Minister of Education and Youth, Fayval Williams, said it’s unlikely that AI will replace teachers in the classroom, despite the notion that AI software is poised to automate a number of jobs globally.
“Artificial Intelligence isn’t likely to replace humans any time soon… and I believe so in the classroom as well. There will be a lot of help from technology. But I believe at the core of it, we still need teachers in our classrooms,” she said in April this year during the Teachers’ Colleges of Jamaica Bi-Annual Research Conference.
But founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates believes that generative AI models like ChatGPT will be able to serve as teachers and perform as well as any human in the near future. He predicts that AI chatbots like ChatGPT will soon be able to help children learn to read and write, and sees this as a more economical solution for many disadvantaged parents who cannot afford a human teacher.
President of the Jamaica Teacher’s Association (JTA), La Sonja Harrison said that at the moment, teachers are being sensitised to what AI offers and its capabilities.
“I’m sure that their own concerns may be coming to light as well as the opportunities in how they can use it to advance content delivery, teaching and learning,” she told the Freedom Come Rain newspaper.
She said the technology must not be embraced, to the extent that it replaces teachers in the classroom, since human capital is a country’s greatest asset.
“We must seek, fight in every sphere, avenue to ensure that Jamaican teachers remain in Jamaican classrooms, because by and large, those individuals are guided and are anchored in Judaeo-Christian principles and we need to ensure that said values and standards continue to be shared with our children and help to ground them, even as they walk in an ever changing world,” she admonished.
