Valley News – Column: Possible use for AI in education

The growing use of AI in public schools triggers alarm ringtone in classrooms and kitchens across the country. Teachers are concerned because students often use AI to finish writing duties, and they read articles describing how their work could be moved due to AI. Parents are concerned because they have lived years of distant teaching and have witnessed the disconnection of learning by screens. And both are concerned about the privacy of students who may be compromised as IA programs absorb personal data on children.

I share these concerns, but my recent experience with an AI bot makes me think that AI could have positive impacts on learning.

At the beginning of this year, my wife was looking for a recipe on her laptop when an advertisement appeared for an application that promised weight loss thanks to an intermittent fast. We both used intermittent fasting to lose weight taken during the holidays. The method we used required a limitation of calories two days a week while eating with abandonment on other days. This protocol helped us for a short time, but we both hated the follow -up of calories and, therefore, after a few weeks, we came back to our normal diet and our higher weights.

This new application, however, offered a different diet: we fast for 16 hours a day and during an 8 -hour time interval, consume what we wanted. The application also provided a “coach” who promised to assess our daily diet and encourage us to stick to the intermittent fasting diet if we have discouraged. For $ 5 per month, my wife thought it was worth trying and, because she prepares most meals, I became a participant.

The next day, we met coach Avo, who became the third member of our family. He joined us before eating to assess the meal that my wife photographed for him, presenting him an easy -to -understand table and offering his specific recommendations on how to make the meal “optimal”, the highest note as possible. The AVO coach also sent SMS and periodic emails to my wife, reminding her to remain hydrated, to eat consciously, to exercise; follow your food calendar; And, encourage her to keep the course with the fast even on the days when she gained a few ounces of weight.

The AVO coach invariably uses a clever speech. He never criticizes my wife's food choices or reprimands her if she does not respect the registered application calendar. Instead of ridicule, Avo offers gay reminders that staying in calendars would help him achieve his weight loss goal and avoid sweet foods would allow him to keep fasting without having desires.

More crucial, the AVO coach measures my wife's progress according to the long -term weight loss goals she has set. He did not judge it on the basis of a predetermined, rigid and unique diet on any number of fixed calories. He also did not judge it on his membership at the food intervals recommended by the application. Instead, he kept his long-term goal in the avant-garde, pushed him to avoid the foods that make him want to eat more often and have constantly reminded him that the body burns the most fat in our body in the last hours of fasting. In this way, the AVO coach was gradually changing his eating habits and mine.

My wife and I know that the AVO coach is a bot ai. We know his ability to interpret photographs of our meals, his “advice” on what to substitute to make our meals more satisfactory, and the data he presents in his motivation paintings are all generated by algorithms. We also know that the AVO coach has no sensitivity. He really doesn't care if we follow his advice, or if we reach our goals, or if he connects us with us. His “Tips” and “Pep Talks”, like his “acquaintances”, are all algorithmic. Even if we know that Avo is inanimate, we both feel better when he gives meals, we prepare an “optimal” note, when he gives my wife positive comments on his meticulous monitoring of meals, hydration and exercise, and when her daily weighings show that she reaches her ultimate goal.

The approach of the AVO coach works because he does not assess my wife by comparing his weight loss rate with an age cohort, or a cohort of people seeking to lose the same weight as she hopes to lose, or all sets of standards based on means. He assesses her according to his own objectives and advises him to make better choices in his diet according to research, knowing that there is not the best way that works for everyone. The approach of the AVO coach works because he communicates that weight loss, such as learning, can only occur when an individual attaches to it.

As which has spent decades to work in public education, I think that coaches like AVO could help in schools, especially if schools used AI to abandon the rigid normalization used to measure students and replace it with the type of individualization that could be possible with AI. If schools measured the performance of students according to the learning objectives they set instead of standards according to the learning rate of students who are the same age, a seismic change in education would take place. Instead of time being standard and learning being variable, learning would be standard and time would be variable. In such a paradigm, teachers should help students set realistic and achievable learning objectives and guide them during the time they need to achieve these objectives.

In such a paradigm, the measures used to strengthen competition and tri-selective based on standardized tests would fall by the way. In such a paradigm, AI would be used to help teachers motivate students to achieve their own objectives. In such a paradigm, AI could transform education instead of developing a more “effective” system.

Wayne Gersen is a retirement administrator of public schools. He lives in Etna.