In the era of AI, when ChatGPT has replaced search engines in phrases such as “I will chatgpt it” instead of “I will google it”, there lies a question which all educators must answer “Are educators equipped to train the students to use AI critically and ethically?” This question has to be deeply pondered upon now more than ever as a survey by the Digital Education Council shows that 86 per cent students in Indian universities use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their studies, with 54 per cent using it weekly and 24 per cent using it daily.
With Global Media and Information Literacy (MIL) week being commemorated by the United Nations (UN) from October 24th to 31st, the theme this year is “Minds over AI: Media Information Literacy in Digital Spaces”. And it is important for educators to take a moment to sigh but accept that students and youth using artificial intelligence is not a distant reality but a truth and that they have to be trained with the necessary tools that one has to be equipped with. In AI Adoption survey by FICCI-EY-P, it was found that around 57 per cent Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in India already have an AI Policy but the same survey also reiterates the need for adopting AI responsibly, inclusively and strategically that would also align with India’s National AI Mission and SDGs.
In order to achieve this, one must be able to apply the five laws of MIL published by UNESCO in 2016. These laws were inspired by the laws of Library Sciences proposed by Dr. S.R. Ranganathan in 1931. The first law of MIL states that information of any kind is important and should be treated equal with the same stature which also transcends to say that the information generated by AI also be recognised as valuable and in other words with an open mind. According to a survey conducted by MBAUniverse.com among 235 faculty members of many business schools in India, only 51 per cent were confident enough of a favourable impact on AI adoption in business schools.
The second law says that media and information literacy should be made available to all human beings equally and when we are applying the same logic to AI literacy, as educators one must make AI Literacy available to all students and not a specific group of students (like the survey by FICCI-EY-P also focuses on how integration on advanced AI content to STEM students were provided but only foundational AI literacy were made available for Non STEM students which can make them lack a deeper and critical understanding of the technology).
The third law mentions that any information is not devoid of biases, or is not value neutral and therefore MIL should make sure that this truth is transparent and understandable to all citizens.
Information derived from AI also has many biases to its kitty such as confirmation, algorithmic and even sample bias. But the Ipsos AI Monitor 2024 report cites that around 63 per cent of urban Indians agree that AI will not engage in discriminatory or biased behaviour and only 21 per cent disagree with this concern. In another study by Reuters Institute this year, around 50 per cent said that the reason for trusting AI-generated answers were due to speed, convenience, and how AI aggregates vast amounts of information.
The fourth law in MIL promotes universal rights to all human beings while AI has had issues where surveillance, deep fakes (misinformation), and data privacy have been concerns according to the FICCI-EY-P report and many other studies. This law of MIL and digital verification skills could be embedded in the curriculum to ensure that students can be responsible AI users and that universal human rights are protected.
The last law states that media and information literacy is not acquired all at once and is a process of dynamic and lived experience and that it completes only when knowledge, skills and attitudes are included and when it covers access, evaluation/assessment, use, production and communication of information, media and technology content. This again can be applied to the rapid evolution of generative AI tools such as (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, etc). Educators must be able to have a curriculum module that is not static in nature but dynamic and HEIs must have an ever adapting and ever-changing AI Policy for their institutions so that the students when graduating are equipped with skills that are not already obsolete for the market.
India has one of the world’s largest youth populations and while they may be good in applied AI but studies have shown that there is a notable gap in theoretical and ethical understanding of AI which quite literally fuels misinformation and uncritical use. Even though the data shows that 57 per cent HEIs have an AI policy, treating AI ethically and responsibly is considered as minor modules which is really not enough.
National Educational Policy (NEP) 2020 promotes critical thinking and digital literacy and what better way to utilize MIL as a mechanism to promote the ethical and responsible use of AI. This can be made mandatory by the University Grants Commission and HEIs as an AI and Media Literacy course for all undergraduate students so that this will be a lifelong learning for all individuals (both educators and students). Therefore, it is imperative for educators to be trained constantly and to continuously adapt to use AI tools for retrieving information responsibly so that they can understand and integrate AI into their classroom teaching for the students to use AI responsibly. MIL can be considered as the Human Digital Twin for AI tools and adapting the laws of MIL to promote AI Literacy can be one of the ways where Indian universities can ensure that its demographic dividend is AI-competent, ethically-aware and democratically resilient.