AI and the Future of Education: Teaching in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Priten Shah.
He holds an M.ED. in Education Policy and Management from the Harvard. Priten is CEO of Pedagogy.Cloud and founder of the civic-focused nonprofit United 4 Social Change.
Priten is addressing the impact of AI upon education in mid 2023. The date is important due to the weekly advances in the AI industry and a near frantic desire for teachers in K12 and Higher Education to understand the impact upon teaching.
Perhaps the challenge to all authors addressing AI’s impact across education is the need for educational systems to protect students while trying to understand the security and privacy impacts AI has upon schools that must meet those privacy mandates for children.
Then again, within the last six to eight months the AI Agents announced by OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft will certainly be viewed by teachers as a threat. It may surprise many that when teachers are requesting access to Microsoft CoPilot, they overlook this AI’s agent functions that will be available to them 24/7 for every class they are enrolled in and includes agent functions for academic support.
Will Education be all about OpenAI?
So, to some extent Priten is jumping onboard the AI train. He does address how states will shift their K12, two, and four year public educational systems to embrace AI. However, chapters addressing ethics, and the professional development for teachers you have to ask where will budgets be found to provide these services?
And for all of the hype of ChatGPT, OpenAI is charging $20/month fees for access to ChatGPT4 and their other AI services, which now include Sora. Run the numbers and it will cripple large schools regardless of age. The money is just not available post pandemic. K12 District are just now pivoting to hand a Chromebook to all students.
AI is too fluid for an educational foundation today
Is there approved budget for OpenAI? This will never develop for public schools. Here is where Priten needs to tackle the achievement gap. Even private schools will need to fundraise or find grants to pay for full OpenAI tool equity for their students. Yet everyone including Priten in the impossible task for recommending AI services when the speed of change is driven by Silicon Valley and Wall Street.
One can appreciate his position on Teacher professional development in the AI era. In fact, the same financial constraints that hinder deployment of OpenAI services are impacting Teachers, Technology teams, and educational leaders. Where do they receive AI training while the market remains in flux? The Technology Fallacy is a better choice for K12 and Higher Education teachers.
In conclusion, AI and the Future of Education is a soft introduction to the challenges confronting our Educational Systems. Priten offers ideas to a most complex task in the era of shrinking budgets across our country.