The ministry said AI systems could make discriminatory or outright wrong decisions.
photograph: 123 RF
The Ministry of Education has warned teachers not to use artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT to mark student performance.
He said the system could lead to discriminatory or outright wrong decisions.
Generative AI such as ChatGPT can create original texts such as essays, but most discussion of its use in education thus far has focused on potential cheating by students.
The ministry’s advice to schools says the tool also shows promise for grading tasks, but teachers should be careful.
“This can be unfair and discriminatory if you don’t understand the basis of your judgment (i.e. looking inside the algorithm). It is the responsibility of the teacher and the school to make the final decision on the learner’s task.” is,” the group said.
“It’s also possible that these tools are simply wrong because of the way they ‘invent’ the answer. AI systems trained off the internet have not seen enough work by children and young people to fully understand what is appropriate and what is expected. young people. ”
Simon McCallum, a senior lecturer in software engineering at the University of Victoria, said he agreed teachers should be cautious about using generative AI for grading.
He said he tried it himself to see how well it worked, but wasn’t sure if the tool was consistently accurate.
“We haven’t really done enough experiments to figure out if it does a consistently good job,” he said.
“I don’t know if it’s going to suddenly go off the rails and do something crazy and punish students for using the word ‘unicorn’ or something because it triggers the AI to behave abnormally. Because I don’t know what it is.”
But McCallum said he expects AI tools will eventually be very helpful in grading student assignments.
“You can train yourself to be unbiased and it will be uniform for every student. , give a lower grade.” ,” he said.
“There are many advantages to having machines do this and automate it, but the quality is not there yet.”
Vaughan Cuillot, president of the Association of Secondary Principals, said generative AI could be useful for teachers, but shouldn’t be relied upon.
“It may be a useful tool to use for marking, but the most useful tool to use for marking is professional judgment,” he says.
Cuiyo said the use of ChatGPT and similar systems is growing rapidly in schools.
