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Research messages is a summary of research produced by NCVER each year. This year’s compilation includes a range of research activities undertaken during 2023, comprising of research reports, summaries, occasional papers, presentations, webinars, consultancies, submissions, the 32nd ‘No Frills’ national research conference, and various additions to VOCEDplus knowledge resources.
The rapid advancement of generative AI (gen AI) has regulators around the world racing to understand, control, and guarantee the safety of the technology—all while preserving its potential benefits. Across industries, gen AI adoption has presented a new challenge for risk and compliance functions: how to balance use of this new technology amid an evolving—and uneven—regulatory framework.
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As governments and regulators try to define what such a control environment should look like, the developing approaches are fragmented and often misaligned, making it difficult for organizations to navigate and causing substantial uncertainty.
In this article, we explain the risks of AI and gen AI and why the technology has drawn regulatory scrutiny. We also offer a strategic road map to help risk functions navigate the uneven and changing rule-making landscape—which is focused not only on gen AI but all artificial intelligence.
ChatGPT took the world by surprise last year, almost as if we had discovered another form of life. Since then, artificial intelligence (AI) has been evolving unchecked, to the point where some are even talking about a “technological Wild West”.
The opportunities presented by artificial intelligence are as daunting as its dangers.
But how should artificial intelligence be regulated? Who should do it? How can we ensure that the companies and individuals who develop and use AI respect ethical principles? Should we legislate now for a technology that we still understand so little about? Is it even possible to do? Does Bill C-27, tabled by the federal government, address these crucial issues? And what role should Quebec and the other provinces play?
These are just some of the questions posed by the series “How to legislate on artificial intelligence”, which presents five texts exploring these and other issues, taking stock of the current situation and suggesting avenues for consideration by governments, industry and the public debate in general.
The authors are seasoned experts, many of whom sit on global committees on AI, including ethicists Jocelyn Maclure and Alexis Morin-Martel, professors Céline Castets-Renard and Anne-Sophie Hulin, University of Ottawa vice-dean Jennifer Quaid, and constitutionalist and former minister Benoît Pelletier.
The advent of AI presents opportunities for progress in critical areas, along with unique challenges, for countries in the Global South.
With rapid progress in natural language processing and image generation, AI now affects creative occupations, which were previously considered safe from automation. Cecily Josten and Grace Lordan write that job displacement concerns are legitimate and new approaches to education and workforce development are needed. They say that addressing biases in AI and fostering reskilling are also necessary for inclusive adaptation to AI advancements.
hatGPT, which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, is a text-generating AI chatbot developed by OpenAI and launched on November 30, 2022. This briefing examines the influence of ChatGPT usage on organizations and workers.
Which roles are most impacted by using ChatGPT and which are the least impacted? For which skill does generative AI have the largest organizational implications? Are there concerns about ChatGPT’s safety and security and, if so, how should they be addressed?
Read the issue briefing to get our full analysis.
Integrating AI into higher education is not a futuristic vision but an inevitability. Colleges and universities must adapt and prepare students, faculty, and staff for their AI-infused futures.
The global talent gap is long-lamented and continues to grow — in the U.S. alone, there are currently 9.6 million job openings compared to 6.5 million unemployed.
This has many calling for upskilling and re-skilling of existing workforces. However, while many business leaders recognize that need, they are hampered by a lack of time, resources and funds to develop materials on which to train their workers.
This is another area that — like so many others — where generative AI offers transformative promise, according to Cypher Learning. The learning management system provider released a study this week exploring leaders’ challenges with upskilling, their exploration of gen AI in building training materials and the promise the technology holds in repairing the schism between the number of workers and available jobs.
“Generative AI is already transforming employee training,” CYPHER Learning founder and CEO Graham Glass told VentureBeat. “In 2024, the focus will be on reimagining education with AI at its core.”
Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) has gained importance in the partnership between the United Kingdom and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in recent years. The Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization has identified TVET as one of the seven priority areas for educational development from 2015 to 2035 and emphasised TVET’s contribution to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4.
The establishment of the ASEAN TVET Council in 2020 and its work plan for 2021 to 2030 have underlined the importance of TVET in the region.
"The labour shortage in certain key sectors of the economy is of concern to political authorities. As evidence of this, in 2021 the Minister of Higher Education mandated the Conseil supérieur de l’éducation (hereinafter Council) to examine the potential of the recognition of acquired competencies (RAC) to contribute to the qualification and requalification of individuals, resulting in the brief Recognition of Acquired Competencies at the College Level : An Avenue to Be Optimized and Promoted." -- AQPC
Open AI stunned the world in November 2022 when it released ChatGPT, its web-based interface to the GPT-3.5 model. Suddenly, a generative AI model trained on massive amounts of internet content was accessible to many people and organizations across the globe. Since then, we've all experimented with use cases and entertained and frightened one another with stories about the results of creative queries, sinister or silly responses, and some powerful ways to use generative AI to be more productive and more innovative.
We know things to be different since that date. Generative AI is remarkably unlike all the technologies in the status quo. It is technology that invades the mind, so to speak. It brings some of the tacit knowledge in our collective mind and makes it available to all. Although artificial neural networks, the technology that has led to large language models and generative AI, are decades old, and although we have been using AI in chatbots and other products for years, ChatGPT brought this technology to the masses.Footnote1
Suddenly, anyone can have direct access to generative AI. It is tangible to and controllable by us all. We can now much more easily understand the many ways in which AI can and will change our lives, through transformations that will surpass the impact of other 21st-century innovations, from smartphones to social media to cloud computing.
But is AI good or bad, friend or foe? Most probably yes. The questions we should be asking are nonbinary: How do we make the best use of AI to benefit the higher education mission and its constituents? How do we transform higher education to adapt to an AI-infused future?
Discussions about AI often focus on the futuristic threat posed by superhuman intelligence. But AI is already woven into the fabric of our daily lives. The way we travel, the food we eat, how we spend our money, the news we read and our social interactions – the influence of AI is everywhere …
Enhancing EI-funded training programs would improve their uptake and help workers who earn little or are vulnerable to job loss and precarious work.
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Knowing How Technology and Artificial Intelligence Have — and Have Not — Affected Jobs in Recent Decades Offers Insight into How They Could Affect the Future of Work
The arrival of AI-powered chatbots has made many people think once again about the skills needed for the "digital future of work." Any efforts to improve digital skills are addressing a moving target, which implies that teaching the appropriate skills is not a trivial matter. What is certain, though, is that there is a very considerable digital skills gap between richer and poorer countries.
The demand for digital skills is very heterogeneous, ranging from basic digital literacy that enables individuals to effectively use simple digital tools to the advanced digital skills necessary to participate in the “global division of digital labour.”
The limited data available suggest that levels of digital literacy are relatively low in countries of the Global South. Low-income countries exhibit extremely low levels of digital literacy, while the gaps between middle-income and high-income countries are also very considerable.
The evidence on the use of digital technologies in schools suggests that most middle-income countries lag far behind high-income countries, particularly in schools with students with low socio-economic status. This may cause digital skills gaps to persist or even grow.
Digital skills training programmes are proliferating, without having proven their effectiveness in terms of enhancing digital skills.
Some evidence indicates that job referrals or training in the use of professional online platforms may be as important as digital training in improving employment prospects.
Proponents of AI say that tools like ChatGPT will bring significant benefits. It can assist teachers, personalize learning with AI-powered tutoring systems and automate administrative tasks, allowing educators to focus more on teaching and mentoring students. However, current educational challenges in access, equity and inclusion in education can be significantly magnified by digital exclusion, lack of connectivity and the digital readiness of countries. On top of these challenges, we have many education systems still attached to teaching methods based on memorization, lack of relevance and engagement as well as poor and short-sighted standardized assessments that can hamper the effective integration of AI for an inclusive and quality education.
When artificial intelligence went mainstream with the public release of ChatGPT in November 2022, it immediately sent ripples through the world of education. Concerns about equity in AI, data privacy, and how to teach ethical AI skills became heated topics at faculty meetings and in classrooms. Two things have become clear: This technology is already transforming education—and people have many questions.
Science Friday hosted a virtual conversation with experts in AI and education in October 2023 to understand the potential AI holds for education and some of the pitfalls to be confronted as it comes to schools across the country. While the path forward may be challenging and occasionally confusing, our guests suggest that by allowing students to lead and guiding them to use AI responsibly, education stands to benefit from innovative tools that will, no doubt, change our world. Here, we recap some of the ideas and insights that came out of that conversation.
AI promises efficiency gains, but they come at the cost of alienation, Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin writes. Generative artificial intelligence is all the rage—in both senses of the term. Many people in higher education are experimenting with new tools such as ChatGPT and DALL-E, and opinions tend toward the extremes: they are seen as either an unmitigated blessing or a curse. Yet there are some important implications of this new technology that have not been fully appreciated.
Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) teachers play a crucial role in equipping individuals with practical skills for the workforce, yet their significance is often overlooked and underappreciated. TVET focuses on providing youth and adults with relevant knowledge and skills for work and life. Thus, TVET teachers possess the most broad and complex mandate among all teaching levels.
Artificial Intelligence–AI–has been around a long time, but caught everyone’s attention with the launch of generative AI, ChatGPT, and DALL-E. These made using AI easy enough for …
In the evolving landscape of education, one topic has taken center stage: generative AI. As educators, we tend to be on a continuous quest for innovative edtech tools that will enhance the learning experience for students. The potential of generative AI is both promising and profound, but it raises critical questions: How can this transformative technology be harnessed not only to educate but to empower inclusively and equitably?
There have been 439 Palestinians from the university community killed and 11 higher education buildings completely or partially damaged since the start of the Israel-Palestine war on 7 October, according to the Palestinian government. Higher education has been severely disrupted.
The Palestinian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MHESR) posted a “Summary of violations against Palestinians in the higher education sector” to its Facebook page on Monday 6 November.
At the University of Manitoba, conversations about the impact of generative artificial intelligence (genAI) tools on current teaching, learning, and assessment practices are ongoing as this technology continues to evolve. An important concern is the potential for inappropriate genAI use to decrease the ability to accurately assess students’ knowledge, understanding, and skills in courses and programs of study.
This article will discuss three theories that play a significant role in how lessons are designed. It will include who is responsible for incorporating the insights offered by the theories and when each theory should be used.
Around one in three respondents to Nature’s global postdoc survey are using AI chatbots to help to refine text, generate or edit code, wrangle the literature in their field and more.
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