In a recent research report, a renowned Charles Darwin University (CDU) specialist warns that artificial intelligence (AI) is discriminatory, prone to racial and sexist bias, and that its incorrect usage is driving education into a crisis on a worldwide scale.
The critique of AI as a foundation for wise use in higher education’ calls for society to look past the hype of AI and consider the dangers of implementing the technology in the classroom after AI ubiquitously invaded and colonized public imaginations across the globe in late 2022 and early 2023.
In the article, author and CDU AI expert Dr. Stefan Popenici discusses the two most harmful myths about AI in education: the idea that AI is objective, factual, and unbiased when in reality it is directly related to certain values, beliefs, and biases; and the idea that AI doesn’t discriminate when it is inherently discriminatory, mentioning also the lack of gender diversity in the expanding field.
When we consider how technology truly works, we see that there has never been a time in human history when it was not directly influenced by particular cultures, values, prejudices, religious convictions, or gender ideologies, according to Dr. Popenici.
There is consistent research and literature that provides examples of AI algorithms that discriminate, grotesquely amplify injustice and inequality, target and victimize the most vulnerable, and expose us all to unseen decision-making mechanisms with no transparency or recourse.
With a startling and dangerous lack of critical thinking regarding automation in education, particularly in the case of AI, Dr. Popenici investigates how the disparity between priorities of higher education and “Big Tech”—the most powerful businesses in the information technology industry—is expanding. Lack of concern about AI in education has an impact on how students’ data is used, their right to privacy, and their capacity for critical and creative thought.
Profits, power, control, and financial gain are the motivations behind Big Tech. The goals of educational institutions and educators are significantly different from one another: they are to foster educated, accountable, and engaged citizens who can lead balanced lives and make valuable contributions to their society, according to Dr. Popenici.
To claim that artificial intelligence is intelligent is misleading and hazardous. What generative AI provides users following a prompt lacks imagination, critical thinking, depth, or wisdom.
In comparison to any computing system linked to the marketing term “AI,” intelligence as a human quality refers to a fundamentally different set of talents and abilities that are considerably more complicated and difficult to isolate, label, measure, and manage.
The ethical and intellectual ramifications of AI must be taken into account if academic institutions and educators are to be relevant in the future and have a real chance of achieving the goals of education.
