Building a nation of Smart People

Representational image. Photo: Collected

In 1948, Orwell's 1984 was published, painting a stark dystopian future of a totalitarian regime thought-controlling its people. Forty years on, in 1984, Terminator was released, portraying the extinction of humanity as it battled against synthetic intelligence.

Forty years on, in 2024, Haileybury Bhaluka is one of the first schools in the world to advertise for a teacher of artificial intelligence, as it turns the darkness of dystopian fiction into a bright educational reality.

Building smart people

The Smart Vision for Bangladesh has both scope and strategy, as it uses technology and innovation to meet the country's present challenges for a sustainable future. Putting an emphasis on smart people requires inclusive and innovative approaches with human well-being at its core. Three transformations are set to dominate: digital, infrastructural, and educational.

Digital transformation implies digitisation across key sectors: government services, education, healthcare, and agriculture. In practical terms, it means widening internet access, promoting e-governance, and encouraging the use of digital tools and platforms. Infrastructural development involves investment in key areas:  transport networks, energy systems and telecommunication. This will spur growth and connectivity across the country. Education change and skills development need systems reform to build digital age skills at key stages.

STEAM education and vocational training are already there as intended planks of policy, but there is one missing element that holds the key to developing smart people: notably, artificial intelligence. Discourse on AI tends to focus on the answers that it gives us—in nanoseconds—instead of the questions that it raises. AI takes this in stride. Ask it to look in the mirror on ChatGPT, and it will give you a reasoned evaluation in a flash.

Framing the future with AI

For Bangladesh, AI poses threats to employment as machine learning spreads across traditional industries. It poses ethical questions of bias in recruitment, training and business funding. It presents data-safety issues for access and misuse of personal information, while at the corporate level, it makes cybersecurity a greater challenge. With garbage in, you get garbage out, as corrupt input results in gross errors. Deep fake content has the scope to derail democracy, undermine civil society and harm people.

Without regulation and governance, on an international scale, such threats present frightening realities: humans are losing control to machines and a world worried about climate change should be as concerned about the exponential increase in energy consumption that AI now needs. AI is a greater force for good. For Bangladesh, healthcare could be transformed through improved diagnostics and treatment and education offers profound potentialities. With ethical principles and robust regulation, best practices can reduce risks and build benefits.

AI in education in Bangladesh

Haileybury Bhaluka, the first outstanding school in Bangladesh, has built a progressive, future-focused school that prepares students for the futures they may face by developing key skills of critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration. Its future-facing curriculum includes the teaching of artificial intelligence. No other school in the region has done this.

AI offers education the promise of personalised learning for students by analysing learner progress and pinpointing next steps with clinical accuracy. AI offers intelligent tutoring, giving learners in-class support in real time, which is particularly good for students with adaptive needs. AI can assess a greater quantity of assignments and tests at lightning speed. AI is being piloted in China to track student behaviour and look for patterns of engagement, altering the teacher as necessary.

AI helps teachers create teaching resources to a high standard. In specific subjects, such as languages, AI translation tools help create teacher resources and support language learning, helping students with pronunciation and grammar and conducting conversations in the target language. AI supports data analysis, scheduling, and timetabling and generates performance data. Schools are now using i-STEAM virtual labs and simulations in science and engineering. For the creative arts, AI offers rich immersive experiences through virtual and augmented realities. There is so much more: chatbots to answer student queries and to keep in touch with parents and carers.

In recognising the transformative power of AI in the hands of a skilled teacher, Haileybury Bhaluka is now recruiting AI specialists. In its international search for the right educators, Haileybury states that the teacher must be able to teach students about AI and its various applications, must have expertise in AI technologies, programming languages, and data analysis, and must be able to equip them with knowledge and skills to understand, create, and apply AI systems.

With its visionary approach to education, it is forming partnerships with MIT and Harvard in related areas. Planning is well underway to bring MIT educators to its Bhaluka campus for two days of design-based activities and it has recently promoted its collaboration with Harvard on its secondary student summer school. In addition, all teachers will be Havard certified. Haileybury seems to be taking Einstein literally by bending time and making the future happen now.

Simon O'Grady is the Founding Headmaster of Haileybury Bhaluka. An alumnus of the London School of Economics, he is an experienced principal, having led four outstanding schools on different continents. He is changing the landscape of education in Bangladesh.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.