UNESCO published its first guidance on the use of Generative AI (GenAI) for education on Thursday, urging governmental agencies to regulate the use of the technology, including protecting data privacy and putting an age limit on users.
The GenAI chatbot ChatGPT, which Microsoft-backed OpenAI launched in November, has become the fastest-growing app in the world to date. Its emergence has prompted the release of rivals like Google’s Bard.
Students have also taken a liking to GenAI, which can generate anything from essays to mathematical calculations with just a few lines of prompts.
“We are struggling to align the speed of transformation of the education system with the speed of technological progress and advancement in these machine learning models,” Stefania Giannini, assistant director-general for education, told reporters.
“In many cases, governments and schools are embracing a radically unfamiliar technology that even leading technologists do not claim to understand,” she said.
Among a series of guidelines in a 64-page report, UNESCO stressed the need for government-sanctioned AI curricula for school education and technical and vocational education and training.
“GenAI providers should be held responsible for ensuring adherence to core values and lawful purposes, respecting intellectual property, and upholding ethical practices, while also preventing the spread of disinformation and hate speech,” UNESCO said.
It also called for the prevention of GenAI, where it would deprive learners of opportunities to develop cognitive abilities and social skills through observations of the real world, empirical practices such as experiments, discussions with other humans, and independent logical reasoning.
While China has formulated rules on GenAI, the European Union’s AI Act is likely to be approved later this year. Other countries are far behind in drafting their own AI laws.
The Paris-based agency also sought to protect the rights of teachers and researchers and the value of their practices when using GenAI.
