12 Times Higher Education8 February 2018
reforms as potentially disadvanta-
geous to poorer students.
Annliese Nef, a spokeswoman
for the National Union of Higher
Education (SNESUP) and a histor-
ian at the Panthéon-Sorbonne Uni-
versity – Paris 1, argued that the
reforms were designed to make
French higher education more selec-
tive and, thus, to avoid the need to
provide more funding to cope with
a demographic bulge in student
numbers.
Another union concern is that
the changes will disadvantage poor
students because, as not every bac-
calaureate option will be available
in every high school, some students
could be shut out of certain degree
courses. “It’s social selection in real-
ity,” she said.
One advantage of the current
national, broad-based baccalaureate
system is that it gives, theoretically
at least, every student the chance to
study “whatever you want” at uni-
versity, Dr Nef said. However, if
students must specialise at an early
age, this could disadvantage less
privileged young people.
“At 14, 15, you don’t know –
your family won’t know – how it
works,” and this lack of awareness
could mean that some miss out on
the opportunity to pursue certain
degrees, she said.
At the core of the argument is
whether France’s school-to-univer-
sity transition is up to scratch. The
government argues that poor spe-
cialisation at high school and the
inability to select students leads to
a higher education dropout rate of
about 60 per cent.
But Dr Nef argued that the sys-
tem was not “that bad”. Data from
the Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and Development –
Artificial intelligence
Philosopher:
more thinking
required on role of
AI in education
Developments in artificial intelli-
gence are now “a runaway train”
and urgently require the attention of
philosophers and other humanists,
a professor has argued.
Mark Kingwell, professor of phil-
osophy at the University of Toronto,
spoke on “Humans and Artificial
Intelligence – What Happens Next?”
at an alumni event in London.some sweatshop.”
Although he was “persuaded by
the balance-of-outcomes argument
about driverless cars”, Professor
Kingwell said that other recent
trends in AI were “a bit like a run-
away train”, which, “on balance, I
feel negative about”. He was par-
ticularly concerned about applica-
tions in medical diagnostics, where
“the algorithms are in effect used
for triage and control of access to
complex and expensive surgery. It
seems to me very tricky to allow
that to happen without reflection.”
Here, philosophers and other
humanists, Professor Kingwell went
on, could draw on a long tradition
of asking ethical and political ques-
tions about changing technologies,
“nuclear weapons, drugs, even
handguns. Many, if not most, hos-
pitals now have bioethics commit-
tees. [However unstoppable present
trends seem] you can still have a
conversation and push back.” Such
humanistic thinking could also con-
tribute to the regulatory framework
governing “the necessary limitations
on certain kinds of programmes and
their applications, just as we would
ask similar questions about a new
pharmaceutical.”
Yet Professor Kingwell, who is
writing an academic handbook
about the ethics of AI, often found
himself frustrated by funding prior-
ities within universities.
“The technical AI project at UT
has been given millions of dollars,”
he explained. “We asked for thou-
sands of dollars for our ethics pro-
ject, and we were given nothing. It’s
familiar: the humanities are per-
ceived to be both costless and use-
less, but we’ve got something to
contribute, too; and we might need
some money, because we want
smart people to come and talk to
us.”
[email protected]albeit from 2011 – show that the
completion rate for French students
is actually 80 per cent, one of the
best in Europe and only 2 percent-
age points behind the highly spe-
cialised and selective system of the
UK.
The six in 10 students who “drop
out” according to the statistics nor-
mally continue with another subject
and go on to graduate, Dr Nef
pointed out. “You can’t know what
you want to do at such a young age,
so it’s better to have a right to
choose English for a semester and
find your way [academically], than
[to have to] choose one thing and
then drop out [because there is no
flexibility to change course],” she
said.
Last November, the government
announced plans to give universities
more power to select students and
require that they attend preparatory
courses before starting a course.
[email protected]“A ‘singularity’ is demonstrably
coming when our attempts to
enhance our own intelligence are
outstripped by artificial entities,”
he told the audience. “Yet there are
no such things as neutral technolo-
gies. We have to ask what interests
they serve.”
Speaking toTimes Higher Edu-
cationafter his talk, Professor King-
well spelled out the implications for
universities.
Developments in AI such as “the
consumer-tailored version of an
algorithm that helps you find your
learning style” and the delivery of
courses through “personal connec-
tions to modules on computers”
were already threatening to “put a
lot of lecturers out of work, because
you wouldn’t need them to be rep-
licating the same material to phys-
ical audiences...The endgame
would be a scenario where you
don’t have to speak to a human at
all: you just order your modules
online and get your results. Global
programmes could be created in