In November of the 2017 year, Microsoft released a training application for learning Chinese. In it, the student responds to short printed and audio messages of the teacher-bot in the chat. However, Microsoft's digital teacher is not just another chat-bot. The artificial intelligence inherent in his algorithm analyzes the user's answers and selects the right load for his learning. Interface simulate the real interlocutor of the digital teacher and helps the application. It is similar to the popular in Asia messenger WeChat.
The growth of technology is gradually changing the system of education - acquiring knowledge is becoming easier. In the US, services help school students to do their homework faster. The relevance of textbooks and abstracts is gradually disappearing. Today, every user of the network can look at Wikipedia and get the necessary information from one or thousands of sources. There are no problems with a lack of information. Rather, on the contrary - we observe its overabundance.
Teachers of schools and universities, tutors and remote teachers today help to gather the necessary knowledge in the pupil's head. But they already use electronic helpers.
The professor at the University of Georgia uses as an assistant chat-bot answering students in a separate training channel. Professor Ashok Goel uploaded Jill Watson, his assistant, a chat-bot. 40,000 messages from the forums select a correct one for a best human response. The algorithm helps students with the solution not only of homework but allows to conduct extra-curricular activities through a smartphone or tablet. Today bots like Watson are being introduced in universities around the world. One of the latest - BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo.
And the robot Tera, developed by MIT Media Lab, finds an individual approach to the student. At Massachusetts University, students learn Spanish vocabulary through a training game on a tablet computer with a robot Tega. Teaching not as a teacher, but rather as a peer student. He encourages students, giving hints when necessary, and even bored over not interesting assignments with them.
Modern remote learning services are also changing by introducing new technologies. Duolingo uses his own bot in teaching foreign languages when asking a chat-bot, the student quickly gets a simple answer. That’s quite convenient. Despite the fact that such solutions appeared on the market quite recently, technologies are being developed more completely. Under the pressure roller of the development of artificial intelligence, standard training chat-bots can also remain in the past, as well as training with a tutor.
To gain knowledge, people need more than a bot running in the question-answer mode. Just like the Microsoft algorithm, the application for learning foreign languages Parla - this is already a full step to the digitization of the teacher. The embedded technology analyzes the student's knowledge and adjusts the individual training program for it. Isn’t it great? The developers argue that based on errors and correct answers, the time allotted, the speed of performance of tasks and hobbies, artificial intelligence is able to find an individual approach to human learning. Applications Parla and Microsoft already make you think about the appearance of "pocket teachers" in the next five years.
In fact, the fear of robots is getting smaller. In the Bot.Me study: A Revolutionary Partnership, 63% of the people surveyed believe that artificial intelligence technologies will help in solving many problems of mankind and future education. In the future will be harder to study, but much easier to buy argumentative essay online for example.
In underdeveloped countries, there is a problem with a lack of worthy teachers. It became clear from the PISA 2009 study that one-third of them in Brazil had barely completed high school, and in Mexico, 70% did not pass the "National Teacher Test". In such multimillion-dollar countries as China, Japan, and India, there are not so much qualified teachers too. The lack of teachers there is only one aspect. Traditionally, in schools and universities, the approach is based on a single level teaching. But students learn differently when someone learns the material from one lesson, and another one needs to repeat the rule several times. Meanwhile, it is often difficult for teachers to identify such students. And to adjust the training program for them is hard too. Developers of the online platform for teaching mathematics Third Space Learning launched an algorithm that analyzes the data of students' interaction with the teacher from the millions of lessons. What is it aimed for? They believe that artificial intelligence will be able to personalize classes so that the laggards pull themselves up to the achievers.
The emergence of "electronic teachers on a smartphone" will help solve the key problems of education. The number of illiterate people in the world at the end of 2014 was more than 780 million. Educational artificial intelligence can give the world free knowledge without special institutions. Virtual teachers are already part of our lives, but so far only as a complement to real ones. In the study of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 17 US schools, only half of the students use technology for educational purposes. Today, people are not yet ready to learn from algorithms. We believe that educators and private tutors will still be the guides to the world of knowledge in the next 5-10 years. However, the preconditions for the gradual displacement of man by artificial intelligence are noticeable just as the appearance of unmanned vehicles on the roads.