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Source: Global Times

Recently, South Korea reiterated its plan to launch the world's first "AI textbook", which is to introduce digital textbooks powered by artificial intelligence (AI) on tablet computers in schools. Although this plan has won the support of some teachers, it has been opposed by more than 50,000 parents. Most parents are worried about the adverse consequences of their children's excessive exposure to digital devices, and many experts are also worried that the potential misinformation in AI may cause huge social harm.

The Korean education department values ​​the personalized learning experience of AI textbooks, believing that it can promote student innovation, stimulate interest, and help teachers evaluate learning. Referring to the "Digital Basic Education Innovation Program" released by South Korea last year, after the introduction of AI textbooks, students will first learn basic knowledge through textbooks, and then discuss and study projects with teachers. "Self-study first, then tutoring" teaching mode. From a positive perspective, this tool may indeed take care of the learning progress of different students, bringing potential advantages for customizing educational content, improving learning efficiency and interest, and providing accurate learning assessment.

But at the same time, this model also has many potential problems and challenges, such as high costs, technology and educational infrastructure levels. At the same time, many changes such as a more open teaching environment, a teaching model with higher initiative requirements, and AI-generated teaching content have also put forward higher requirements for students' digital skills and literacy. The impact of this series of changes on the learning ability and physical and mental health of young people remains to be evaluated. Therefore, although AI textbooks are a beneficial attempt at educational innovation, their implementation must take into account costs, technology, teaching effectiveness and student welfare to ensure that they effectively improve the quality of education. Among them, the participation of teachers and students, as well as continuous evaluation and improvement are indispensable.

The controversial points of South Korea's attempt are, first, the excessive involvement of AI technology in education, especially in early childhood education, and second, the withdrawal of teachers from their roles, which highlights the lack of guarantees for the boundaries and models of "AI+education". In fact, "AI+education" is not a new concept. Countries generally adopt a gradual approach in their attempts to introduce AI into education, with AI playing more of an auxiliary role to improve teaching efficiency around the core role of teachers. This also means that the quality of teaching is still controlled by teachers, and teachers can correct AI errors in a timely manner.

Whether from the current technical level of "AI+education" or from the perspective of social concepts, it is too early to remove the role of people from basic education. On the one hand, various types of "AI+education" generally rely on large language models (LLMs) to provide underlying support. Although companies have continued to increase their investment in LLM research and development in recent years, and LLM performance has continued to improve, phenomena such as "hallucinations" that may fabricate fictitious or meaningless answers without warning when LLM generates responses are still very common, and there is currently a lack of effective solutions at the technical level. This has little impact on the traditional teaching model where teachers teach and can identify problems in a timely manner, but students in the self-study model may not be able to distinguish and lead to misunderstandings.

On the other hand, many parents are also worried about the consequences of their children's further addiction and dependence on technology. Teenagers' addiction to mobile phones is a long-standing social issue in South Korea. According to an annual survey by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family of South Korea, 18% of the respondents, about 220,000 students, have difficulty managing their daily lives due to uncontrolled use of the Internet and smartphones. Among them, the number of junior high school students is the largest, reaching nearly 90,000, followed by high school students and elementary school students. Against this background, it is not unfounded that Korean society is concerned that students are addicted to AI and neglect to cultivate other learning methods and skills.

Modern education is an ecosystem project. Its essence is to be people-oriented and systematically stimulate and awaken students' inherent potential and abilities. Teachers should not only impart knowledge and cultivate students' ability to learn and solve problems independently, but also build a good teacher-student relationship, understand their needs and characteristics, and provide support and encouragement. At the same time, education should also create a positive, open, inclusive and challenging learning environment to stimulate students' enthusiasm for learning and creativity. In addition, education should take into account social and cultural factors, cultivate morality and cultivate students' patriotism, social responsibility and global vision. These are all things that AI cannot bear, at least in the short term.

After the introduction of AI, "AI+education" should ideally be a human-computer environment ecosystem project. In the future, AI products may be used as a tool or means of education to teach purely rational subjects and undertake the grading of homework and test papers with closed answers. However, since the goal of education is to cultivate well-rounded individuals and achieve balanced growth in knowledge, skills, thinking ability, creativity, emotions, and values, AI that lacks real emotions and relies only on emotion simulators has natural shortcomings compared to real teachers. Therefore, "people" are the element that "AI+education" is least likely to be stripped away, and it is nonsense to expect to introduce AI and let teachers be "hands-off shopkeepers." (The author is the director of the Human-Computer Interaction and Cognitive Process Laboratory of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications)