A step towards building greater trust in AI in education

Artificial intelligence (AI) powered education platforms are proliferating, but there’s a lot of confusion and hype in the market. To instil public confidence in AI’s education potential, the industry needs to adopt common benchmarks and standards to ensure the safe and responsible use of AI in education.

Today, the users – the parents, the students, the instructors – have no sense of whether a tool is safe and effective, and they tend to be afraid of most AI-enabled tools.

To address the problem, Riiid, which specialises in AI-powered education solutions, and DXtera Institute, a non-profit membership organisation that uses technology to lower barriers in education delivery, have formed a cross-sector alliance of companies, non-profit organisations and education technology associations to work on an AI in Education benchmark initiative.

The initiative, launched in August, is focused on establishing benchmarks and standards in four critical categories – Safety (security, privacy), Accountability (defining stakeholder responsibilities), Fairness (equity, ethics and lack of bias), and Efficacy (quantified improved learning outcomes). In a word, SAFE educational AI.

In the three months since the alliance was launched, it has grown from 20 members to more than 100 members, representing 15 countries. Organisations involved include Carnegie Learning, ETS, GSV Ventures, the German Alliance for Education, EduCloud Alliance and Digital Promise.

Underwriters Laboratory, the private certification company, is a member of the alliance and has independently developed a kind of rubric that they use for inspecting algorithms. UL, as it is known today, has participated in the safety analysis of many new technologies since it was founded in 1894.

Nearly every American product that uses electricity has the UL logo on it, which means that it has undergone rigorous testing to meet various standards.

The alliance intends to do something similar for AI education tools and platforms, eventually implementing a voluntary review process for such products that would give consumers confidence in the way that nutritional labels do on packaged food products today.

The alliance isn’t focused on the United States market alone. It is engaged with people in Israel, Russia and the the European Edtech Alliance, which represents all the EU countries and Education Alliance Finland, among others.

AI has the potential to transform education, relieving teachers of administrative burdens and personalising learning paths for students. But in order to realise that potential, we need recognised standards that everyone can trust.

More: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20211214103758477