Artificial intelligence (AI) has developed and been used in a variety of industries, including healthcare, agriculture, cyber-security, autonomous cars, finance, logistics, e-commerce, entertainment, etc., as a result of the rapid progress of information and communications technology (ICT).
According to reports, the Indian AI market is anticipated to grow to $7.8 billion in value by 2025. A NASSCOM (2020) report predicts that by 2025, AI will have increased India’s gross domestic product by between US$450 billion and US$500 billion.
UNESCO has been working in this area for a while because AI affects its fields of study and expertise. According to UNESCO, artificial intelligence will have a significant impact on education, including how students learn, how they access knowledge, and how teachers are prepared. According to a recent UNESCO assessment, India’s educational system has to put more of an emphasis on AI.
While UNESCO recognises the enormous opportunities that AI presents for the 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development, the organisation also maintains that, as part of UNESCO’s overall effort to reduce inequalities in access to knowledge and research, it is critical to address the ethical issues related to AI head-on.
persistent difficulties
The research notes that India’s education system has a number of difficulties, among which the expansion of AI in education is particularly hampered by a lack of infrastructure and resources. The socioeconomic disparities in the Indian education system are substantial. These disparities are based on caste and class. An English-medium school is ten times more likely to enrol a kid from the top 20% of society than one from the lowest 20%, for example.
Similar to this, the gap still exists when taking gender into account. India has a literacy rate of 74.04 percent. 65.46 percent of women and 82.14 percent of men were surveyed. The completion rate for upper secondary education in India is 0.85, which suggests that gender parity is in favour of men.
Apart from this, some of the major obstacles facing the Indian educational system include issues with teaching, drop-out rates, linguistic barriers, the digital divide, etc.
AI-based remedies
The UNESCO report provides a thorough explanation of how AI-powered technologies might be used in India to address these problems. According to UNESCO (2019a), integrating AI into educational systems has the potential to completely transform the teaching-learning process. According to the report, the following are some situations where AI approaches might be applied:
Formal education can employ machine learning.
Both official and informal employment can benefit from natural language processing.
Computer vision, natural language processing, and machine learning can all be employed in the classroom.
Evaluation can be done with computer vision.
The management of schools can benefit from machine learning.
The mapping and matching of talents using machine learning
Pertinence and suggestions
The significance of AI education in India is explained in the study. AI has the potential to give girls and women in the nation a specific emphasis that will help them overcome the challenges posed by traditional gender norms. AI places a special emphasis on underprivileged socioeconomic segments.
Additionally, AI will improve educational outcomes and provide prospects for teachers. Additionally, it improves linguistic diversity and the inclusion of kids with disabilities.
The research cites the absence of policies for AI in education as one of the main obstacles. The establishment of partnerships with the private sector is advised by UNESCO because doing so will enable the public sector to make the essential technological advancements on a scale that the public sector alone cannot.
AI in education policies in India should address a range of concerns, including data gathering and ownership, in both the public and private sectors. In addition, there must to be an emphasis on women, girls, and low-income socioeconomic groups, all under the guiding principles of inclusion and equity.
According to the research, while some problems—such as the inexplicability of AI—have no apparent solutions and may never be found, there are infrastructure and resource-related problems unique to India that can be resolved.
