- This blog was kindly written for HEPI by Kortext Chief Product Officer Andrew Bates.
- To learn more about AI’s impact on higher education, tune in to Kortext Live, a free, in-person event at Imperial College London on April 25, 2023.
What is artificial intelligence?
The definition of AI has changed over time, but in a nutshell, it can be described as “interpreting external data correctly, learning from such data, and using those learnings to meet specific goals through flexible adaptation.” It is the system’s ability to accomplish a task.”
From search engines to digital voice assistants to facial recognition in our phones, we take AI tools for granted every day.
Generative AI is the field of artificial intelligence that has taken the world by storm. Its goal is to mimic the way humans think and communicate. The best-known example of generative AI is ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI. ChatGPT is based on the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) architecture, a type of deep neural network designed to generate human-like text. It has been trained on vast amounts of text data (including books, articles, and web pages) to understand and generate responses to a wide range of natural language input (thanks to ChatGPT for that explanation). Generative AI writing apps are proliferating, and enterprise software companies like Microsoft and Google (and numerous startups) are implementing the technology for a variety of uses.
what happened?
Generative AI writing apps offer exciting possibilities, but their human-like responses are of great concern in higher education as students may use the apps to write assignments.
Questions arise about plagiarism and academic honesty in current higher education assessment models when academics cannot determine whether a student’s work is all their own work. So how is the tech industry tackling the problem of “AIgiarism”?
OpenAI has updated its usage policy to say it does not allow use for “fraudulent or deceptive activities”, including plagiarism and academic misconduct (although it is questionable how this would actually be enforced). ).
The company is also reportedly working on technology to “statistically watermark the output” so that it can be detected as AI-generated text. However, these precautions have not been adopted industry-wide. Instead, the focus of other generative AI writing apps seems to be more focused on facilitating built-in plagiarism checkers, claiming that their output is never flagged by plagiarism detection tools.
Is AI bad for learning?
Does that mean AI is a negative development for higher education? Not from Kortext’s point of view. The QAA Briefing on AI and Academic Integrity does not recommend banning generative AI writing apps. Instead, it suggests that higher education providers should use this as an opportunity to rethink assessment design and involve students and staff in developing “authentic and innovative” assessment methods.
ChatGPT (and other AI tools) help students think critically, become more reflective, participate in group discussions, use problem-solving skills, and engage in assessments that relate to real-world scenarios in the workplace. provide an opportunity to encourage In fact, the higher education sector has concerns about the use of AI detection tools. They can return false positives, and their performance can vary across disciplines. At this stage, it is important not to rely too much on them, but instead “see these classifiers as add-ons whose conclusions require critical analysis.”
the future is bright
For some students, plagiarism is a shortcut if they don’t have time to meet a deadline. When you’re under pressure, you can make the wrong decisions. Kortext’s Arcturus smart learning platform uses AI technology to help students do more in their limited time. Our eTextbooks allow students to search, highlight text, make notes, add bookmarks, and intelligently translate text into her 100+ languages. By making tasks like this quicker and easier, it saves students time and allows them to focus on deeper learning.
Our collaborative AI technology helps scholars drive student engagement with course content by creating learning objectives from recruited learning content and personalizing student learning journeys. Our Engagement Insights help academics track student interactions with all content in their workbooks, allowing them to diagnose early when they need more help. Kortext is actively working with the higher education sector to further develop AI tools that improve the student experience.
AI technology has the potential to transform higher education, and we are excited about the possibilities that lie ahead.
