Khaldon Azhari

RIYADH: Education was on the program of the 3rd Global AI Summit (GAIN) in Riyadh on Thursday and one of the themes was how AI and humans interact, particularly with children.

Professor Andrej Brodnik of the University of the audience on how AI is used. “It’s a marvelous tool which can help to do education more efficiently,” he said.

“But don’t forget something else: That education is not done by AI. It will be a teacher who is interacting.”

The key to using AI, he said, is to educate teachers on how they can benefit from AI and from the teaching point of view.

“If you’re a teacher out there, if you’re a parent out there, do not try to be a perfect teacher; just be a good teacher. What does it mean? That means encourage the love, learning, and curiosity with kids.”

“If you’re a parent out there, do not spend quality time with your kids. Yes, you heard me right. Do not spend quality time with your kids. Spend trash time. Bake cookies, play with them, have pillow fights. This is what makes us human. The rest of it, I think, will be augmented by AI.”

Prof. John Shawe-Taylor, Director, Centre for Computational Statistics & Machine Learning, UCL, said AI is making learning more accessible and that the potential of AI is to assist in interacting with learners, pointing out that so far AI just gives a solution to the user.

“I think what we need to have been for AI to enable the user to understand by interacting with the user much more. We don’t expect a human being to say, ‘Do this’ and not be able to answer the question, ‘Why do you want me to do that?’ Maybe we could discuss the recommendation and come to a better recommendation and have a better understanding of the learning landscape that the AI is attempting to lead us to. I think one of the things that AI is challenging us to do is to think about what it means to be human.”

Taylor pointed out that it is humans who can reason and think about how to plan in a coherent way. “But I think now that hypothesis is a little under threat because it’s quite clear that AI is matching our intelligence in many, many areas. The ability of generative AI to exhibit intelligent conversation is really , truly remarkable.”

He added that there’s been a mix of intelligence and humanity, and humans are asking themselves just how far the machine can help or interact.

“This is the first time in human history that we have an artificial machine which helps us, or tries to help us, in our cognitive processes of our thinking,” he said. “That’s the thing which I think is exciting.”

Celina Lee, the CEO, and co-founder of CINDY, says AI’s influence is only likely to grow.

“Every single day, every month, there’s new technologies coming up, there’s new developments,” she points out. “What’s important is to make sure that young people, the next generation of innovators, of technologists, are equipped with the tools they need in order to contribute to society, to business, to everyday people’s lives with AI.”

“AI is influencing everything, from climate, to business, to financial services. Every single aspect of our lives is already being touched by AI, and it will just get to be more. And so, do you think AI can be a leverage to solve some of the global challenges, for example, like climate change? Definitely.”