The June 20th issue from Edtech Insiders provided a number of interesting facts or predictions.
- P&S Intelligence predicts that the “AI-in-education” global market is expected to grow from approximately $2 billion in 2022 to more than $25 billion in 2030. North America currently accounts for 42 percent of the market’s expenditures.
- Edtech Insiders recently launched the AI Tools in Education Database. There are currently 161 tools listed. The developers have included a form that allows anyone to upload a tool that is not listed. I found a few of the descriptions to be lacking but appreciate having this tool as a source. As I randomly perused the list, there are more than a few of these tools that I would explore if I were actively teaching a course in K-12 or higher ed. There are 10 categories in which the developers have grouped most of the tools.
- Virtual Teaching Assistants – Playlab, Brisk Teaching, Roshi
- Virtual Tutors – Salley for career coaching, Quizlet’s Q-Chat, Trellis
- AI-Powered Study Tools – Wisdolia, Cognii, Studyable
- Educational Content Creation – Prof Jim, Synthesia, Prep.ai
- Educational Search – Perplexity, Heuristi.ca, Transcribe, AskBooks
- Auto-generated Learning Paths – Learn.xyz, Nolej, LearnGPT
- AI-Powered Research – Elicit, Scite, Consensus
- Speak to Characters – Khanmigo, Duolingo Max’s Roleplay, Character.ai
- Grammar and Writing – Quillbot, Trinka, Writefull, Smodin
- AI Cheating Detection – GPTZero, Turnitin, Originality.ai
I compared a few of the tools listed to the list that I update periodically. A few of these are on my list which isn’t specifically tailored to education. I also quickly perused the webpages for each of the tools listed above when I found the links. Some look very interesting and it’s obvious that there’s a lot of money being invested in the race to be a “first mover” in a specific category.
- The report noted a Pew Research Center article that presented 8 charts highlighting partisan differences over K-12 education based on Pew Research Center surveys and other data. One slide highlighted below, shows the huge gap in opinions of federal agencies between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans view the Department of Education unfavorably by 65 percent whereas Democrats view it favorably by 62 percent. The only two agencies with greater disparity in opinions between the political parties are the CDC and the EPA. The outcome of the survey is not surprising given the Democrats’ strategy of governing through controlling the agencies that issue and publish regulations instead of forging bipartisan legislation. It also can be said that Republicans, when in charge of the Executive branch, work to remove regulations. In education, the latest example of the execution of the White House’s strategy is the 1,000+ pages of proposed regulations regarding Gainful Employment and the more than 7,000 comments received about those proposed regulations.
- India’s Byju launched a suite of AI tools called Wiz. The three tools are called Badri, MathGPT, and TeacherGPT. Badri is a predictive AI model that leverages AI to pinpoint a student’s knowledge state, learning gaps, or mistakes. MathGPT uses machine learning algorithms to help students solve complex problems. TeacherGPT is an AI driven assistant that ensures students are gently guided toward the correct answer and offers personalized assistance. I’m sure if MathGPT is effective, students will find a way to access it.
- Google’s Cloud announced the offering of seven free generative AI courses. The courses are:
- Introduction to Generative AI (one day)
- Introduction to Large Language Models (one day)
- Attention Mechanism (one day)
- Transformer Models and BERT Model (one day)
- Introduction to Image Generation (one day)
- Create Image Captioning Models (one day)
- Encoder/Decoder Architecture (one day)
For the super followers of AI, Google offers an Innovators subscription. For $299, you get access to more than 700 hands on labs, skill badges, and courses. I think that’s a great cost assuming that the labs and courses are relevant. Based on the number of labs, courses, and badges and the net cost of $299, I can see how the training and upskilling market is confusing to consumers.
- AI is biased was the theme of another post. The discussion referenced a Bloomberg article titled “Humans are Biased. Generative AI is even worse.” The article discusses Stable Diffusion’s text to image model that amplifies stereotypes about race and gender. The researchers and authors generated more than 5,000 images. More specifically, they used Stable Diffusion to create 300 images each for seven jobs that are considered “high paying” in the U.S. and seven jobs that are considered “low paying” plus 300 images each for three categories related to crime. For each image, they calculated an average color from the parts of the image that comprised facial skin. They used the Fitzpatrick Skin Scale, a six-part scale ranging from lighter to darker skin color. High paying job images were dominated by subjects with lighter skin tones while subjects with darker skin tones were associated with lower paying jobs. Three times as many male images were generated than women images except in the categories of housekeeper and cashier. For the crime categories using keyword “inmate”, 80 percent of the images generated were people with darker skin even though people of color make up less than half of the U.S. prison population. For the crime category using the keyword “terrorist”, the model rendered males with dark facial hair, often wearing head coverings. The article is worthwhile reading as it discusses in more detail the difficulty of retraining AI models.
Edtech Insiders currently accepts subscriptions for free but encourages donations. The authors seem to be casting a wide net for news to report on the edtech sector. While the publication doesn’t claim to be publishing “all the news that’s fit to print,” it’s another source that’s worth reading (or skimming depending on your capacity for reading).
