Generative AI: Implications and Applications for Education
This work addresses the impact of generative AI on education, highlighting both opportunities and limitations, but it is incremental as it builds on existing technologies without introducing major innovations.
The paper examines the implications of generative AI, specifically chatbots based on large language models (C-LLM), for education, reporting on an application to AI review and assessment of complex student work, and explores the intrinsic limits and potential applications of this technology in educational settings.
The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 precipitated a panic among some educators while prompting qualified enthusiasm from others. Under the umbrella term Generative AI, ChatGPT is an example of a range of technologies for the delivery of computer-generated text, image, and other digitized media. This paper examines the implications for education of one generative AI technology, chatbots responding from large language models, or C-LLM. It reports on an application of a C-LLM to AI review and assessment of complex student work. In a concluding discussion, the paper explores the intrinsic limits of generative AI, bound as it is to language corpora and their textual representation through binary notation. Within these limits, we suggest the range of emerging and potential applications of Generative AI in education.