The United Nations on Thursday urged for stringent regulations on the use of AI tools in classrooms, including a cap on their usage for older students and a ban on tools like the popular chatbot ChatGPT.
UN calls age limits for AI tools: The UN agency for education, UNESCO, in its updated advice for states, has cautioned that public officials lack preparedness to handle the moral dilemmas of implementing “generative” artificial intelligence programs in schools.
The Paris-based organisation warned that using these programmes in place of actual teachers could harm a child’s emotional health and make them more susceptible to manipulation.
According to Audrey Azoulay of UNESCO, “Generative AI can be a tremendous opportunity for human development, but it can also cause harm and prejudice.”
Without public participation and the required government safeguards and restrictions, it cannot be integrated into education.
Late last year, ChatGPT, a generative AI programme, made headlines for its capacity to produce essays, poetry, and dialogues from the shortest inputs.
In colleges and universities, it raised concerns about plagiarism and cheating.
However, investors poured cash into the industry, and proponents singled out education as a potentially lucrative area.
According to the UNESCO recommendations, AI technologies might assist youngsters with special needs, serve as a challenger in “Socratic dialogues,” or serve as a research assistant.
However, the technologies wouldn’t be secure and efficient unless educators, students, and researchers participated in their design and governments controlled access to them.
The advice did not suggest a minimum age for students but did note that ChatGPT had a lower age limit of 13.
The guidance noted that “many commentators understand this threshold to be too young and have argued for legislation to raise the age to 16.”