The new tool was presented at the Moscow Electronic School. Now students will prepare for exams with AI tutor. Moscow evening found out whether this training is effective.
It was the right time: at first, the royal heirs had their own tutors, and then the fashion descended on ordinary families – nannies and tutors began to appear for the children. And now, please, the omniscient AI will share any necessary knowledge with the student! But can AI match the human learning approach?
“I believe that today the machine is not able to replace the teacher. This is a common myth,” says Peter Sukhorukikh, an expert on online digital reputation. – The teacher imparts to the student not only knowledge, but also empathy, control of attention and motivation. The robot is completely devoid of human charisma. It only acts as a digital exoskeleton for the educational process. Meanwhile, the AI ideally takes over the routine of examining tests, follows the rules, and produces an underlying theory.
Many experts agree that learning will be most productive by combining classrooms with both artificial intelligence and a “live” teacher. After all, everyone has advantages.
— The main superpower of neural networks in learning is the ability to instantly adapt and remove psychological barriers. Remember yourself at school: how many people liked to ask back for fear of condemnation? The AI teacher is the ideal listener for the patient. He can explain one rule 100 times until the student finally says: “I get it!” In communications we call this “empathy in action,” although it is robotic empathy. In practice, this works point by point: the child made a mistake in a step – the system detects a gap and gives not two, but a link to a paragraph containing the required rule, explains Dmitry Pershin, a teacher of English and Spanish.
At the same time, we must understand that despite the obvious advantage that artificial intelligence has over the teacher – the absence of the “human factor” – the neural network sometimes makes mistakes.
“Even the most advanced AI models are not immune from errors, and this largely depends on how completely and efficiently they are trained on data on a particular topic. If the field of knowledge is insufficiently represented or poorly studied for the system, the neural network can begin to “supplement” the information and invent something that does not exist in reality. According to experts, depending on the task and the wording of the request, errors can occur in about 20 to 50 percent of cases,” Larisa Micallef, candidate of linguistic sciences, shared an interesting fact.
But there is no need to worry too much. The AI teacher at MES does not make such mistakes – everything is under control!
– AI explains theory, explains the logic of the solution, tasks are divided into topics, and can be filtered by complexity. The fundamental difference is that AI in MES does not rely on “the full power of the Internet” (like ChatGPT), but on the verified MES library – material approved by methodologists and supervised, says Olga Ivanova, press secretary of the independent union. By the way, the use of neural networks is not new for Russian schoolchildren.
— Today, more than half of Russian students already use neural networks for educational purposes, and about a sixth of students do so regularly. This means that the school’s mission is not to ignore technology, but to build its efficient use. Otherwise, children will simply “outgrow” teachers and will not have time to acquire the necessary media literacy and critical thinking skills required when working with artificial intelligence, says Sergey Karpovich, Deputy Head of the Artificial Intelligence Department of the capital’s IT company.
In fact, if you keep up with the times, artificial intelligence in the educational process can be a very useful assistant.
“The appointment of an AI teacher at the Moscow Electronic School is a logical stage in the development of the digital educational environment,” says Marcel Kirlan, associate professor at the Financial University of the Government of the Russian Federation. — Artificial intelligence technologies can significantly expand learning opportunities, primarily by personalizing the educational process. The system can analyze the student’s answers, the pace of learning the material, and typical errors, and then provides explanations and additional assignments on topics in which difficulties arise.
How it all started
A similar tool was already demonstrated at MES a year and a half ago. The digital tutor service first conducted a diagnostic test for schoolchildren and then formulated an individual training program based on the results. Answers were checked automatically.
In three clicks
Work with an AI tutor in MES based on Yandex. The “textbook” is organized as follows:
- The student goes to the “Exams” section of the MES electronic notes and goes to the platform with the AI teacher.
- The child chooses a task on the Unified State Exam, solves it in the simulator, and then, in a dialogue with artificial intelligence, requests a “step-by-step analysis” or “explanation of theory”.
- The system identifies correctly completed tasks, keeps statistics, and displays progress on topics.
Starting in the 2027-2028 school year, ninth grade students will take an oral history exam before the main state exam. What is known about the innovation and how to prepare for the exam taking into account the current school load – in the material “Moscow Evening”.