The pervasiveness of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in every sphere of our lives has continued to generate mixed reactions from all over the globe. While some feel it’s going to take their job, several people believe it will harm educational outcomes and critical thinking in humans — adults and children. As if these are not enough, some think it could lead to human extinction because of its capabilities and the possibility of being misused by humans or the machine itself outgrowing human intelligence.

Some have embraced the good it offers and use it for work and even educational purposes. At the same time, some believe the continuous hype may result in another AI winter — a period of reduced funding and interest in Artificial Intelligence research and funding. While we wait to see if this becomes the case, I believe we should continue embracing the technology, using it ethically and responsibly.

While there are risks associated with AI, many professionals and organisations have continued to use it cautiously while mitigating the risks and data safety concerns. In fact, professionals across all fields of endeavour have found AI to be very helpful as it saves them time, helps them generate new ideas, automates repetitive tasks, conducts assessments, and is used for teaching, coaching, or mentoring individuals on topics or job competencies of interest. While some people can work around AI deficiencies, some believe AI-driven systems creators must do more work to perfect the system before they can accept it as a technology worthy of 100% trust.

One of the beauties of the coming of AI is that it has evidently pushed us to rethink how we do things. For instance, how we teach and test students in our schools and assess job seekers for employment. It is no longer news that Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude are challenging traditional assessment methods, such as essays, exams that are based on knowledge recall, for children in schools, and many of the design tasks we use for assessing candidates for employment, as Large Language Models (LLM) can easily solve them and produce high-quality answers if prompted correctly. This has raised concerns about what we teach in our schools, academic integrity, and highlighted the need for new methods to assess deeper learning, critical thinking, and job competencies.

As processes and systems are being adapted to suit the ubiquity of Artificial Intelligence, experts in the field of emerging technology have advised that humans should use Intelligence Augmentation instead of expecting AI to be their sole problem solver. Intelligence Augmentation (IA) is a synergy of human and machine intelligence — a partnership between human and Artificial Intelligence (AI) where AI and humans collaborate for better output or result. IA implies that AI accurately produces an output at a fast speed and scale that humans cannot do, and humans use their judgement based on their knowledge, experience, and other variables an AI-driven system cannot consider to arrive at a result.

While IA, when used for work, has produced better results than reliance on just AI without human partnership, the method has also proven to have a similar effect in the teaching and learning space. For the best gain in using Artificial Intelligent – tutors, coaches, mentors, simulators, and tools, just to mention a few, Intelligence Augmentation is also paramount. Whether Artificial intelligence is being used to provide personalised and adaptive learning or to supplement the instruction provided by a teacher, IA is also needed by both teachers and students for greater academic outcomes.

Can we deploy AI for education in a resource-constrained environment like Nigeria? Of course, yes. My position is based on my experience of helping institutions across the world integrate technology into their instructional space through planning, enacting policies, making adequate provision for the required resources, training every stakeholder involved, offering unbridled support to teachers, scaling in stages, and continuously monitoring and evaluation of the process. Truth be told, infrastructure and teacher capacity development would be a challenge, but the potential of Educational Technologies, like AI-driven learning technologies, in bridging educational gaps, improving access for underserved communities, and preparing students for a tech-driven future makes it worth the effort. It’s a journey worth taking to level the playing field for our youth and their peers worldwide.