SCHOOLS STUDY AI FUTURE

Artificial Intelligence At The Rockhampton Grammar School

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has long been a source of science fiction writers'’ most fanciful dystopian stories. However, in the last five years, AI has transformed into a tool that people carry with them and use daily.

Written by Ms Reniece Carter

Human voice recognition from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and other service providers allows users to ask today’s weather, play music, and the meaning of life. Written language translators, driverless cars, automated farming are all coming online due to high-end computing power available through cloud vendors. As such, the School must consider how it can leverage such technological advances to position itself as a market leader in terms of technology adoption and utilisation. RGS Head of Secondary School – Academics, Ms Reniece Carter writes about the AI challenges.

AI implemented rather than it simply changing their work which programmes such as Quillbot or Grammarly do, or via functions such as spelling autocorrect.

Determining if it is possible for AI to provide feedback on student drafts was initially a key goal of investigations. This was in conjunction with determining if current AI technology could review key literacy dimensions of student work such as repetition of ideas, a lack of a clear thesis statement, poor paragraph connections and ineffective flow of ideas. It is important to acknowledge any AI system implemented would need to be age appropriate and ask age applicable questions in relation to suggestions and proposed changes.

It would be foolish to attempt to reinvent the wheel. Investigating products currently in the marketplace allowed the refocus of investigation goals and showed what is and what is not feasible.

Any technology used at RGS must be part of teacher directed learning. This is especially given teachers are the most important single influence on student outcomes. As the recent Covid-19 pandemic highlighted, technology never could replace the benefit of face-to-face teacher directed learning nor their subject matter expertise.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

According to the Australia government, ‘artificial intelligence has the potential to deliver economy-wide benefit by lifting Australia’s competitive capabilities, enabling industry wide transformation, and unlocking local jobs and economic growth.’ (Artificial Intelligence | Australia’s Digital Economy (pmc.gov.au)).

Ethics and Artificial Intelligence

It is acknowledged AI ‘has the potential to increase our well-being; lift our economy; improve society by, for instance, making it more inclusive; and help the environment by using the planet’s resources more sustainably. For Australia to realise these benefits however, it will be important for citizens to have trust in the AI applications delivered by businesses, governments and academia.

In the classroom environment, there are unexplored advantages available by compiling the vast amount of information on students, to effectively aid and enhance their education. Computers and AI are efficient at assessing considerable volumes of data and developing associations within that data. AI’s weakness is that it cannot replace the innate artistic skills of a master craftsman. Teaching is a craft, not a science, and not a computational exercise. It is recognised that AI utilisation in the classroom will cause some level of fear in the teachers the School is attempting to assist. The intention of the School’s investigations into new technology is to use AI to augment the human, not replace the human.

The School’s purpose is to ‘provide a disciplined, stimulating and innovative learning environment to inspire students to become successful lifelong learners.’ AI is certainly innovative, and the mention of lifelong learning, is something to which RGS educators and staff members aspire. The School’s aim is to have a fundamental impact on student learning. Consequently, RGS wants students to learn from the

Mark Newham was particularly accurate in his article, AI in Education, published in Briefings, Volume 24, Issue 1, February 2020 when he stated, ‘In education, we are only just starting to scratch the surface in realising what AI can do to enhance learning outcomes for students, teachers and school leaders. AI will become an important part of any attempts to scale up effective practice.’

Computer scientist, John McCarthy first coined the term ‘artificial intelligence’ in the 1950s. He used the term to describe the science and engineering of making intelligent machines.

Since that time, the term AI has been often used but rarely defined. The concept of ‘engineering an intelligent machine’ relies heavily on how the author or reader interprets the term ‘intelligent’. From the Terminator to Star Wars’ C3PO and Tony Stark’s side-kick Jarvis, AI has been both portrayed as a threat and an ally, capable of unique thought, revolutionary decision making and human-like interactive capabilities.

RGS has an obligation to ensure students are exposed to the benefits of AI in the modern world. This must also involve exposure to, and an understanding of, the risks or potential risks associated with AI. In a school environment, it is possible to ensure this occurs in a safe and managed way. However, given the potential uses of AI and resulting information, it is crucial consideration of ethical responsibilities occurs. There are many potential benefits to embracing edtech and the positive evidence is building, but the use of the AI-enabled learning tools in educational settings also raises thorny quality and ethical questions. (Shaping AI and edtech to tackle Australia’s learning divide, Leslie Loble, Dec 6, 2022.) While ethics will be considered in terms of how a system interprets student data, the education sector must also consider the implications for the teaching community.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT launched on 30 November, 2022. It is part of a broader set of technologies developed by the San Francisco-based start-up OpenAI, which has a close relationship with Microsoft. It is a new generation of AI systems that can converse, generate readable text on demand and even produce novel images and video based on what they have learned from a vast database of digital books, online writings and other media. Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT) is a type of large language model (LLM) that uses deep learning to generate human-like text. They are referred to as ‘generative’ because they can generate new text based on the input they receive. ‘Pretrained’ is referenced because they are trained on a large corpus of text data before being fine-tuned for specific tasks, and ‘transformers’ because they use a transformer based neural network architecture to process input text and generate output text. (https://www. weforum.org/agenda/2023/01/davos23generative-ai-a-game-changer-industriesand-society-code-developers/). In essence, the model can generate content, based on the large volume of data it was trained on, by using a technique called transforming.

Since its launch much debate has occurred in education circles regarding ChatGPT and indeed AI in general. As educators know, it is not the first time technology has entered classrooms. Over the last decade, many discussions have occurred regarding how to deal with the use of spelling checker programmes, the use of Grammarly and Quillbot, the rise of Wikipedia, and indeed automatic translation software such as Google Translate.

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence Tools on Education

Programmes such as ChatGPT highlight the fact schools, including RGS must change the way they view and implement learning and assessment. As those who work in education know, this is not the first time such change has been required.

The rise of AI tools emphasises the debate as to the value of the historic approach of memorising and regurgitating information. As part of the monumental Senior School system change which occurred in all Queensland schools in 2019, the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (QCAA) identified and defined a set of 21st century skills students would need to be global citizens. Based on national and international research, these skills aim to ensure students can develop the knowledge, abilities and confidence to equip them in a rapidly changing world (QCAA, 2017). The inclusion of critical thinking, creative thinking, communication, collaboration and teamwork, and personal and social skills highlights the necessity for students to be active and engaged learners.

The marking of student work for homework or assessment tasks (both draft and final copies) can be a daunting task, and for most teachers, it requires a significant time commitment. However, as online essay grading software becomes more advanced, Remboint Director Dr Robert Williams says, “teachers can potentially save hours of their time, leaving them free to focus on more individual areas of improvement.” (How teachers can save hours of time on essay grading, The Educator Online, 7 February, 2023)