Starting in 2024, Australia will allow the use of applications such as ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools in schools. This was announced yesterday, through a statement, by the Australian Department of Education after the meeting of ministers in the field (from the different states and federal territories of the country) that took place on Thursday. The announcement, without a doubt, generates expectation since the tool is not without controversy, so the regulation of its use becomes an aspect of interest. In this sense, the EU has been working for some time on a regulatory framework that could see the light of day before the end of 2023.
But what does the landing of this technology in the classrooms represent? Was its arrival inevitable? “Without knowing the details of the regulatory framework, I would say that the use of these tools is not only inevitable, but if used well, it can be something very positive,” Josep Maria Martorell, deputy director of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, explains to La Vanguardia. (BSC). “It can accelerate the use of knowledge and increase the autonomy of students,” he adds.
Of course, its implementation entails several challenges, in his opinion. The first, the necessary training of teachers. “It is a tremendously powerful tool and the people who will implement it need to be well trained.” The second challenge has to do with technological sovereignty. “Generative AI should end up being open and universal access, competitive in all our languages, transparent, respecting privacy and free of bias.”
Martorell explains that both the Government of Spain (with the Perte New Language Economy) and that of the Generalitat of Catalonia (with the Aina project) are working in this direction. "The idea is that in the near future everyone will have open access to transparent generative AI systems in our languages, something that is very important."
"That Australia - he continues - does this is fantastic: in English there are many generative AI models that work well. But in the classrooms of Catalonia, for example, Catalan and Spanish are spoken, and therefore we need systems that do not respond to us more or less good if we ask them in these two languages, but rather that they are extremely competent.”
From what the Australian Department of Education has hinted at, the framework that they have not yet presented revolves around the principles verbalized by Martorell. That is, it is based on principles such as the protection of human and social well-being, transparency in information, equal and non-discriminatory access, respect for copyright and accountability, as well as existing ethical guidelines. about the use of this technology.
“If we want to guarantee all these principles, which are appropriate,” says Marorell, “it is not feasible to simply use existing commercial tools, which may not comply with them exactly, but it is necessary to continue investing, as governments are already doing. so that there can be competent publicly sourced tools that follow all these fundamentals.”
The details of this new framework, as reported in the statement, will be published over the coming weeks and before the use of generative AI is regularized in Australian schools, scheduled for the beginning of the next school year. which starts in the first months of the year.
The popularization of ChatGPT, a chat system based on artificial intelligence from the company OpenAI launched last year, motivated almost all the regions that make up the oceanic country, except South Australia, to ban this new technology in public schools. However, last April, Western Australia changed its mind slightly and allowed teachers to use generative AI tools.
The debate surrounding the use of generative AI, such as ChatGTP, centers on the possibility that students do their homework through these tools or that these programs violate student privacy. On the other hand, its defenders consider that AI would contribute to the teaching of disadvantaged students, among other arguments.
Last month, UNESCO called on governments to rapidly regulate the use of generative AI in schools to ensure its ethical and human-centred use, and proposed setting global targets on the use of generative AI, as well as setting the minimum age for students to use these tools in the classroom at 13 years old.
The world body also insisted that teachers have adequate training in this matter, as well as the establishment of global, regional or national standards for data protection and privacy.
