The Quebec government will set up a “national consultation body” to address issues related to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education, in a context where new tools are raising concerns.
This new body will be made up of representatives from educational establishments, student associations, unions and AI experts.
Three objectives will guide its work, including that of “developing a common vision and defining basic guiding principles with regard to the responsible, ethical, sustainable and secure use of AI in higher education”.
According to the Minister of Higher Education, Pascale Déry, since new technologies related to artificial and generative intelligence “are here to stay” and “evolve very quickly”, the government must ensure that it stays up to date with the latest trends.
“This is why the creation of a national consultation body on artificial intelligence seems essential to us today, in particular to better identify the educational and ethical issues linked to the use of artificial intelligence and to guide us in choosing the directions to take in the face of this new reality,” she explained in a press release.
Generating essays, lesson plans, code
While AI is not a new technology, new tools that have emerged relatively recently have raised concerns in the education community.
As the Higher Council for Education and the Commission for Ethics in Science and Technology pointed out in a report published this spring, new generative AI tools, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini, can be used in an academic context.
They can, among other things, “produce short essays, take exams, develop lesson plans, correct papers, answer questions, generate computer code, summarize texts, create new images or synthesize music.”
These capabilities raise concerns among experts, who report, among other things, the dangers of misinformation, discriminatory bias, data opacity, risks to accessibility to psychosocial services and concerns about privacy.
The creation of a body that could, among other things, “formulate guidelines regarding the use of generative AI” was also a recommendation contained in the report.
The new body created by the Quebec government will also have to “help establish strategic priorities as well as AI orientations”, “facilitate exchanges between the ministry and its network”, and “contribute, through its expertise, to the development and implementation of certain initiatives related to AI and targeted by the ministry”.
FECQ satisfied
In response to the government’s announcement, the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (FECQ) said it was pleased to see that Minister Déry was following up on the report, which was the result of extensive consultations.
The federation believes that it is time for the higher education network to adopt a common vision regarding the issues related to AI, since the perception of these tools currently differs from one establishment to another.
“It is inconsistent that at one CEGEP, we are taught the ethical use of ChatGPT, while in another, this tool is referred to as ‘the one whose name must not be spoken’,” said FECQ president Antoine Dervieux.
The federation has already presented the demands that it intends to put forward before this new body, in particular that establishments do not systematically prohibit the use of AI modules by students.
She also wants to reduce inequalities between the policies of different institutions, for students to be trained to ensure ethical and honest use of AI and for us to ensure that AI tools do not become a vector of disinformation.