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. 

Publication date: From March 2020 - February 2021.

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Guest Editor

Sandra Leaton Gray, Associate Professor of Education, UCL Institute of Education, UCL, UK.
Natalia Kucirkova, Professor of Early Childhood and Development, University of Stavanger, Norway.

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Article list 

Editorial

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Research article

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