Kerre Woodham: Should AI be utilised more in schools?

You might remember a month or so ago we had Justin Flitter, an AI expert, in the studio for an hour talking about the fact that AI is here, it's already being used by numerous early adopters, it's not going away, and you'll have to get on board or you'll be left behind. And as you can imagine, the calls were a mix of oh no, it's a disaster, stop it now and King Canute trying to turn back the tide, and others who were saying it's brilliant, already using it, been using it for over a year. A woman in her 70s who was working with disadvantaged kids found AI enormously helpful in terms of teaching tools.

So some people are ready, willing, and able to embrace change, technology, advancements. Others don't see it as an advancement, they see it as taking jobs, as concerning, as worrying and I get that. But it is here, and it would be pointless to bury your head in the sand and say I don't want it to come. It's already here. It's already being used. Job seekers are using AI to write their CVs and cover letters. AI’s being used by employers to screen job applications. It's being used in job training. It's being used in research and now, Education Minister Erica Stanford says the use of AI as a marking tool will be expanded over the next few years. It's already been used for the literacy and numeracy corequisite exams. Now, she says, it will be used as the education system moves away from NCEA Level 1. She says AI is as good if not better than human marking. It will undoubtedly be as good, if not better, at setting exams.

Remember 2016? Late changes in a top-level school exam math's paper led to a mistake so bad that students could not answer the question. It was unanswerable because of a mistake made by a human, leading to students walking out of the exam doubting themselves and beside themselves. That same year, it was revealed for other external NECA maths and stats exam papers were affected by mistakes, but they weren't considered as severe. Now if you can iron out those kind of glitches, all well and good. And if AI can free up teachers to teach, not doing the boring admin tasks, again, so much the better.

It's not perfect. It's only as good as the human input it receives, but like automation it is brilliant at doing the basic repetitive jobs. So for those of you who are on board, love to hear from you, those of you who have had bad experiences too love to hear from you on that as well. And is it suitable to be used for setting exams, marking papers? The sort of admin that takes up so much of a teacher's time in school. I would say absolutely get on board.

Kerre McIvor, is a journalist, radio presenter, author and columnist. Currently hosts the Kerre Woodham mornings show on Newstalk ZB - where this article was sourced.