What is AI?

 Presented with the term, artificial intelligence, I wonder if most people conjure a vision of AI as I do, with this visual influenced by some sci-fi movie.  I immediately think of the 2001 movie,  A. I. Artificial Intelligence and the character that Haley Joel Osment, a movie that always left me feeling sad because the A. I. boy is trying to find his true nature after not being able to exist in either the cyber or real world due to circumstances. Such emotions and forlorn expressions on that face throughout the movie.  It reminds me a lot of the plot line in Klara and the Sun and that possibility that Klara might replace the ailing Josie.

According to Wikipedia, A.I. is simply defined as intelligence demonstrated by machines, as opposed to the natural intelligence displayed by animals including humans.

I found Dobrov's (2004) definition more effective in that it describes the genesis and power of the machine's intelligence based on three assumptions:

1. Every calculating device can be modelled by a program. A.I. is a program.

2. AI is a step device and on every step it inputs from outside a portion of information  and outputs a portion of information.

3.  AI is in some environment which gives it a portion of information on every step and which receives the output of AI. Also we assume that the environment will be influenced of the information which AI outputs. This environment can be natural or artificial and we will refer to it as “world”. (Dobrov, 2004, p. 2). 

With these assumptions, Dobrov defined, "AI will be such a program which in an arbitrary world will cope not worse than a human" (p. 2).  

Concepts such as machine learning and deep learning are associated with AI.  These are distinct (Copeland, 2016) in that AI is the overarching concept that gave birth to subsequent concepts:

AI consistently has been on the list of the top Ed Tech Trends in K12 for over a decade. 

But how is it being used in Education?

Here are 7 ways from Harper (2021):
Task Automation

Personalized Learning

Universal Access

Smart Content Creation

Teaching the Teacher

Identify Classroom Weakness

24/7 Assistance

These are all great! But notice that these are all teacher-centered uses.

The examples are few and far between. Here is a recent study on how kid's use AI in the classroom, specifically, their interactions with Smart Speakers.

Another recent example of AI that is related to Deep Learning and Deep Fake was a segment that aired on 60 minutes and repeated last Sunday (7/31).  

Yes, there's some scary stuff presented in this segment but we all know from EDIT 781 that whenever a new innovation or technology appears, humans are going to find both good and bad ways to use it.  There is a great new tool developing called Synthesia, an AI Video Generation platform.  The company uses it's AI technology to create real-people avatars and with your script and a recording of your voice, they can generate a very professional video for you without you appearing.  The best part if you want to change your script, you do not have to rerecord. Synthesia can simply replace that section using their advanced technology. This deserves a serious look for those who create content!

I have a doctoral student who is testing it out as part of her research!

What ideas have you seen or experienced that showcase students using AI for learning?