Expert: AI to reshape education as powerful tools mushroom

The human teacher's role in education will be redefined in the future as artificial intelligence (AI) evolves, said Zhang Bo, academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"AI will affect how the teacher and the teaching machine function (in the field of education), such as whether the machine will replace or weaken the human teacher's role," Zhang said while he attended a panel discussion at a forum held at Tsinghua University Art Museum in Beijing on Friday.

The forum is a sideline event of the award ceremony of a national AI robot competition. Hosted by the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAAI), the event aims to build a platform to showcase recent research findings and applications in the area of AI in China.

Zhang, 89, is one of China's first generation of AI experts who began the journey of studying AI in 1978. He is currently working as the honorary director of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence at Tsinghua University. Deeply rooted in AI research and education in China in the past 46 years, Zhang is still playing a key role in calling on younger generations to strive for innovation in AI.

Speaking at the event, Zhang pointed out that Chinese education attaches great importance to problem-solving skills, but students' ability to ask questions is what drives innovation and technological development.

During the discussion, Han Liqun, former director of the School of Information Engineering, Beijing Technology and Business University, said AI could empower education in multiple ways.

"Personalized teaching can be carried out in large-scale in the future. Led by a human teacher, each student can have an AI teaching assistant that provides teaching programs according to the student's learning ability and characteristics," said Han.

She added that AI teachers that are equipped with the teaching experience of many human teachers can be shared by thousands of students, which is conducive to promoting educational equity between regions.

Han noted that, in the process of guiding young people to use AI tools, it is necessary to help them establish the concept of "technology for good" and cultivate a sense of social responsibility.

Most award winners of the competition are teachers and students from universities, and younger kids are beginning to make their mark in this field as well. Several primary school students on the stage caught people's attention during the award ceremony.

Ten-year-old Yang Yuzhou is one of the first-prize winners in the competition. He began to learn coding last year and won first prize in the competition's creative coding section. Currently, he knows how to use AI tools to generate pictures, and he said that in the future he wants to create intelligent robots that could assist humans.

At the event, the pupils were accompanied by their parents who discovered and gave full support to their child's interest in technology.