Opportunities and challenges
In the context of higher education, AI technologies offer a wide range of opportunities, as well as new challenges.
- Work facilitation & help (AI as assistant or "co-pilot")
- Developing digital skills for the future
- Personalized learning paths and individualized learning content
- More efficient administration and organization
- Research support (e.g. analysis of large amounts of data)
- Creation of low-barrier learning environments
- Automated assessments and real-time feedback
- Quality of the results produced (dependent on prompts, among other things)
- Lack of motivation on the part of students to acquire certain skills
- Integration of writing processes in learning scenarios
- Consideration of "new" examination modalities
- Making students' own work more verifiable (e.g. via process documentation, clear indication of resources, etc.)
- Promoting critical thinking
- Detection of AI-generated content
The use of AI systems such as ChatGPT involves the processing of personal data that takes place on servers in the USA. The Court of Justice of the European Court has ruled that the USA does not have an adequate level of data protection. The data processed by ChatGPT includes your first and last name, email address, telephone number, IP address and the chat messages you enter. The data entered is stored and might be (re)used for training the chatbot and for generating responses. When using AI systems, the disclosure of personal data must generally be handled with care. Students must not be required to share any personal data. The EU has passed the AI Act to ensure that the use of AI-based systems does not have a negative impact on the safety, health, and fundamental rights of people.
According to the current legislation in Austria, authorship of a work arises only through the creation of a work by a natural person, i.e. a human being. AI-generated products are therefore not protected by copyright, and the users of the AI also have no claim to authorship of the products generated by the AI. As this field is rapidly evolving, many questions relating to copyright cannot be definitively answered at the moment.
Central ethical principles in dealing with AI are beneficence, transparency, non-malice, autonomy, justice, and data protection (see Principles for the ethical use of artificial intelligence, 2022). The ethical use of AI goes beyond legislation and ensures that AI is not used to the detriment of individuals or society. In the context of teaching - although developed for schools - the Ethical Guidelines for Teachers on the Use of AI and Data for Teaching and Learning Purposes can be helpful.
Information literacy is (also) very important when dealing with AI. People need the ability to critically examine and question AI-generated products and the data and sources used for them. AI products are based on the respective training data of the AI systems, and distortion effects (data bias) cannot be ruled out here. A good basic introduction to this can be found in the Fundamentals of bias and fairness in AI systems.
Currently there are many open questions surrounding the use of AI tools (in teaching) that are either still unanswered or require decisions or considerations at the individual, institutional, state, or global level. In addition, technologies and applications are changing continuously and rapidly, which makes future developments difficult to foresee.
Nevertheless, we should all be aware of the potential and actual impacts on our society. As teachers and stakeholders in higher education, we need to critically assess the impact and take an informed and reflective stance.
The website of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research is also useful for a general overview of the topic.