The possibility of replacing the teacher with artificial intelligence
Modern education cannot ignore, much less resist, the current trends of robotization and automation. Despite the traditional conservatism, the educational system must consider the social reality in which the modern generation will live. New technologies should be present in the methods and system of education; they should be organically combined with traditional principles of teaching and education, complementing the educational process. Electronic boards and diaries, sensor panels, information and communication networks, robotics - all that ten years ago seemed fantastic, but for today's students, is a natural habitat. Today robots have become our assistants, part of everyday life, and even interlocutors, actively interacting with humans and solving routine monotonous tasks for them, helping reveal human potential. Robots can be used for different purposes depending on their functionality and program. There are already many cases of anthropomorphic robotic rescuers, robotic manipulators, robotic teachers, robotic soccer players, and so on. Their functionality is constantly increasing, and the "thought process" no longer belongs only to living organisms. Developers are increasingly improving intelligent systems, especially in terms of human-machine interaction.
The directions of robotics development in education
Every year, robotics and robots will be applied more and more in the educational process. Five trends can be distinguished in this respect, which are already being implemented today.
- Robotics is an element of playful learning, and learning becomes a fascinating process. Students can simultaneously develop thinking, creative imagination, and play using constructor parts to assemble and program robots. In technical universities, this technology is used to learn algorithms and principles of robotics and develop skills in solving applied engineering problems.
- Robot Intermediary. In the education process, there are situations when a student, for some reason, cannot attend classes with the whole group, and then he can develop psychosocial maladaptation. In this case, a mobile robotic mediator can help them. It moves around the educational institution, is present in the lessons, and transmits information to the patient. The student himself controls the intermediary robot from the computer and, without violating the medical regime, staying at home or in the hospital, continues to be an active participant in the educational process.
It compensates for the lack of social interaction, which has a positive effect not only on the development of the student's personality but also on their well-being. A good psycho-emotional background and a sense of presence improve the state of health and reduce the rehabilitation time of an ill student.
- Telepresence robot is an intermediary in distance learning, a substitute for the teacher when using distance technologies; its purpose is to promote new methods of remote education. The peculiarity of the human brain is that more effective perception occurs with good spatial orientation. The teacher can be anywhere, while the robot can be in the classroom. Its cameras and sensors are the eyes and ears of the teacher. They read signals and send a response through images and audio speech to tablets, laptops, and students' phones. In some cases, the robot can cope without a person and conduct the class independently according to the program. This interactive learning method increases the quality of education because the best teachers can teach courses in any educational institution at a considerable distance.
No robot can think like a human; artificial intelligence has not yet achieved this. The robot follows the commands given by the teacher according to technical capabilities. The teacher and the library were the only sources of knowledge in the last century. Today's students have easy access to electronic libraries; each can have electronic books at their disposal. However, education is not only a volume of knowledge but also the ability to apply professional knowledge in communication with people. Even the best robot has materials limited to a database and cannot answer any questions.
Robot tutor for inclusive education. On the one hand, the robot is not alive, but on the other hand, it moves and can respond to the student. Here the robot is helpful as a guide, an assistant, and an intermediary between teachers and students with special educational needs or disabilities. The robot tutor helps students with mental or physical disabilities or disabilities to learn professional skills by combining instruction with dynamic or relaxing wellness pauses to relieve emotional tension and fatigue. The robot is capable of diagnosing the student's well-being and physical condition and can even provide psychological correction and rehabilitation and reduce emotional stress. A natural or virtual humanoid, anthropomorphic robot tutor can fulfill the role of an ideal tutor, teacher, and mentor. It is patient and resilient, capable of compensating for the mental or physical disabilities of a disabled or disabled student.
Robot Motivator. This robot can correct primary and secondary mental disorders in children. Such classes develop professional competencies, promote motivational and cognitive activity activation, provide emotional involvement in the learning process, and help form practical skills.
Spheres of the practical application of robots and AI
AI is widely used for composing individual training programs. Focusing on the preferences and needs of each student, it selects materials for repetition and assimilation of topics and distributes them to prevent burnout. It would take weeks or months for a human to compose individual programs for a company of 100 people, and AI not only helps save this time but also learns itself in its work process. Another application is conducting various experiments, which may involve certain health risks for human scientists. For example, special robot dogs help gain knowledge - they gather information about the territory, assisting specialists in studying the soil or mapping the area. Robotics in education is predominantly related to the sciences. New technologies can dramatically change the lessons of physics, biology, mathematics, and chemistry lessons. Robots can better develop hard skills: with them, it is safer to conduct experiments and test theories, gaining knowledge about a specific result. Not everyone will be able to do the same thing in production, which will likely lead to losses and accidents. Soft skills can also be developed in the process of interaction with the robot: from teamwork skills to the ability to find the necessary information. And the ability to "google" in the 21st century is becoming more important than just knowing. The field of education needs to change - and robots can be part of it. Children in schools will be able to read about experiments, operations, and reactions and observe them in a safe format. It'll just be a matter of time before artificial intelligence becomes part of everyday life. That is why it is necessary to learn how to handle technology today to succeed in our work tomorrow.
Who will win: artificial or natural intelligence?
Our children increasingly prefer to spend a weekend with a tablet than with their parents in nature, and there is a clear victory for AI. But if a child falls and breaks his knee, he is unlikely to run to the tablet. It is also directly related to the confrontation between the teacher and the robot: no one will notice the teacher's sensitivity, personal example, or the emotional connection between the teacher and the student. A teacher is not an audiobook here; unique qualities are essential.
Instead of or together?
Some experts believe that the teacher can be partially replaced by artificial intelligence. Of course, robots are not yet capable of full-fledged expression of emotions, but they can definitely help deal with routine work and systematize data. It can be challenging for teachers to control a whole class, to give individual attention to everyone in solving complex problems or explaining incomprehensible details. The machine will do it in a few seconds: it will analyze the student's work and answers and then give the teacher all the information "in clear lines." In this format, AI does not act instead of the teacher but together. AI will facilitate and improve teachers ' work if all the processes are built correctly and qualitatively. Robots can become an aggregating tool, with the help of which a large data flow will be processed. For example, artificial intelligence will be able to remotely collect all the data about a child: their academic performance, participation in competitions, grades, and teachers' recommendations - a considerable layer of information that will be valuable information for parents and teachers. There is an opposite point of view: not all researchers and scientists believe that a robot can fully replace a teacher. The famous British analyst and futurologist Ian Pearson predicts that by 2030 robots will physically and mentally surpass humans. However, even he argues that the teaching profession is one of those professions in which a robot cannot fully replace humans. In addition to teachers, military, police, and management professions are called unattainable professions for robots. An essential skill a robot cannot master is critical thinking, i.e., a particular system of judgments, analyzing things and events, formulating reasonable conclusions, and distinguishing truth from fiction. Critical thinking allows you to make assessments and interpretations and correctly apply the results to situations and problems. Critical thinking is one of the most crucial talents in today's world, and children and adults must practice it regularly. Robots are not yet fully capable of creativity. It is impossible to replace those areas of human life where there is creativity because the creative process cannot be automated. It means that the joint invention of teachers and students will remain a process of interaction between people, not between people and machines. Collaborative creativity and common activities are a great way to bring adults (family and school) together for children's sake. It is impossible to program everything classified as creativity and creative industries. Artistry, curiosity, and imagination - are qualities inherent only in humans, and they are essential components of the educational process. And with the development of technology, more and more attention will be paid to developing creativity. Qualitative communicative skills (skills of quality oral and written communication, the ability to speak publicly and listen attentively) can be taught only by people, not by robots. For example, with all the existing resources, conversational dialogue can only be trained with a human partner, incorporating elements of nonverbal communication that are only available to humans. Psychologists argue that we do not remember precisely the information a person says to us, but we remember the emotions and feelings we get from this communication. The interaction between student and teacher follows the same rules. Often the teacher's personality and charisma play a decisive role in the student's attitude towards the academic subject and the learning process. This list could go on for a long time. It is a paradox, but the more our lives are automated, the more people become emotionally vulnerable. It involves emotional development and education within a balanced learning and education system. At the same time, the speed of development and application of technology and robotization is much faster than the qualitatively new interaction between teachers and students, family and school, educational content, and technology of transmission of this content is built. The roles and nature of teacher-student interaction are changing. Schools will change, and other educational organizations will appear, but the educational process will always remain a collaborative effort of people, a space of communication and interaction, dialogue, and development. A teacher is a significant person for the students. It is a person who can support, sympathize, and rejoice for his student. Practice shows that Internet resources, automation, and robotics tools for education will actively develop, and routine processes will be automated. But the variety of educational resources will not replace the functions of joint activity and development of students and teachers. Everything that deals with personality, motivation, creativity, and critical thinking is beyond the risk of being replaced by robots entirely. Thus, like any process, replacing teachers with robots has pros and cons.
Advantages of robot teachers:
- Interacting with a robot teacher can help students better understand technology skills.
- Robotic teachers are cost-effective in the context that they do not have to be paid because they simply perform duties according to the program set in their system.
- they are usually programmed to be constantly updated, so they will be able to teach students the latest methodologies relevant to any learning sector.
- Mutual understanding with a robot teacher is much more accessible than with a human teacher, and students tend to get more enthusiasm from such a tutor.
- They can project computer displays from anywhere in their classroom.
- The "head" of the robot teacher can store more information;
- The robot is incapable of feeling tired.
Disadvantages of robot teachers:
- Most robots require charging to function smoothly, leading to enormous energy costs.
- Because robot teachers do not have feelings, they will not be able to help during an emotionally difficult time.
- To use robot software and hardware, classrooms must be equipped with high-quality infrastructure to use electricity and Internet connections.
- Robotic teachers will not be able to develop creative or innovative ideas to help students understand a particular concept, nor can they provide critical feedback when testing knowledge;
- They will not be able to determine whether students' performance problems are a consequence of misunderstanding a topic, "gaps" in their knowledge of the material or their problems; hence they will not be able to find correct and practical solutions.
Learning that depends solely on robotics is associated with certain disadvantages related to social issues, including:
- confidentiality,
- barriers to development,
- increased unemployment,
- technical disadvantages.
The principal value of robots in education is their use in curriculum design and structure. But using such technology as an alternative to teaching people worldwide can be a complicated process.
Also, the entire curriculum is based on computer programs that can make human learning unnecessary. It is not the case because of related technological limitations, such as inaccurate speech or emotional recognition.
Although robots can act as an attractive educational tool in classrooms, it is unlikely that they will replace humans as teachers anytime soon. Robots will only be able to replace teachers 100 % when they become fully conscious, like humans.
Beyond that, school is not just about providing educational services but more. And while robots cannot teach children values, friendship, mutual assistance, and other qualities inherent only to humans. There are already hundreds of online services for learning languages, preparing for tests and exams, and training in solving various problems. Still, there is no area for teaching children human qualities and instilling universal values, such as morality and honesty. And such programs are unlikely to appear in the not-so-distant future because they have not yet figured out how to explain them in diagrams.