UNESCO aims to Grow AI-based Education for Women in the Next 5 Years

AI-based education for women: The future growth & impact on the next generation in 5 years

The State of Education in India 2022 study by UNESCO makes it apparent that leveraging AI-based education in India requires preparing women for technology in the classroom. The aim is to provide equality in education on AI irrespective of gender, sex, race, language, color, religion, political views, and other opinions.

Al has first been used in academic contexts in the 1970s. Researchers at the time were curious about whether computer techniques could replace one-on-one human tutoring, which is regarded to be the most effective method of instruction but is not available to most people. AI's integration into the educational system brings attention to problems with access, ethics, equity, and sustainability. According to the study on AI economy and education, 83% of adolescent girls in the nation don't have access to a laptop at home and only spend an hour or less per week utilizing the computer laboratories at their schools.

The International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Education, which was held in Beijing in 2019 under the theme "Planning Education in the Al Era: Lead the Leap," was organized by UNESCO in collaboration with the Chinese Government to assist educational systems in responding to the complex challenges. More than 50 government ministers and vice-ministers, 500 international participants from more than 100 member states, UN agencies, academic institutions, civil society, and corporate sector groups were among its attendees. In the context of "SDG 4 – Education 2030 and the Future of Education Beyond 2030," they looked at the systemic effects of Al. The "Beijing Consensus on Al and Education" (UNESCO, 2019a), which offers a shared understanding of important concerns and policy recommendations linked to the three aforementioned policy questions, was the conference's main output.

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Despite this, according to the Stanford University's Institute for Human-centred Artificial Intelligence's 2022 Artificial Intelligence Index, the nation ranked first in terms of talent concentration and relative AI skill penetration—leading the world in terms of relative skill penetration by gender, with women exhibiting a higher rate than men in the country.

The lack of access to technology in early education for women, however, may be resulting in missed potential given that women make up 22% of India's AI talent pool and a third of publications in the field of artificial intelligence.

In August 2020, the AI market in India was estimated to be worth $6.4 billion, and by 2025, it is anticipated to be close to $8 billion. To prepare students for the AI economy, the National Schooling Policy 2020 emphasizes the importance of teaching technological skills at all levels of education. To prepare the youth and the emerging workforce academically for an AI-led world, both the government and the commercial sector are working to integrate AI-based education. We have a national program on AI, based on the national strategy on AI, according to Rajendra Kumar, additional secretary, ministry of electronics and information technology. We intend to bring together all necessary parties to ensure that we may employ this cutting-edge technology for creating applications for specific domains like education.

To that goal, the government has collaborated with the commercial sector. The Central Board of Secondary Education and Intel's combined effort to increase AI literacy in schools serves as one such example. The government has also made efforts on its own, with initiatives like the Atal Innovation Mission, which selected over 14,000 schools to establish Atal Tinkering Labs (ATLs), which will provide courses in things like drone engineering and artificial intelligence.

Along with other recommendations, the UNESCO report emphasizes the importance of giving all students and instructors access to the most recent technology and of making ethics the focal point of AI-based education, including working to eliminate algorithmic biases and the associated discrimination.

Earlier this year, UNESCO and "Technovation" (a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing technology education) collaborated to launch the Technovation Idea Lab, a free, five-week online course that taught female students between the ages of 10 and 18 critical computer programming skills for the creation of artificial intelligence (AI).

More than three thousand girls from Brazil, India, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, and Pakistan participated in the program, and more than 250 of them submitted a final project. Seventeen of these students that finished the assignment were from India. They were chosen to receive a modest award from UNESCO in appreciation of their diligence and efforts.

The project's goal was simple: over the course of five weeks, the students had to gain a basic understanding of how AI-based education systems now operate in the real world, identify an issue in their different social environments, and suggest a solution that would involve using an AI system.