AI and the Human in Education

AI and the Human in Education

A London Review of Education special feature

Artificial Intelligence (AI) brings enormous potential for addressing the world’s greatest challenges. At the same time, it poses significant risk to humanity. Current AI technologies already have significant capabilities: they can recognise and predict objects, speech and emotions; they can analyse scenes and different languages; and they can plan, build and suggest solutions. In the not too distant future, AI could predict any multi-sensory and multi-dimensional patterns and make automated decisions impacting billions of lives.

There are complex social, moral and ethical issues in applying AI to education. The articles in this special feature offer diverse perspectives on adjusting to a new order in which big data are used to determine and direct educational paths, triaging learners accordingly. Some of the articles focus on the more dangerous aspects of incorporating intelligence into educational systems, and the subsequent re-engineering of those systems, Others emphasise the significant societal benefits. Together, they highlight an imperative: that the time and resources saved by automation should be turned to enriching and developing what it means to be human, including rewarding mechanisms to express our most essential qualities of altruism, vocation and collective social endeavour. 

Guest editors

Sandra Leaton Gray - Associate Professor of Education, UCL Institute of Education, UK

Natalia Kucirkova - Professor of Early Childhood and Development, University of Stavanger, Norway

Article list

New digital laboratories of experimental knowledge production: Artificial intelligence and education research, Ben Williamson, published 21 July 2020

Digital literacies and children’s personalized books: Locating the ‘self’, Natalia Kucirkova & Margaret Mackey, published 21 July 2020

Artificial intelligence and the technological turn of public education privatization: In defence of democratic education, Kenneth J. Saltman, published 21 July 2020

Artificial intelligence in schools: Towards a democratic future, Sandra Leaton Gray, published 21 July 2020

Can artificial intelligence help predict a learner’s needs? Lessons from predicting student satisfaction, Dimitris Parapadakis, published 21 July 2020

The role and challenges of education for responsible AI, Virginia Dignum, published 13 January 2021