The "World Social Science Advanced Lecture" (Lecture 76), organized by the Fudan Institute for Advanced Study in Social Sciences (Fudan IAS) and Contemporary China Research Center at Fudan University, was held on Sep 15, 2023, at Fudan University. James Katz, Senior Visiting Scholar at Fudan IAS, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Director of Division of Emerging Media Studies at Boston University’s College of Communication, gave a lecture on The Future Role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Education: Classrooms, Social Equity, and Digital Divides. The lecture was chaired by Prof. Sujian Guo, Dean and Distinguished Professor of Fudan IAS. Jing Cao, Professor at School of Journalism Fudan University, researchers and postdoctoral fellows of Fudan IAS, and other teachers as well as students of Fudan University attended the lecture.
Prof. Guo first warmly welcomed Prof. Katz and thanked Prof. Jing Cao for introduction. Then Prof. Katz started his sharing. The content included: connotation of AI and human-computer comparison experiment, application of AI in education, challenges and responses of AI application in education.
Prof. James Katz said AI is the ability of a computer or machine to perform tasks that would normally require human intelligence to accomplish. Its areas include natural language processing, machine learning and deep learning, computer vision, etc. He emphasized that AI can learn in ways we cannot understand, and act in human-like or even in superhuman ways.
Professor Katz believed that AI can help students and drive educational transformation in terms of personalized learning, adaptive assessment, real-time feedback, error correction, personalized tutoring, quick access to information, and collaboration. He further discussed the integration of AI with classroom teaching scenarios. Prof. Katz believed that we can also collect the data with the help of computer vision, data mining, and other technologies to improve teaching practices and increase teacher efficiency, thus creating a more effective learning environment.
Prof. Katz did not ignore the possible negative impacts of AI. He believed that there are some practical and ethical challenges that come with the application of AI technology in education. According to him, it is undisputed that some repetitive tasks can be given to AI, and then humans would have more time for higher-value and more creative work. But overuse of AI is also against the original purpose of education. For this reason, Prof. Katz argued that the use of AI in education must be supervised by humans and require an independent external monitoring mechanism. AI systems and their data should be strictly protected from misuse, and the privacy of individuals should be guaranteed.
Prof. Katz concluded that the development of AI has had a broad impact on the field of education and human society. Especially the development of big language models in recent years are changing the way of education job skills training, providing more personalized learning experiences, and helping educators better understand, support and assess students' needs. In order to maximize the effectiveness of AI, education should be a scenario in which humans and AI cooperate in depth rather than compete against each other, and humans must be guided by the right values to find the true positioning and development path of AI.
After Prof. Katz's speech, Prof. Guo chaired the Q&A session. Researchers and students asked questions about the creative use of AI, how human thinking can be integrated with machine thinking, the monitoring of AI systems, the dissemination and screening of fake news, etc. Prof. Katz answered the questions meticulously and gave inspiring responses. Afterwards, Prof. Guo also made a brief comment on Prof. Katz's speech, believing that his research on AI is cutting-edge and forward-looking, and that it is one of the key issues that must be confronted in the future education field.
After the lecture, researchers from Fudan IAS and Prof. Jing Cao’s team from the School of Journalism took a group photo with Prof. Katz and expressed their expectation for further exchanges and cooperation.
