Artificial Intelligence and Learning

Abstract

Rapid technological advances, particularly recent artificial intelligence (AI) revolutions such as digital assistants (e.g., Alexa, Siri), self-driving cars, and cobots and robots, have changed human lives and will continue to have even bigger impact on our future society. Some of those AI inventions already shocked people across the world by wielding their power of surpassing human intelligence and cognitive abilities; see, for example, the examples of Watson (IBM’s supercomputer) and AlphaGo (Google DeepMind’s AI program) beating the human champions of Jeopardy and Go games, respectively. Then many questions arise. How does AI affect human beings and the larger society? How should we educate our children in the AI age? What changes are necessary to help humans better adapt and flourish in the AI age? What are the key enablers of the AI revolution, such as big data and machine learning? What are the applications of AI in education and how do they work? Answering these critical questions requires interdisciplinary research. There is no shortage of research on AI per se, since it is a highly important and impactful research topic that cuts across many fields of science and technology. Nevertheless, there are no effective guidelines for educational researchers and practitioners that give quick summaries and references on this topic. Because the intersection of AI and education/learning is an emerging field of research, the literature is in flux and the jury is still out. Thus, our goal here is to give readers a quick introduction to this broad topic by drawing upon a limited selection of books, reports, and articles. This entry is organized into three major sections, where we present commentaries along with a list of annotated references on each of the following areas: (1) AI Impacts on the Society and Education; (2) AI Enablers: Big Data in Education and Machine Learning; and (3) Applications of AI in Education: Examples and Evidence.