New teacher in the city: Openai's big test in Indian schools

Copyright © HT Digital Streams Limit all rights reserved. Openai’s India initiative is ambitious. (AP) Summary artificial intelligence beats, but did India do his homework? We need to set up robust rules to govern consent, protect student data, claim fairness and ensure that teachers still remain stewards of learning teachers have always been a high pedestal in Indian society. Of ancient times, the reverent Guru-Shishya tradition of teachers has increased to the status of divinity, embodied in the timeless Sanskrit Shloka, “Gurur Brahma, Gurur Vishnu …” In the era of rapidly constant technology, a new demand for the education corridors of India? This question jumped from abstract debates to urgent world with Openai’s recent announcement of a landmark initiative in India: the distribution of 500,000 paid ChatgPT licenses for schools and technical institutes, packaged with teacher education and research on research. For a country where education is an enormous challenge and a national priority, the move indicates a defining moment. Are Indian schools ready to embrace AI? Promise of a digital revolution in classrooms: Openai’s India initiative is ambitious. By placing advanced AI instruments in the hands of teachers and learners, it promises a future where personalized tutorial is not a privilege of the elite, but a possibility for each child. Imagine that large classrooms where attention extends vary, but AI systems fit each child’s unique learning rate; Or a rural school where a teacher in the rural Bihar uses the same AI-powered tool used in Bangalore’s top engineering college. For teachers, charged with administrative tasks, AI’s deployment can mean a chance to regain what is most precious in teaching: authentic human interaction. Rather than being replaced, teachers can improve their skills, given the time and space made by AI instruments that take over routine tasks to focus on mentoring, creativity and critical thinking. Of great importance is that Openai’s cooperation with IIT Madras ensures that AI integration will be based on India-specific research, not just imported assumptions. Partnerships with the Ministry of Education, Aicte and Anchor originates this initiative within the National Education Policy of 2020’s broader vision of digitization and inclusion. Management Gaps: Yet optimism should not blind us to the risks. India’s patches of outdated laws cross each other with one of the most transformative technologies in the history of man. The Information Technology Act, 2000, India’s primary digital legislation, does not even mention artificial intelligence. As a result, regulators are forced to provide for the early Internet-ERA challenge empowerment, hacking and obscenity-to suit AI’s much more complicated realities. And although there is progress, such as the Digital Personal Data Protection Protection Act (DPDPA) of 2023 and parliamentary debates on algorithmic fairness, the country does not have a comprehensive, dedicated AI act of the kind that Europe has already adopted. Prejudice and fairness in education: an important risk of deploying AI in Indian classrooms is algorithmic prejudice. Worldwide, AI systems have failed marginalized groups due to skewed training data. In education, it can lead to biased rating, discriminatory admission or invasive student monitoring. For a country as socio-economically diverse as India, an unfair algorithm risks the inequality of inequality rather than reducing it. Europe faced this by labeling educational AI ‘high -risk’ and setting up independent audits. India will require similar regulations to ensure that the statistical ghosts of a biased data set are never infected by the examination result or university assignment. Privacy and consent: Indian parents may soon be asked to have AI systems collected their child’s personal information. Under the DPDPA, all minor data requires verified consent of the parent, a mechanism that is at risk of being linked to Aadhaar or other sensitive identifiers. Without transparent practices, India may find itself in lawsuits and a public setback about dealing with personal information from children. Copyright and Intellectual Property Fights: Openai has already faced lawsuits in India about the use of news and content without permission. With IT rules (2021) instructing organizations to refrain from publishing information without legal rights, there are questions about whether ai-generated teaching material in schools can violate the Copyright Act. Can a lesson plan generated by Chatgpt be infected by an unresolved claim for intellectual property? The answer remains uneasy, and Indian regulators will have to act quickly. The role of the teacher in the algorithmic era: Even if every policy is cleaned, India must guard at a final risk: the black box nature of advanced AI. Teachers and parents should never find that their generative AI outputs blindly trust without understanding how systems reach these conclusions. Unlike Europe, who oversee human supervision as non-negotiable, India has yet to create such a handrail. Unless strengthened, this opacity runs the risk of displacing the authority of the teacher. Road Pre-Gurur-Again or Gurur teacher?: Is India so ready for AI in his schools? The answer is a measured ‘almost’. Depending on whether India can set up robust rules to govern consent, protect student data, claim fairness and ensure that teachers remain the stewards of learning. If done right, AI will not profane teachers. This will elevate them and give us the chance to merge the best tradition and technology. Perhaps ‘gurur-ai’ will not rewrite the old shloka, but update it-with the recognition that the empowerment of education does not come out of tools, but the wisdom with which we use them. The author is an independent privacy lawyer. Catch all the business news, market news, news reports and latest news updates on Live Mint. Download the Mint News app to get daily market updates. More Topics #Kartic Intelligence #Education Read the following story