International Group of Artificial Intelligence – IGOAI in association with the Global CIO Forum organised a virtual summit on Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education on 23rd December 2021. The conference focused on how artificial intelligence plays a key role in future of Higher Education, from personalised learning to autonomous generation of curriculums to support and empowerment of learners.
Artificial intelligence-based technologies are becoming popular for higher education and are improving the quality of learning. It also brings important benefits for education, such as learning that is personalised to the preferences of each student, helping her or him to adapt the pace and control iterations to improve the mastery of the topic.
The event was joined by Under the Patronage of Her Excellency Dr Shaikha Rana bint Isa bin Daij Al Khalifa, Secretary-General and Deputy Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the Higher Education Council; Dr Jassim Haji, President, IGOAI; Dr Lorenzo Cotino Hueso, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Valencia; Dr Sam Saarinen; Dr Claudio Feijoo; and moderated by Aco Momcilovic, Co-Director and Co-Founder, Global AI Ethics Institute and hosted by Dalal Buhumeida.
Under the Patronage of Her Excellency Dr Shaikha Rana bint Isa bin Daij Al Khalifa, Secretary-General and Deputy Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the Higher Education Council – Bahrain joined the launch of the first conference in the Middle East on Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education and talked about what is artificial intelligence and said, “When people think about artificial intelligence, what often comes in mind is Kinetic from Terminator movie but today we are far from machines that have the ability to perform multiple tasks.
She added that today’s artificial intelligence is in general but now it is task-specific, broadly speaking artificial intelligence is about finding patterns in the seas of data, co-relation that would not be immediately initiative or comprehensible to humans and then using those patterns to make decisions. So, the utility does with regard to higher education from answering basic questions to providing epidemic support artificial intelligence is helping streamline the way things have been done in higher education.
Dr Jassim Haji, President, International Group of Artificial Intelligence welcomed Under the Patronage of Her Excellency Dr Shaikha Rana bint Isa bin Daij Al Khalifa and all the other speakers for joining the virtual summit and talked about artificial intelligence in higher education and said, “Artificial intelligence in higher education not only means taking syllabus, lecture but it can also be used for research and how the computer visioning for instances use for gradings and auto-corrections, how the syllabus is autonomously provided by the artificial intelligence, how the speech recognition is done for auditory interactivities and how the data privacy certifies responses to the student’s questions related to studies.”
Dr Lorenzo Cotino Hueso, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Valencia addressed a session on Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education within Public Services and discussed a few areas including universities as providers of data and trainers of algorithms for the big tech, do we want to replace teachers and professors through automatisation, how to improve teachers and students with technology and basic use of artificial intelligence.
Dr Claudio Feijoo, Professor, Technical University of Madrid discussed Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education within Public Services said, “I think we have a mission to have the transformation as everybody is talking about the digital transformation so this part of the digital transformation is to make our society better and to enhance them.”
Dr Sam Saarinen, Founder of Edapt Technologies talked about Artificial Intelligence and Data Privacy in Higher Education and said, “Higher education is very important. It is one of the most direct ways to improve the economy over the development of science in a country because in many streams you go to higher education or are about to begin their careers in advanced fields by improving higher education and making it more effective and scalable. We can have a dramatic impact on not only students but also on society as a whole.”
Dr Lorenzo Cotino Hueso, Dr Claudio Feijoo, Dr Sam Saarinen also joined the Q and A session moderated by Aco Momcilovic on Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education.
The event was closed with a closing note by Sheikh Abdulla bin Khalid Alkhalifa and said artificial intelligence has to offer more to higher education when it comes to teaching and supporting our students. He also thanked all the speakers for sharing their experiences and thoughts.
