Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a multidisciplinary field with a deep history rooted in philosophy, science, and more recently in communication. One of the earliest breakthroughs in AI date back to Alan Turing&rsquo;s 1950 imitation game (Turing Test), which tested a machine&rsquo;s capacity to exhibit human-like intelligence (Turing, 1950). Over the years, and specifically in the 21st century, AI has grown into a powerful tool that has significantly impacted human ecosystems. Since the inception of computerized AI, educators have speculated whether their roles might become obsolete, and more generally, whether pedagogy in its current definition would remain relevant. More recently, and specifically with the advent of commercial use of AI tools &ndash; namely generative chat bots such as ChatGPT &ndash; taking everyone by storm since the end of 2022, debates have surfaced about AI&rsquo;s role in education. The use of AI in open and distance education (AIED) could impact all areas of education, including teaching methods, assessment, curriculum design, learning platforms, and beyond. In fact, AI and related technologies are becoming more common in classrooms, university management, online education, and personalized learning environments. Moreover, discussions on AIED typically revolve around a two-dimensional paradigm; how AI is being used by learners and educators; as well as how to educate learners and educators about AI, its applications, shortcomings and governance.&nbsp;
<h3 dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">Global South facing AI</h3>
In fact, ample research is being conducted to gauge the levels of acceptance, awareness, and application of AI in education. There is also an increase in scholarship that tackles digital and AI literacies needed in today&rsquo;s new landscape. However, there seems to be a lag within education in keeping up with the technology advancements. To put things in perspective; ChatGPT got 100 million users in just 2 months of being launched; a number that took TikTok 9 months, and Instagram 2.5 years (Hu, 2023). The pace of innovation in this domain is faster than any educational system can keep pace with, especially with stiff academic processes that typically take longer to adopt innovation or new trends otherwise easily applied within an industry. In fact, some argue that a &lsquo;keeping-up&rsquo; gap is widening between tech innovators and tech users, that include educational systems. To add a deeper level of complexity, educational systems in the Global South, face greater challenges in keeping up with advancements in AI technology. This is mostly due to poorer infrastructure including slow internet connectivity/speed, limited processing and computational capacity, and a staggering language barrier with much of the AI tools being developed in main world languages [specifically in English], to name just a few. Furthermore, the matter of fact remains that the majority of tech companies and innovators operate in the Global North, or work for &lsquo;western&rsquo; investors. This eventually comes down to developing countries, such as Egypt, having to import AI tools and to customize these technologies, rather than build them &lsquo;in-house.&rsquo; The situation is made more compound by the fact that computerized data &ndash; in Arabic or non-standard languages &ndash; is in short supply in this part of the world. Large data sets, being AI&rsquo;s oxygen and lifeline, are not easily aggregated or accessible, making the training process for AI to perform its assigned tasks, more difficult, if not impossible. Even when you ask ChatGPT to speak or generate text in Arabic using different dialects, the language nuances become uncanny to a native Arabic speaker, who would argue, sound like an American speaking in Arabic but with an accent. These tiny distinctions are being addressed, and probably by the time this commentary is published, things would have move forward in that regard.&nbsp;
Within the Egyptian educational context, another divide is deemed to widen; a digital divide between haves and have nots; those who have access to high speed internet and those who remain in the dark. This digital divide can be seen in other parts of the world, but it becomes more overpowering in countries with urban and rural geography, with all the&nbsp;entailed within this dichotomy.&nbsp;
In terms of uses in education, there are many present for both educators and learners. On the educators&rsquo; side, AI predominantly serves as a teaching assistant capable of preparing and grading assessments and evaluations; analyzing classroom dynamics, and detecting student engagement in real-time; offering timely interventions for at-risk students (Chen, Zou, Xie, Cheng &amp; Liu, 2022); personalizing teaching experiences &ndash; specifically addressing students with learning difficulties and other disabilities, creating adaptive learning environments, and enhancing academic performance through gamification, augmented reality, and other innovative pedagogy (Bozkurt et al., 2023). AI systems have also been praised for saving time for educators through assisting in creating lesson plans, syllabi and grading rubrics.
<h3 dir="ltr">Accessible sources and integrity concerns&nbsp;</h3>
For learners and students, AI holds huge potential in facilitating accessibility to resources in different languages; self-paced learning and intelligent tutoring systems with real-time feedback, while also being more cost-effective than traditional methods. For example, subscribing to an AI language tutoring app or website costs much less than enrolling in a languages course taught by human instructors. In fact, such tools would provide one-to-one feedback in an asynchronous learning environment, all without the added cost of private human tutors who charge by the hour (Medium, 2024). Tools such as natural language processing can be used anywhere and anytime, making language learning more accessible for students who may not have access to traditional classrooms (Rabie, 2023). The personalization of educational resources and customization features make learning more engaging, fun, and tailored to specific needs. However, the benefits of personalized learning are counterbalanced by privacy concerns, since large-scale learner data is required to train AI models effectively, and such data may contain sensitive information, raising ethical concerns regarding privacy and data security (Chen et al., 2022). But perhaps the most cited concern for students&rsquo; use of AI within their learning journeys are ones over academic integrity and plagiarism. Students seem to find it easier to assign writings and other tasks to AI aide tools, often without giving proper citations, or misappropriating content from conversational bots as their own (Mills, Bali, &amp; Eaton, 2023).&nbsp;
One of the key challenges of AI systems is that they often reflect the biases, values, and ideologies of their creators and input data providers (Makeleni, et al., 2023). Even so called &ldquo;AI hallucinations&rdquo; &ndash; which are instances when conversational AI bots make things up-, are more prevalent with inquiries that are cultural specific or non-mainstream, given the limited data available regarding specific cultures or non-standard languages. This raises concerns about social injustice, indoctrination and potential misuse by authoritarian regimes, further emphasizing the importance of exercising caution when using AI in educational contexts, especially by students who are not subject matter experts on issues at question, and are, therefore, more impressionable and easily, as well as adversely, influenced (Bozkurt et al., 2023).
Adopting AI in education without actively considering these factors could lead to unintended negative consequences, potentially limiting the technology&rsquo;s value or even causing harm (Bozkurt et al., 2023). Challenges such as educator perceptions of AI, lack of technical proficiency, ethical concerns related to privacy and data ownership and the proliferation of inaccurate information further complicate AI&rsquo;s integration in education (Mills, Bali, &amp; Eaton, 2023).&nbsp;
<h3 dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">What about Egypt?&nbsp;</h3>
If we shift gear towards the Arab region, with several of its countries considered developing, or in constant states of conflict or turbulence, one can argue that Egypt has cemented some active steps into embracing AI. With its digital transformation milestones, aligned with Egypt&rsquo;s Vision 2030, to its development of a Charter for Responsible AI in 2023, as part of the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology&rsquo;s National Council for Artificial Intelligence, there seems to be a preparation of sorts, and a strategy for AI integration in different sectors (UNESCO, 2021), albeit rather long term. However, in the educational sector, there is still a lag in taking more concrete steps for governing academic integration of AI in K-12 as well as higher education. In fact, perhaps one of the very few institutions that have been actively engaging educators and students in discussions about AI, academic integrity, copyrights&hellip;etc., has been the American University in Cairo&rsquo;s (AUC) Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT). CLT has been echoing the urgency of keeping abreast with AI, and have made tangible impact in capacity building for instructors and administrators who deal with AI in its different forms through webinars, discussion forums, online resources, and email announcements. In fact, CLT together with AUC&rsquo;s Academic Integrity office published a university-wide code of ethics statement on the use of AI tools within education. The code summarizes the broader regulations of using AI while giving faculty the flexibility to determine the extent of AI use permissible within the classroom to optimize student learning. It also explains when such use jeopardizes academic integrity and subsequent sanctions. Furthermore, CLT has put together a policy for educators&rsquo; reliance on AI detection tools, that have proved to be unreliable at many occasions. The policy outlines research conducted both by CLT, as well as aggregated from other sources, about the prevalence of false positive results on these detection tools, and how they are often biased against non-native English speakers [the tools can flag human content as AI generated just because it is written in non-native English structure]. Despite its mandate focusing on faculty body, CLT has organized several student-faculty co-design sessions to encourage all community members to take part in these vitals discussions. Dr. Maha Bali, Professor of Practice at CLT, explained the role her office plays in supporting faculty at AUC, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve supported faculty who want to add parts about AI in some courses, whether with online material, or giving guest lectures. The AUC Library will also integrate AI in the Libraries and Learning Technologies course eventually.&rdquo; CLT constantly updates its website with new tools, and policies. Perhaps more of such centers are needed in other educational institutions to bridge the &ldquo;keeping-up&rdquo; gap discussed earlier.&nbsp;
On the macro level, Egypt can make use of a language model of its own, trained on data provided by its different stakeholders and in Egyptian Arabic dialects. This can be compared to the UAE&rsquo;s Falcon LLM model similar to &ldquo;OpenAI&rsquo;s GPT and Google&rsquo;s Gemini &mdash; computing systems that power chatbots, image generators and other generative AI tools&rdquo; (AlArabiya News, 2024). The UAE&rsquo;s Ministry of Education has also launched an advanced data analytics platform that serves over 1,200 schools and 70 higher education institutions, including more than 1.2 million students. This platform aggregates data on various variables, including curricula, teacher development, learning resources, finances, operational performance, and feedback from teachers, students, and parents, as well as scores from international assessments. Additionally, the UAE's Ministry of Education has a dedicated data analytics section focused on developing machine learning algorithms to enhance strategic studies related to the country's educational system (UNESCO, 2021). This is why to maximize the potential of AI in education, Egypt and other developing nations must continue to invest in infrastructure, training, and the development of culturally and linguistically inclusive AI systems.&nbsp;
<h3 dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">Conclusions</h3>
Despite the rise of AI in education, its uses remain controversial, and digital literacies needed to navigate the technology remain in dire need. In fact, there is a growing call to include AI literacy as a fundamental 21st-century skill. There is also a critical need for new teaching philosophies that accommodate AI technologies, to upskill users and to maximize the benefits of AI. Furthermore, any new development must be coupled with governance, regulation and policies, and in educational settings such guidelines are much needed if AI is to be used responsibly (Cotton et al., 2023). The present language bias highlights an underrepresentation of indigenous languages, including Arabic, in AI systems, making it difficult for these technologies to accurately recognize or generate non-standard English language patterns. Addressing such disparity is critical to ensuring that AI-powered tools benefit learners globally, especially in non-English-speaking regions. Finally, excluding or curbing the use of AI in education is increasingly difficult to assume; the tools and approaches are there to stay. It is only educators and learners who are agile [a term consistently being associated with acceptance of AI] are able to maneuver the new landscape and make the best of it.
<hr>
References
<ul>
<li dir="ltr">Bozkurt, A., Junhong Xiao, Lambert, S., Pazurek, A., Crompton, H., Koseoglu, S., Farrow, R.,</li>
<li dir="ltr">Bond, M., Nerantzi, C., Honeychurch, S., Bali, M., Dron, J., Mir, K., Stewart, B., Costello, E., Mason, J., Stracke, C. M., Romero-Hall, E., Koutropoulos, A., &amp; Toquero, C. M. (2023). Speculative Futures on ChatGPT and Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI): A Collective Reflection from the Educational Landscape. Asian Journal of Distance Education, 18(1), 53&ndash;130. <a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7636568">https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7636568</a></li>
<li dir="ltr">Chen, X., Zou, D., Xie, H., Cheng, G., &amp; Liu, C. (2022). Two Decades of Artificial Intelligence</li>
<li dir="ltr">in Education: Contributors, Collaborations, Research Topics, Challenges, and Future Directions. Educational Technology &amp; Society, 25(1), 28&ndash;47.&nbsp;</li>
<li dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/48647028">https://www.jstor.org/stable/48647028</a>.</li>
<li dir="ltr">Cotton, D. R. E., Cotton, P. A., &amp; Shipway, J. R. (2023). Chatting and cheating: Ensuring</li>
<li dir="ltr">academic integrity in the era of ChatGPT. Innovations in Education and Teaching International. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2023.2190148">https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2023.2190148</a>.&nbsp;</li>
<li dir="ltr">Globethics Policy Series 2 Navigating the Future of Higher Education with AI 2024 ICDE</li>
<li dir="ltr">Leadership Summit Policy Dialogue Report.</li>
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<li dir="ltr">Hu, K. (2023, February 2). CHATGPT sets record for fastest-growing user base - analyst note | reuters. Reuters. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-sets-record-fastest-growing-user-base-analyst-note-2023-02-01/">https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-sets-record-fastest-growing-user-base-analyst-note-2023-02-01/</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>
<li dir="ltr">Makeleni, S., Mutongoza, B., &amp; Linake, M. (2023). Language Education and Artificial Intelligence: An Exploration of Challenges Confronting Academics in Global</li>
<li dir="ltr">South Universities. Journal of Culture and Values in Education, 6(2), 158-171. <a href="https://doi.org/10.46303/jcve.2023.14">https://doi.org/10.46303/jcve.2023.14</a>.</li>
<li dir="ltr">Mills, A., Bali, M., &amp; Eaton, L. (2023). How do we respond to generative AI in education? Open</li>
<li dir="ltr">educational practices give us a framework for an ongoing process. Journal of Applied Learning and Teaching, 6(1), 16-30.</li>
<li dir="ltr">Rabie, D. R. M. (2023). The Future of Education with Artificial Intelligence and Machine</li>
<li dir="ltr">Learning in the Arab World: A Systemat. العلوم التربوية, 31(3), 1-35.&lrm;</li>
<li dir="ltr">UAE releases New Falcon AI model to challenge Meta, OpenAI. AlArabiya News. (2024, May 14). <a href="https://english.alarabiya.net/business/2024/05/14/uae-releases-new-falcon-ai-model-to-challenge-meta-openai-">https://english.alarabiya.net/business/2024/05/14/uae-releases-new-falcon-ai-model-to-challenge-meta-openai-</a>&nbsp;</li>
<li dir="ltr">UNESCO. (2021). "Artificial Intelligence in Education: Challenges and Opportunities."</li>
</ul>

آراء

Commentaries

التعليم من الروضة إلى الصف الثاني عشر

K-12 Education

تعليم عالى

Higher Education

التنمية الشاملة

Inclusive Development

الذكاء الاصطناعي في التعليم: صديق أم عدو؟

Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED): Friend or Foe? 

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