Artificial Intelligence in Education: Current Insights and Future Perspectives

Definition of AI

Nabiyev (2010) roughly defines AI as the ability of a computer-controlled device to perform tasks in a human-like manner. As indicated by the author, human-like qualities include mental processes like reasoning, meaning making, generalization, and learning from past experiences. Russell and Norvig (2003) describe the term AI as Machine Intelligence, or Computational Intelligence, that embraces various subfields wherein learning takes place and “specific tasks, such as playing chess, proving mathematical theorems, writing poetry, and diagnosing diseases, can be performed” (p. 2). Nilsson (2014) defines AI as the entirety of an algorithmic construction copying human intelligence. To Nilsson (2014), AI embraces the construction of the information-processing theory of intelligence. In other words, raw data, received from any user, is filtered by a device, made meaningful, and processed before finally becoming cooked data capable of meeting the demands of users.

There have been mind-blowing developments in the evolution of AI and the remarkable role it has played in human lives. Recently, there have been some concrete examples of AI being capable of learning how to think like a human. These examples have even demonstrated that AI-based applications, in some cases, can even function as better as humans. For example, in 2016, Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo defeated one of the world’s most accomplished “Go” players, Lee Se-Dol, a South Korean champion (Sang-Hun, 2016). As the greatest proof of AI’s human-like thinking and skills, the result of this match shows that a true artificially-intelligent system is one that can learn on its own (Adams, 2017).