Harnessing AIoT in Transforming the Education Landscape: Opportunities, Challenges, and Future

1 Aiot In Education: What Is It All About?

Let us start by peeping a bit into history and philosophical aspects of education instead of diving straight into the latest trends of artificial intelligence and its overlap with education.

According to well-known philosopher of yesteryears, Immanuel Kant, the human being is the sole living being which needs pretty dedicated levels of guidance and education to start becoming an effective member of its community. As such according to Kant, the notion of education holds significant importance in addressing a fundamental inquiry in philosophy: “What is THE human being?”. Education serves as the mechanism via which the cognitive faculties that define our human nature are realized and nurtured. This is the process by which individuals undergo a transformation to attain their full humanity. Simultaneously, it is the process through which humanity endeavours to enhance and ultimately achieve perfection. This pursuit aims to enable us to live in accordance with moral principles within a universal realization of a society governed by ethical standards.

There is an interesting research work carried out wherein analysis was on the extent to which the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in educational methodologies may compel us to reconsider Kant's above standpoint about human beings. There is a debate in academic circles, whether systems incorporating AI should be perceived solely as tools for enhancing educational processes or as autonomous entities capable of independent thought and agency. While today it is well known that advent of AI can allow a system to self-learn (machine learning) based on historical data patterns and can even predict further by ‘deep learning’ and as such if someone is adhering to the fundamental tenets of Kant's perspective, then their viewpoint necessitates significant modifications, thereby acknowledging that education is not solely confined to human interactions as Kant asserts. Thus, it can be suggested that certain nonhuman entities have the capacity to do both, educate and be educated and as such, the advent of AI necessitates a re-evaluation of the fundamental inquiry posed by Kant, namely, “What constitutes the essence of the human being?” The author of this research work ultimately concludes that despite the shift in perspective about essence of being a human, due to change in circumstances presented by emergence of AI, the viewpoint of Kant remains significant, albeit perhaps requiring additional support and modification in consideration of post- and transhumanist viewpoints (Kornilaev, 2022).

The overarching aim of this entire chapter, and not just this section, is to discuss the potential of AIoT in education sector with related analysis of opportunities, threats, and future possibilities. This chapter does not deal with the technical aspects of AIoT and neither does it adopt any research methodology like qualitative interviews or test experiments through controlled groups or survey based quantitative interpretations or alike. The author instead expects the reader to view it through the mindset of an ‘all round review’ and read it with an intent of ‘sense making of things’ before embarking on full-fledged transformation to using AIoT in education sector.