New Delhi: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on Friday launched its 2022 State of the Education Report (SOER) for India which is focused on Artificial Intelligence in Education.
The report, “Artificial Intelligence in Education – Here, There and Everywhere”, was launched here, with an objective to provide guidance towards the responsible and human-centered application of Artificial Intelligence in education in India.
“This fourth edition of the State of Education Report provided an introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI) to demystify a subject that has endured various misconceptions and emphasized the integration of AI in Education to also promote quality and skill-based education,” said UNESCO in a press statement.
“This is supplemented by an overview of challenges and opportunities in the Indian education sector that Artificial Intelligence can address.
“Today, improving the quality of education and the learning outcomes of students are the utmost priorities of all countries. India has made significant strides in its education system and strong indicators point to the country’s notable efforts to enhance learning outcomes, including by using Artificial Intelligence-powered education technology,” said Eric Falt, Director, UNESCO New Delhi.
According to UNESCO, the AI market in India is expected to reach $7.8 billion by 2025 at the rate of 20.2 percent compound annual growth.
“To align India’s curriculum to the 21st century and to prepare the students for the AI economy, India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 lays profound emphasis on the need to impart the necessary technical knowledge at all levels of education,” it said.
Speaking at the event, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Electronic and IT (meitY), Dr Rajendra Kumar, emphasized the “high-quality data” for developing the advanced technologies.
“For advanced technology like AI, one of the key ingredients is excess to high-quality data. This is one area where the government has made tremendous efforts in the last many years, starting with the open government data platform back in 2010 which actually brought a huge number of data sets into the public domain to everyone, like researchers, data scientists to use it to develop meaningful and effective technologies” he said.
In the report, UNESCO also offered varied dimensions and suggestions for future uses of Artificial Intelligence in the school setting.
The UN agency also offered ten action-oriented recommendations and expressed the hope that it will catalyze India’s transformational journey through technical education and advanced tech-driven solutions in the educational processes.
