Steve Toy says ai has revolutionized the way people learn languages through technology in two important ways.
First, ai can help deliver video content to individual users that is appropriate for their skill level in a given language.
“This is something that educators have always wanted to do: have video content that lets you hear the words you’re learning,” says Toy, CEO of Memrise, a language learning platform. “But it’s very expensive to create content and it’s very difficult to get all kinds of people to learn the same number of words at once so they can play the same video that makes sense. And now we don’t have to worry about that. We just have to know the words that each individual knows and we have to know the words that are in a given video.”
ai can then do the rest, combining videos and existing content on social media that match the learner's knowledge of a given language.
Additionally, ai can also help people practice their language skills. “We now have the ability to let you try using those words and give you real-time feedback on how you’re doing in an environment where there’s no human judgment,” Toy says. “The main reason people who know 100 words of a given language don’t try using those words even to have a planned conversation like, ‘Hi, how are you? Can I buy you a coffee?’ is because they’re worried about sounding stupid.”
These kinds of uses of ai, allowing for individualized instruction and offering students specific, instant, unbiased feedback, are part of the reason why edtech companies both large and small have embraced ai. It’s also why many educators are excited about the prospect of the technology, and something of an ai arms race is emerging among the major edtech companies.
<h2 id="embracing-ai“>Adoption of ai
Deirdre Quarnstrom, vice president of Education at Microsoft, says ai has the potential to exponentially increase student access to personalized learning.
“We know from practice and experience that personalized learning is really key and that everyone benefits from it,” Quarnstrom says.
An example of how ai is helping to facilitate more personalized learning is Microsoft's tool Reading Coach, which is available to educators and parents through Teams. Reading Coach can generate assessments of each student’s reading practice on demand, among other features. “We know that when students are more engaged in reading, they enjoy the content and it’s more personalized, they’re going to spend more time and that becomes a predictor of reading outcomes,” Quarnstrom says.
Other ai tools for educators include Microsoft CoPilotwhich is powered in part by GPT technology through Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI and can help teachers generate lesson plans and assessments. Microsoft also recently announced that it will allow Khan Academy to provide free access to its Khanmigo artificial intelligence assistantfor all K-12 educators.
Regardless of the ai platform used, however, it’s important for the educator to take the reins, Quarnstrom says. “They know their students, they know what they’re trying to accomplish, they have a set of goals, and they know what their students are capable of,” she says.
Other tech giants are also entering the field of ai applied to education. Google's flagship artificial intelligence model, Geminiis available in Workspace for Education, and Apple’s recently announced partnership with OpenAI is sure to have implications for teachers and students.
<h2 id="ai-pitfalls-and-potential”>Dangers and potential of ai
Of course, there are also critics of ai.
Jane Rosenzweig, director of the Harvard College Writing Center, argues that many of the existing texts… ai tutors only provide on-demand versions of Wikipedia articlesnot the deeper insights that a trained educator can provide. Research into how effective generative ai tools can be is still in its early stages, though a recent review of the research found Students saw only modest benefits from using ChatGPT-style tutorsAnd hallucinations remain a problem for ai technology.
Alden Do Rosario, CEO and founder of CustomGPT.ai, says that eliminating hallucinations should be the first goal of all ai companies, particularly those working in education. However, he is confident that the problem of ai-induced hallucinations will be solved, and like many tech executives, he is optimistic about the future of ai and education. Ultimately, he believes ai will not only help students of all levels learn, but it will also change the way they learn.
“If knowledge is available at the blink of an eye, like Google used to do, but now it’s a thousand times more powerful, then the focus on trying to memorize things becomes much less important,” says Do Rosario. “Remember there were these things called ‘open-book tests.’ Now they will be open ai tests. The way you take a test will be completely different with ai at your fingertips.”
