AI Tools for Teachers: A Beginner's (Lib)Guide to AI

The research process has always involved collaboration, from brainstorming sessions to writing groups. Researchers rely on their peers for direction, encouragement, and insight. What if the collaborator was not human? What if the partner were a machine? This was the question I pondered as I started my most recent research project. As an academic librarian, I’ve always been interested in discovering innovative ways to assist researchers. As soon as I learned that AI assistants could help researchers in their work, I knew I had to give it a shot. And so, I began working with ChatGPT, a powerful generative AI tool.

ChatGPT is an AI tool that has sparked debates about its potential implications for education. We used the SWOT analysis framework to outline ChatGPT’s strengths and weaknesses and to discuss its opportunities for and threats to education. The strengths include using a sophisticated natural language model to generate plausible answers, self-improving capability, and providing personalised and real-time responses.

Since its maiden release into the public domain on November 30, 2022, ChatGPT garnered more than one million subscribers within a week. The generative AI tool ⎼ChatGPT took the world by surprise with its sophisticated capacity to carry out remarkably complex tasks. The extraordinary abilities of ChatGPT to perform complex tasks within the field of education has caused mixed feelings among educators as this advancement in AI seems to revolutionize existing educational praxis. This review article synthesizes recent extant literature to offer some potential benefits of ChatGPT in promoting teaching and learning.

The U.S. Department of Education (Department) is committed to supporting the use of technology to improve teaching and learning and to support innovation throughout educational systems. This report addresses the clear need for sharing knowledge and developing policies for “Artificial Intelligence,” a rapidly advancing class of foundational capabilities which are increasingly embedded in all types of educational technology systems and are also available to the public. We will consider “educational technology” (edtech) to include both (a) technologies specifically designed for educational use, as well as (b) general technologies that are widely used in educational settings. Recommendations in this report seek to engage teachers, educational leaders, policy makers, researchers, and educational technology innovators and providers as they work together on pressing policy issues that arise as Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used in education.

Transformer based language models whether encoder-based ones like BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) or auto-regressive decoder-based ones like GPT (Generative Pretrained Transformers) brings near human level capabilities in NLP (Natural Language Processing) and (particularly for encoder based GPT models) NLG (Natural Language Generation).

Transformative artificially intelligent tools, such as ChatGPT, designed to generate sophisticated text indistinguishable from that produced by a human, are applicable across a wide range of contexts. The technology presents opportunities as well as, often ethical and legal, challenges, and has the potential for both positive and negative impacts for organisations, society, and individuals. Offering multi-disciplinary insight into some of these, this article brings together 43 contributions from experts in fields such as computer science, marketing, information systems, education, policy, hospitality and tourism, management, publishing, and nursing.

Transformer based language models whether encoder-based ones like BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) or auto-regressive decoder-based ones like GPT (Generative Pretrained Transformers) brings near human level capabilities in NLP (Natural Language Processing) and (particularly for encoder based GPT models) NLG (Natural Language Generation).

The U.S. Department of Education (Department) is committed to supporting the use of technology to improve teaching and learning and to support innovation throughout educational systems. This report addresses the clear need for sharing knowledge and developing policies for “Artificial Intelligence,” a rapidly advancing class of foundational capabilities which are increasingly embedded in all types of educational technology systems and are also available to the public. We will consider “educational technology” (edtech) to include both (a) technologies specifically designed for educational use, as well as (b) general technologies that are widely used in educational settings. Recommendations in this report seek to engage teachers, educational leaders, policy makers, researchers, and educational technology innovators and providers as they work together on pressing policy issues that arise as Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used in education.