The three-day Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) Summit ended last week in New Delhi with participants deliberating on how AI can be employed to help humanity.
AI for education was the theme of the session titled “AI Education and Skilling: Bridging the Talent Gap,” where the panelists advocated for closer industry-academia collaboration in the education sector and inclusion of students’ voices in AI panels.
The GPAI Summit’s focus on AI in education follows the commitment expressed by G20 leaders recently toward harnessing digital technologies like AI to overcome digital divides for all students, while focusing on the importance of foundational learning as the primary building block for education and employment.
AI in education
Google Classroom, Coursera and Duolingo are among the leading players that have shown the immense potential of AI applications in the education industry. AI can help students in smart content creation like information visualization, digital lesson generation and frequent content updates as well as with personalized learning, task automation, customized data-based feedback, adaptable access, determining classroom vulnerabilities, 24x7 assistance with conversational AI, secure and decentralized learning systems and examination assistance, among others.
“While digital engineering is being used to develop new educational technologies that can enhance learning techniques, provide better outcomes and making education more accessible and smarter, coupled with new-age skillsets are important,” says Nicole Worthington, Senior Vice President and Head of Marketing EMEA & APAC, Global Thought Leadership, HCLTech.
She adds: “For example, online learning platforms and adaptive learning software can provide personalized instruction to students. These days, children are not just restricted to books when learning Physics. They can rely on 3D models that are better at explaining difficult concepts, making them more easily remembered and implemented when required.
“Some organizations [like HCLTech] even give students and trainees access to virtual reality glasses that are used to create immersive learning experiences.”
HCLTech has been helping its clients globally with AI solutions. For example, in the education sector, it helped a US-based publication house that has offerings in the education segment for students and teachers and manages a worldwide network of test centers with an AI-assisted remote proctoring solution.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the education sector underwent a rapid transformation from offline to online-based systems. As a result, the client recognized an increasing demand for online exams and requested the AI-assisted remote proctoring system to meet the increased demand for online exams, all while ensuring exam integrity.
To ensure exam integrity, what was imperative was effective detection of prohibited items and unauthorized people, with a centralized monitoring capability. The solution had to be compatible with low-configuration computers with basic webcams.
HCLTech developed a customized AI solution that seamlessly integrated with the client’s proctoring system and detected prohibited objects like smart watches, pencils, calculators and books. It also helped in real-time tracking of prohibited activities like looking away from the screen for a specified amount of time and moving away from a designated spot.
Among the major benefits were increased efficiency of examinee-to-proctor ratio by five times, reduced cost per stream analytics by less than $0.5 and ability to process 10,000 video streams simultaneously worldwide. It also delivered a response time of less than two seconds for addressing malpractice incidents, with a false positive rate below 10% to minimize unnecessary alerts for proctors.
Innovations around AI and practical applications are on the rise. While governments across the globe are working together to bring in regulations for more ethical and responsible use of AI, technology organizations are among the leaders guiding the way with a variety of use cases.
While AI and automation need to be adopted to prepare students for the future of work, the rise of technologies like GenAI has created new jobs that require significant reskilling as well as developing new skills for these roles. This is where HCLTech TechBee program is crucial in training students in new technologies and skills.
HCLTech has also been training its employees using HTC Vive headsets that reduces training costs by up to 50% and HCLTech XR solution that delivers up to 75% retention through XR training.
