zeeshan khan
Globally, Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing academia by offering more efficient, individualized, and easily available learning. Unesco is dedicated to helping member nations use AI to fulfill the goals of the 2030 Plan while maintaining fairness, ethics, and integration.
AI is a revolutionary promise and a possible risk for Pakistan, a nation that is constantly beset by an education shortfall. Success depends on Pakistan’s ability to harness AI’s potential for equitable schooling while addressing its threats of growing inequality and loss of culture.
Global Education Gaps and AI
AI has proven that it can close educational disparities on a global scale. Platforms such as Rodent AI Learning, which was awarded the Unesco AI Technology Award in the year 2020, use adaptive education to offer customized instruction in China, allowing kids from rural areas to achieve on par with their urban counterparts. In Kenya, which is M-Shule and other Unesco-backed programs provide SMS-based courses catered to each learner’s level of proficiency, targeting places with poor internet access. These illustrations demonstrate how context-aware or local AI might lessen disparities in education.
Bringing AI to Pakistan’s Education
Despite localized cases already demonstrating promise, Pakistan has huge possibilities for utilizing AI in teaching. AI is used by platforms such as Information Platform, which won Unesco’s Wenhui Awards for its unique approach to knowledge wellness, to give students individualized instruction and interesting educational materials. By teaching students in isolated places with limited access to trained instructors, such as the Tharparkar or South Waziristan, in Sindhi or Pashto, these technologies can help reduce inequities.
Artificial intelligence (AI) can help with STEM (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematical concepts) instruction in areas like Gilgit-Baltistan, where institutions frequently lack essential teaching tools. In the recently combined regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan, AI-powered platforms might also act as virtual teachers for ladies, removing challenges like social customs, irregular energy, and a lack of computer proficiency. Pakistan may support UNESCO’s goal of promoting equitable schooling in underserved areas and boost its digital skills efforts by using AI.
Challenges of AI Adoption
Yet, there are serious moral, social, and infrastructure issues with Pakistan’s quick adoption of AI. With only 36% of Pakistanis getting access to the internet, the nation’s stark digital gap poses a danger to widening inequality. There are glaring differences: whereas metropolitan areas like Karachi and Lahore are investigating AI-driven learning resources, Balochistan’s internet access rate is still less than 20%. To stop AI from increasing the educational divide among rural and urban populations, the internet must be expanded fairly.
AI for Pakistani Linguistic Diversity
With over 70 distinct languages said, most of which are currently in danger, Pakistan faces a serious risk of losing its cultural diversity if AI is adopted there. Without conservation efforts, languages like Domaaki, which are utilized by just over 500 people, might become obsolete in a matter of years. AI might assist by digitizing, documenting, and producing suitable educational material in these languages that reflects regional traditions and cultural heritage through the use of machine-learning algorithms. But things might get better if language conservation isn’t given conscious attention.
The importance of conserving such Languages is highlighted by Unesco’s “Atlantis of languages worldwide in Danger,” as disappearing would result in the demise of priceless oral traditions, tales, and local wisdom that are connected to the identity of a community. AI systems that exclusively concentrate on English or Urdu run the danger of hurrying the extinction of minority languages in areas like Gilgit-Baltistan, where native languages are not taught in curriculum.
Consideration must be given to the moral problems surrounding the use of AI in Pakistani education. Algorithmic flaws in AI systems have drawn attention from all across the world. For example, in the US, computerized assessment has penalized minority students. The “The suggestion on the Ethics of Intelligent Systems” from Unesco places a strong focus on integrating AI with equality, justice, and rights for humans. Failure to take a comprehensive, morally-driven strategy might keep Pakistanis from achieving AI’s maximum potential as it strives to develop AI-driven services.
Addressing Ethical and Data Challenges
To solve these challenges with information ownership and usage, Pakistan’s data protection regulations have to be improved. Should the requirements of the local community or company goals take precedence over those of AI systems developed by international businesses? Pakistan’s gender inequality must be taken into consideration while designing ethical AI. Although AI has the potential to educate females in remote locations, foolish programs run the risk of fostering inequality in society. Pakistan has to heed Unesco’s “AI and Sexual orientation Equity” study, which emphasizes the risks of establishing views into systems.
Pakistan must understand the significance of adopting AI to provide fair chances for high-quality education as the globe observes the International Year of Education today, which highlights the power of transformation of knowledge and the importance of inclusion and creativity. AI has huge potential to overcome the nation’s gaps in education, but it also needs meticulous preparation and ethical issues.
By increasing broadband access in remote regions including the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the province of Gilgit southern Punjab, rural the province of Sindh and Balochistan, Pak may prioritize digital inclusion. While legislators can encourage the creation of AI tools for languages at risk, they can also draw guidance to algorithms such as Kenya’s M-Shule, that employs artificial intelligence and text messages to deliver socially pertinent information in native languages. Cooperation between the public and private sectors, and international groups might pool assets.
Pakistan’s Ethical AI Strategy
It is crucial that the country’s national AI strategy, which is currently in its final phases of development, requires ethical issues into account and guarantees that the use of AI for learning is carried out in a way that respects diverse cultures, fosters capital, utilizes account local circumstances, and improves the educational process for all students.
