Artificial Intelligence for Learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) reflects humanity’s strengths and shortcomings.

Historically, people have imagined the AI of the future in crude, mechanical, science fiction-type ways. For instance, when people speculated on AI as it might relate to education, they often pictured anthropomorphized robots: the idea of a human-looking robot paired with the notion that AI would have human-like understanding, subjectivity, and consciousness — which the AI that exists today in no way possesses.

Modern AI is not a distinct entity, but rather, a collection of concepts and technologies that people can apply to — and sometimes use to solve problems in — diverse fields, including engineering, health care, and education. Importantly, today’s AI tools are a far cry from the kind of autonomous artificial general intelligence (AGI) that humanity has, at times, imagined taking over the world for its own self-directed purposes. Indeed, ascribing the term “artificial intelligence” to today’s technology is probably misleading. Generative AI is really just software trained on vast amounts of data gleaned...