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Artificial Intelligence
Dave Horn
Definition-Origins
The concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI) often conjures up pop-culture images, such as
HAL (9000) or the Terminator, depending upon your age. Although fictional, these
machines embody the definition of AI, whereby a machine carries out functions generally
associated with being human, including reasoning, learning from situations, and
optimization through experience. Machines can carry out the approximations of human
reasoning by organizing and manipulating factual and heuristic knowledge.
The idea of AI has been around since antiquity, but it wasn't until after WWII that
research and development of AI began in earnest. One of the early pioneers in the field
was Alan Turing, an English mathematician. He used programmable computers and
posited that if a machine could fool a knowledgeable observer into believing that it was
human, it could be considered intelligent. He created a test—the Turing Test—to support
his theory, and used a teletypewriter to avoid the need to produce speech when the
machine and person interacted with the knowledgeable observer. The human would try
to persuade the observer that it was human and the machine would try to fool the
observer into believing it was also human.
Educational Technology & Learning
A Terminator as the classroom teacher would definitely reduce issues with behaviour and
classroom management! However, the actual capacities of AI machines to date are still
limited, although research in this field has opened up doors into the examination of how
learners learn. Some impacts of AI on e-Learning and educational technology can already
be seen.
In California, a small group of post-secondary institutes shifted their high-enrollment
courses from traditional lectures to online tutorials, discussions forums, and computerized
grading to obtain speedier insight into areas where students were succeeding and where
they were struggling. This resulted in increased student learning in 25 of the 30 projects
and a cost reduction of 37% for the institutes.
The development of intelligent tutoring systems helps students working on algebra and
physics problems where there are many ways to solve problems and also equally varied
ways to get incorrect solutions. Additionally, computer tutors are capable of recording
both longitudinal data and data at a fine time scale, such as mouse clicks and responsetime data. Educational technologists and e-learning developers can then mine this data to
build an understanding of student learning and modify learning systems to accommodate
these learning modalities.
Future AI systems will have application in terms of creating dynamic online learning
systems that can adapt to and learn from the strengths and weaknesses of the learners. AI
programs will also prove beneficial to students with dyslexia and dysgraphia as their
speech recognition and output abilities improve, thus enabling students to progress at a
faster pace without being held captive by their learning difficulties.
Further Reading
Beck, J., Haugsjaan, E., Stern, M. (2006). Applications of AI In Education.
International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 16 (3), 227-265.
AI Topics (2010). Education: Intelligent Tutoring & Other Educational Uses of AI.
Retrieved from
http://www.aaai.org/aitopics/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/AITopics/Education