Qiqi is a 10-year-old pupil in Jiang Su province who is reading in fourth grade in elementary school. Chatting with Doubao is one of her favorite extracurricular activities,which can cater her need for communicating and help her practice spoken English. Doubao is an AI tool developed by ByteDance company, providing functions such as chatbot, writing assistant, and English learning assistant. It can answer various questions and engage in conversations in different languages.

“This AI robot is like a teacher, a friend, a versatile Doraemon, and a caring older sister,” Qiqi’s mom Ms.Tang said.

As a primary school student, the main AI tools that Qiqi uses are Huashuyun, Xiaoyu AI and Doubao, which are apps that are used on mobile terminal, mainly for chatting, generating pictures and polishing compositions.

 

 

Ms Tang said that she was supportive of Qiqi’s use of AI in general, however there are still some worries about it. For example, the robots sometimes take up the time Qiqi spends on playing with children of her age in real life. Many children who love AI tools would spend a lot of extracurricular time on chatting with AI robot, which may replace real-life contact with their friends and families. Secondly, using AI to correct and help with homework will reduce some of the processes children training themselves.

 

However, she thinks that mainly related to the child’s own self-control and willingness to learn. Qiqi is an excellent and self-discipline student, so in the process of using it to generate articles, she will find that the AI tools is not as good as her own writing, and will use it with a critical attitude.

Overall, AI can help Qiqi broaden her horizon and learn a lot of knowledge that is not in the textbooks.Besides, AI  can help answer questions that parents sometimes  don’t know about, which also convenient parents nurturing.

Students of different age groups have different needs for specific functions of AI tools, and for students in higher education at Hong Kong’s universities, they are mainly for academic use. The most active and positive user of AI is Ren, a PhD student major in remote sensing in The University of Hong Kong. He mainly uses ChatGPT, an interactive AI, for translation. Because he does research in English environment, he will let ChatGPT help him to do some translations or use it to build frameworks when writing reports.

“I sometimes also uses it to write codes for me, but I would rarely ask Chat GPT professional questions, because it may affect my own learning process, and ChatGPT often has bugs – it didn’t use the latest data base.”

But in general, Ren still thinks that the benefits of ChatGPT far outweigh the disadvantages. “It saves you from the repetitive works and allows you to focus on innovative ideas and critical thinking. It’s like getting yourself a secretary.”

For those drawbacks, he feels they can be overcome through self-control.

Professor Lei Yuxi, Postdoctoral researcher from University of Oxford, UK, and teaching at Metaverse and New Media Colloge, Yango University Fujian Province, said the biggest drawback for students using AI is that they may not fully understand the answers it creates. At his college, for example, students are used to borrowing AI when writing their essays, but they are not able to understand the answer of experimental approach provided by AI, so the essays appear to be illogical.

 

Overall, the access, understanding and use of AI tools by students from Hong Kong’s universities are quite extensive, which means the penetration of AI tools in their lives is very high.

When asked about their views on possible divides caused by AI, both Ren and Zhang said that they have used the AI tools more often when coming to Hong Kong. And students in mainland do know less about it and seldom use it because of ChatGPT’s regional firewall restrictions.

“Basically most of my undergraduate classmates have never used it, or to say more than half of them, at least not for a long time as an aid to scientific research” said Zhang.

When it comes to AI’s access in some remote areas, they almost unanimously think that AI access is the same as the computer, as long as they have internet. It’s more about their own demands. There will not be such intelligence divide caused by economic inequality.

On this issue, Stella, who is studying in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong, has a different opinion.”I’m concerned about some of the inequalities that may be created due to AI use. Firstly, some schools don’t allow students to use electronic devices in school, and even if a teacher wants to introduce students to AI, they may be hindered by school policy. Secondly, you have to make sure that students have accesses to these devices, and because of regional disparities, students in Beijing and Shanghai may be exposed to AI tools at a very young age, and that may be a sign of inequality for students in other regions, and that requires that there may need to be some changes in policy to make it as accessible as possible for students in every location, but that in itself is also  difficult as it relates to the political and economic development level.”

 

Based on Stella’s experience as an intern in Hong Kong, she said teacher’s altitude towards AI tools will affect students. “I think teachers also need to think about how to design assignments that can be completed by students independently and creatively, not simply assignments that can be generated immediately by AI. Because it can quite simple to form a sense of dependence.”

And she noticed that the difference between Hong Kong and mainland is that in Hong Kong teacher will not avoid mentioning it and prohibit students from using it. While in mainland it has less understanding and permission of AI.

 

“I think if it is included in basic education, the government is certainly to hope that technology can cross the digital divide, and bring equality. Whether it will exacerbate the inequality still need to look at the institutional design and arrangements. If it is like the compulsory curriculum, I think it is rather bridging the inequality,”said Professor Zhang Hong, College of Media and International Culture, Zhejiang University,“I think technology itself is not about class. It has to rely on institutional arrangements, and changes in people’s perception of AI to achieve equality.”

Professor Zhang mentions that schools and families play an important role in this process, whether the basic education of schools includes the cultivation of AI ability, whether the teaching concept pays enough attention to the development of technology, and how families balance the education of digital technology and the cultivation of abilities other than digital technology will all have a non-negligible impact on the young generation.

Professor Lei also noted this situation. In his observation, mainland China has a strict public policy on the use of AI, under which teachers need to teach strictly according to the established teaching proposal, and it is difficult to introduce the latest knowledge. Secondly, the attitude of teachers directly affects the attitude of students towards the use of AI. Some old professors are unable to master AI, not to say applying it in the classroom, which also leads to students not having access to AI in the long learning process.

Professor Lei believes that the development of AI technology, as the fourth industrial revolution, has changed people’s mode of production and life, and is a great example of technology changing life. Professor Lei holds a conservative view towards its effect to education. He believes that it is   positive that AI technology can be applied to education and teaching, but because the policy can only play an encouraging role, the radiation range is small. Only some of the students in tier one   universities (Project 985 and project 211 )can have access to the corresponding technical resources, it will inevitably bring about some of the problem of educational inequality.

However, Professor Lei is optimistic about the possible dependence of young generation.

“Technology guides humans, and technology will guide parents. It’s a current trend, which is certainly good. If you don’t learn AI now, you will fall behind in your peer group, and in the future, the whole academic programme will force society to progress,” said Professor Lei, “I don’t think it’s the so-called sense of dependency because of the sense of existence, it’s a role of the times. It’s like throwing you on a desert island now and not allowing you to use your mobile phone, you won’t be able to leave out with it because you are dependent on your phone. AI, As a innovative thing, I think it is a trend, if you not using it or relying it, you will fall behind. This is the whole future ’s trending.”

In Professor Lei’s view, while the emergence of AI is not a good thing for academic creativity, it is an inevitable consequence of technological development. The impact is always in progress, in the short term the development of AI has brought a change in students’ opinion , requiring students to have a rich knowledge base, intellectual literacy in different disciplines, and the ability to use AI; in the long term, AI will turn out to be a necessity for the human society and will continue to develop on the path of specialization, which requires the youth to take a use of AI technology to focus on a certain area, and because of this, society and schools will be more supportive of the cultivation of professional and technical talents.