AI tutors 'make more work' for teachers, experts say

“Clunky” AI tutoring tools risk “burdening” teachers with “low-level work”, MPs have been warned today.

“Like with the automated tills in a supermarket, there are people running around making sure it looks like it’s working automatically,” Professor Neil Selwyn, of Monash University in Australia, told the Commons Education Select Committee this morning.

The committee is currently exploring how AI is reshaping the world of work and learning, given that the government is planning to introduce AI tutors at the end of next year.

AI tutors ‘creating huge amount of work’

Tes first revealed that the government was exploring the use of AI tutors last year, with the Department for Education later confirming this as part of its schools White Paper.

While the DfE has emphasised that the tools will be used to support classroom teaching, not as a replacement for face-to-face learning, it has not specified whether students could use the tools independently.

Referring to AI tutoring tools already being used in the United States, Professor Selwyn said that “teachers are having to do a huge amount of behind-the-scenes work to keep the technology working”.

“It’s quite clunky, the maintenance and repair work to keep the technology going can’t be overestimated,” he added.

This has resulted in teachers becoming “bogged down” and spending “a lot of time filling in the gaps about the student that the technology doesn’t know”, he warned.

“It’s certainly putting a strain on teachers, I think, and it’s not making for less work, but possibly making for more work for teachers.”

Professor Selwyn said he is worried that this is “burdening teachers with quite low-level work” rather than freeing them up to be pedagogy experts.

Capacity building ‘must be priority’

The government recently admitted that there is a “limited” evidence base for AI tutoring tools.

The latest generation of AI tutors, including chatbots, have a “much looser evidence base” than earlier models, Professor Rose Luckin, of University College London, said.

“We need to be really careful how we design and implement any AI tutor that we roll out. The best designed tool will not have the impact we want unless it is carefully implemented,” Prof Luckin said.

“Capacity building in the people is the most important part in anything we do when it comes to getting the best from AI and mitigating the risk.”

Fears about new teachers relying on AI

Professor Selwyn also suggested that teacher trainers need to help new cohorts to avoid becoming overreliant on AI.

“A lot of the teachers we speak to are very worried about the new generation of newly-qualified teachers that won’t have had the experience with working without AI,” he told MPs.

He also has concerns about the “sidelining and displacing of teachers, and also about how tech can be used as a workplace surveillance and performance tool”.