The Paradox of AI Empowerment in Education: A Utopian Dream or Dystopian Nightmare?

Keywords: Ai, Education, Future of Learning, Collaborative Learning

Session Type: ROUND

Abstract

The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) globally has challenged the future of work greatly. In education specifically, AI has been argued to address challenges in accessing education, automating processes and optimising learning outcomes (Mann & Hilbert, 2018). When engaged correctly in education, AI can be used to contribute towards addressing Goal 4 of the UN sustainable development goals – ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all (UN sustainable development goals, 2023). The goal is not consensus but enlightenment, not answers but more profound questions. Participants are expected to emerge with an enriched perspective, a critical lens, and an invigorated commitment to shape an educational future where AI is not an unbridled force but a meticulously crafted instrument of equitable, ethical, and empowering education. This Roundtable Provocation is an odyssey into the layered, often uncomfortable yet indispensable, dialogues that will shape the future of education in an AI-driven world. It is an opportunity to confront, reflect, challenge, and be challenged, collectively weaving through the intricate tapestry where technology, ethics, and the quintessence of human learning coexist, collide, and converge. In this discursive space, we are not technologists, educators, or policymakers. We are co-creators of a narrative that will define the future generations’ learning experience—a narrative where AI’s computational brilliance and the irreplaceable human touch are not at war but in a delicate, respectful, and empowering dance. The question isn’t whether this dance is possible but how we, the custodians of the present, are choreographing a future that is as technologically advanced as it is profoundly human.

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