\n <\/p>\n
An AI tool named after Albert Einstein (pictured) was taken down shortly after it was released.<\/span>Credit: GK History Images\/Alamy<\/span><\/p>\n On 23 February, academics across the world took to social media to decry the death of education as we know it. The day before, a technology start-up company called Companion had released an artificial-intelligence platform that pledged to free students from tedious coursework.<\/p>\n Such a statement might not seem controversial at a time when AI tools exist for nearly everything, if not for the fact that the program, called Einstein, promised on its website to do so much more. The company said that students could grant the tool access to their account on a virtual learning environment, such as Canvas. Once they did that, Einstein could watch lectures, read course material, participate in discussions, complete quizzes, and write and submit homework \u2014 all with minimal oversight by the student themselves. <\/p>\n Companion chief executive Advait Paliwal told the technology news outlet CNET that Einstein \u201cmakes ChatGPT look like a toy\u201d, whereas educators called it \u201ca cheating app\u201d, \u201cevil\u201d and \u201cthe ultimate brain smoothing machine\u201d. Language on the tool\u2019s website shifted after the backlash to downplay the AI\u2019s capabilities, and by 26 February, the bot was no longer accessible after a \u2018cease-and-desist\u2019 demand. Paliwal told Times Higher Education that he would now \u201cconcentrate on promoting how the wider Companion AI can be used by students\u201d. (Attempts by Nature to reach Paliwal received no reply.)<\/p>\n Einstein\u2019s moment in the Sun might have been short, but it is part of a wider reckoning over how students should be educated today. AI tools are being marketed as time savers for teachers overburdened by administrative tasks, and yet some faculty members are instead spending more time on battling bad-faith uses involving students, resulting in a push to return to \u2018de-digitized\u2019 curricula that place less emphasis on computers.<\/p>\n \u201cMy first thought when I saw Einstein was \u2018game over\u2019,\u201d says Lilian Edwards, a specialist in Internet law and technology policy at Newcastle University, UK, because circumventing it would require instructors \u201cto rearrange [their] assessment strategy entirely\u201d, which would involve substantial effort. \u201cAI can certainly be useful,\u201d she adds, but the majority of people she knows \u201cthink it\u2019s driving a stake through the heart of conventional educational assessment\u201d.<\/p>\n AI has lots of legitimate uses in academia \u2014 including writing code, translating texts and correcting grammar \u2014 and David Jurgens, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, says it\u2019s nearly impossible to avoid in his field. As such, he often faces many of the same ethical quandaries as his students. Jurgens came across another AI, called Professor Feynman, which is essentially Einstein for academics: it promises to free them from the \u2018busywork\u2019 of reading and grading essays, responding to discussions and even the need to offer online office hours, by creating a \u2018digital twin\u2019 that mimics their voice, mannerisms and teaching style.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can imagine a nightmare situation where classes become AIs talking to AIs, with no people actually interacting,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n Rather than adapting his assessments to AI platforms, Jurgens has engaged his students in thoughtful discussions in the classroom.<\/p>\n \u201cTeachers are always going to have to spend time developing and updating their curriculums, and so I\u2019ve tried to make it a more collaborative process,\u201d he says. \u201cIt feels like a better use of my time, and as a result, I do see students being more aware that they\u2019re only hurting themselves in the long term if they\u2019re replacing themselves with these tools.\u201d<\/p>\n An AI tool named after Albert Einstein (pictured) was taken down shortly after it was released.Credit: GK History Images\/Alamy On 23 February, academics across the world took to social media to decry the death of education as we know it. The day before, a technology start-up company called Companion had released an artificial-intelligence platform that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[15130,439,638,12543,23757],"class_list":{"0":"post-46611","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-bot","9":"tag-classroom","10":"tag-debate","11":"tag-einstein","12":"tag-sharpens"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Game over<\/h2>\n
More collaboration <\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"