CEO of education technology company, One on One Educational Services, Ricardo Allen, has invited teachers to provide their knowledge and feedback as the company builds its artificial intelligence-enabled education tool.

Speaking on Taking Stock with Kalilah Reynolds, Allen said input from teachers is crucial to ensuring that the AI-based tool can best serve Jamaica’s education system.

While the team has not revealed many specifics about the AI tool, Chief Technical Officer at One on One, Dr Ricardo Anderson, said they are building an ecosystem of educational tools to enhance the entire education system.

“We want to allow students to learn at their own pace but also with the assistance of a teacher integrated into that process with tools and techniques that also allow the teacher to improve the way they work so that they can spend more time doing higher order tasks,” Dr Anderson said.

According to Allen, the introduction of AI tools such as Chat GPT has accelerated the company’s work in revolutionising Jamaica’s education system.

“When we started our business 10 years ago our business plan was to personalise education using the most advanced technology which is AI. Ten years ago AI was far behind where it is now,” he said.

“The explosion of large language models like Chat GPT have brought our plans forward by 3-5 years because we have the foundational elements,” he added.

“It allows us to access and so instead of starting from scratch, we can add our own novelty, and do things that are more specific to our environment and build out the tools that are going to be more useful in our education system,” Dr Anderson added.

The men explained that the goal is to create an individualised experience for each child that caters to their specific goals, challenges and learning styles. They said this would allow teachers to focus on higher-order tasks such as mentorship and coaching to equip students to face challenges outside the classroom.

“We understand that there is some apprehension because it’s a new technology but we can’t let that stop us. Our purpose is to innovate,” Allen said.

However, the CEO stated that receiving input and feedback from teachers is essential as they will also interact with the platform.

“As we embark on this process of training AI we’re involving a lot of teachers; young and old teachers, especially those that are leaving the industry. We need their knowledge,” Allen said.

“You [teachers] have something to contribute to this because your knowledge will help us to train that AI so it is optimised for those who are going to use it,” he added.

The CEO did concede that there are some ethical considerations.

“Frankly, there are a lot of risks. So, safeguards have to be put in place to ensure that it is not being abused. What we see AI as is a co-pilot to students and teachers, there to assist not takeover,” he noted.

In response to concerns that AI will make students lazy, Dr Anderson noted that the technology already exists and it is best to train our youth on how to adequately use it.

“The professional services will change and we don’t want our students to be left behind. We want to ensure that we enrich this environment so that they are on levelled playing field with the rest of the world,” he added.