AI will completely transform offline universities, says Sanjeev Sanyal

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Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM), on Tuesday said artificial intelligence (AI) will completely transform how offline universities operate.

 

Speaking on the theme "The Potential and Peril of AI in Education" at the ASU+GSV & Emeritus Summit here, Sanyal said the current higher education system is outdated and that expensive college education may become obsolete, as the same lecture can be taught anywhere at no incremental cost. He added that university education, in its current form, is a 20th-century creation.

 

"The way we give out education in the lecture format, which is still the dominant format of education, especially for the higher end of high school and certainly for most universities, is outdated. I personally cannot see how we do not have to completely restructure this," he said.

 

Sanyal stated that universities need to focus on creating new knowledge through research and development (R&D). "Universities will increasingly focus on finding new frontiers of knowledge. Interestingly, their competitors will not be other universities but private or government R&D labs and other spheres that enable new knowledge creation," he said. He also suggested that universities could evolve into innovation or startup hubs.

 

Acknowledging that some disciplines may be exceptions, he said, "We cannot teach surgery in this particular (AI) format, and there must be other subjects as well. But for a very large part of the education system, you can now essentially automate." He elaborated that AI can facilitate personalised learning based on an individual's level of understanding and pace.

 

Discussing the perils of AI, he cautioned that in subjects like humanities, there is potential for monoculture, leading to the perpetuation of ideological or preconceived notions.

 

He also emphasised that AI technology may struggle to create new areas of knowledge that require non-standardised ways of thinking. "The way AI exists today, it is essentially mining information in various ways. So, if I came up with a completely radical new way of thinking about something, AI would definitely mark me down," he explained.