- Prelims: Science and technology, Artificial intelligence(AI), Generative AI, e-education, ChatGPT etc
- Mains GS Paper III and IV: Significance of technology for India, AI, indigenisation of technology and development of new technology.
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
- The Khan Academy’s online education videos attracted thousands of learners in 2008.
- Khan’s not-for-profit enterprise is funded by the Gates Foundation, Google and Elon Musk.
- The academy has 130 million learners from across the world, ranging from school-goers to graduate-level learners
INSIGHTS ON THE ISSUE
Context
Artificial intelligence(AI):
- It is a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers.
- It describes the action of machines accomplishing tasks that have historically required human intelligence.
- It includes technologies like machine learning, pattern recognition, big data, neural networks, self algorithms etc.
- g: Facebook’s facial recognition software which identifies faces in the photos we post, the voice recognition software that translates commands we give to Alexa, etc are some of the examples of AI already around us.
Generative AI:
- It is a cutting-edge technological advancement that utilizes machine learning and artificial intelligence to create new forms of media, such as text, audio, video, and animation.
- With the advent of advanced machine learning capabilities: It is possible to generate new and creative short and long-form content, synthetic media, and even deep fakes with simple text, also known as prompts.
Massive Open Online Courses’ (MOOCs):
- MOOCS have been around since 2008.
- Their institutional origins can be traced to three free online courses offered by Stanford University in 2011.
- Peter Norvig, Sebastian Thrun, Jennifer Widom and Andrew Ng conducted these courses.
- Thrun launched his online education outfit, ‘Udacity’, in late 2011 as a for-profit company.
- Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller followed suit with their venture ‘Coursera’, which was also registered as a ‘for-profit’ company.
- MIT and Harvard joined forces to create ‘edX’ in May 2012, as a non-profit MOOCS Company.
- According to ‘Class Central’, the number of MOOCS learners in the world (excluding China) was 220 million in 2021.
- Coursera accounted for 97 million learners, while edX and India’s SWAYAM had enrolments of 42 million and 22 million, respectively.
India and MOOCS:
- Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore have been the early movers .
- Both institutions offer a variety of MOOCS courses through the edX platform.
- India’s ‘Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds’ (SWAYAM) launched in 2017 by the Ministry of Education, Government of India.
- It is one of the world’s largest learning e-portals.
Why Generative AI?
- The financials of MOOCS platforms are fragile.
- The operating expenses of a MOOCS platform are high
- partly due to maintenance expenses associated with the LMS tech stack
- partly due to steep marketing costs incurred for enlarging the learner base.
- On the revenue side, the practice of offering entry-level courses gratis (or at low fees) aggravated the financial crunch faced by these platforms.
- MOOCS platforms, by and large, rely on degree-earning courses to earn revenue, such courses have few takers.
- A key metric that determines learner enrolments for MOOCS is the probability of potential learners discovering LMS platforms through web-based search engines.
- Even when a learner stumbles on a platform of her choice, she would still struggle to locate courses that suit her needs from the crowded portfolios of Coursera, edX and Udacity.
- High rate of dropouts by entry-level learners.
- In turn, drop-outs reduce the catchment of learners for degree granting programmes.
- edX’s Chat GPT plug-in helps aspiring learners to successfully locate platforms and courses that suit their requirements.
- The Khan Academy’s chat box ‘Khanmigo’ challenges learners with thought-provoking questions
- edX’s ‘edX Xpert’ and Coursera’s ‘AI Coursera Coach’ function as virtual assistants that:
- answer queries
- provide feedback on assignments
- generate quick summaries of voluminous content
- swiftly turn out exam scores.
- As learning gets interesting and engaging, drop-outs are bound to come down, resulting in more learners progressing to degree granting programmes.
Ethical Issues with AI:
SWAYAM:
Way Forward
- The SWAYAM-user community will drastically scale up by 2025, when India’s active Internet users become 900 million strong.
- This rapid scale up will necessitate the utilization of AI-based learning and teaching services by institutes affiliated to the platform.
- Unlike the United States and Europe-based platforms, SWAYAM is publicly funded and is driven by the National Education Policy’s tenets of inclusivity and cross-disciplinary learning.
- The drift of SWAYAM courses is more likely in the direction of cross-disciplinary course offerings that utilize unstructured data.
- SWAYAM is thus ideally positioned to derive benefits from the evolving semantic web.
QUESTION FOR PRACTICE
What are the different elements of cyber security ? Keeping in view the challenges in cyber security, examine the extent to which India has successfully developed a comprehensive National Cyber Security Strategy.(UPSC 2022) (200 WORDS, 10 MARKS)
