Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia will be the first college in the country to use AI teaching assistants when students return to class in the Fall. The 3-D avatars will use Open AI to deliver content to students, provide instructions and directions, and answer questions in various languages.
The animated bots powered by tech company VictoryXR can be designed to look like the professor and will be available to students around the clock, even when the actual professor is sleeping.
Senior Assistant Professor and AI project lead Muhsinah Morris says the initiative is designed “to enhance students’ ability to get access to information that is cultivated in your classroom.”
Critics of the program worry that these virtual teaching assistants might eventually get tenure and replace actual TAs or even professors. Morris says this isn’t the goal, though: “It doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing with these tools. The reason we’re doing it is for humanity to have an easier existence, to make and minimize the tasks we have so we’re not always working. I don’t see erasing the human component of computing, ever.”
Artificial intelligence in education has been a hot-button issue recently, and it remains to be seen how top colleges and universities across the country will implement AI in the classroom and to what end.
Morehouse College is a small liberal arts college and HBCU. It has received top ratings from esteemed publications, including U.S. News & World Report.
Source: Animated AI TAs Coming to Morehouse
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