Instead of virtual classrooms with human teachers, the latest course at London’s David Game College brings a virtual teacher to a real classroom. The private school is running the first AI-taught class in the UK as part of its new Sabrewing program. The initial class will see 20 GCSE students participating in the educational experiment, which will rely on AI platforms and virtual reality headsets to guide their learning instead of human educators.
The AI system is designed to personalize education via AI. The Sabrewing AI model (named for the Sabrewing hummingbird to emphasize speed and flexibility) assesses each student’s strengths and weaknesses and adapts the lesson plans to match them. The idea is to spend more time on areas the student needs the most help with while their strengths are added to the study list later on. This will supposedly make each student better across the board.
The David Game College students, whose families pay about £27,000 annually to attend, won’t be entirely deprived of human educators during the Sabrewing class. There are three so-called “learning coaches” to monitor behavior and support the lesson plans. They also supplement the AI as teachers in subjects where the technology isn’t up to the task, including art classes and sex education.
“The Sabrewing programme is fascinating,” Independent Schools Association Chief Executive Rudolf Eliott Lockhart said in a statement. “Using AI to drive an adaptive learning approach has the potential to be a real game-changer and at David Game College they are looking to underpin this innovative approach with serious educational expertise.”
Educational AI
David Game isn’t the first school to look to generative AI as a boon for higher education. Arizona State University (ASU) has made ChatGPT a faculty member in many ways. ASU and OpenAI worked together to make a version of the AI chatbot that can help students in hundreds of ways. Currently, ChatGPT is aiding in the composition of academic papers, simulating patients for healthcare students, and helping design and recruit participants for research studies.
The school is enthusiastic about how the AI will serve the needs of each student instead of a one-size-fits-all classroom. The administration believes it will eventually prove out in tests and other metrics. Of course, relying on AI to teach raises questions about whether it will work as promised or what might be missing from school in terms of social and emotional development without teachers who can serve as role models and mentors. Regardless, it’s easy to believe that if the AI class experiment succeeds, it will be replicated as quickly as possible elsewhere.
