Late one Tuesday night, while juggling a part-time job, I realized I had an upcoming test to prepare for. In the past, I might have considered cheating or giving up.
However, in 2024, AI tutors have made test preparation less daunting.
Now, you can upload a whole textbook and ask your AI to teach you. You can customize your AI to help you take a mock test or just get a summary to go through.
In my four years of college, I have done it all. I have used AI for everything, including assignments, tests, exams, mocks, quizzes even class participation projects. However, limiting the scope of AI to just an assistant is not enough; now, AI is ready to take charge of the education and learning industry.
Read on to learn everything about AI tutors, their benefits, challenges, future scope, and more.
What Are AI Tutors?
AI tutors work as a proxy to human tutors, working as an equalizer in the field of education. Through AI tutors, learners from all around the world can get advanced education and assistance regardless of their financial status, location, educational background, or language.
Students just need to have a laptop and a trusted internet provider. Look out for the one that has a reliable customer support and get in touch with them. For instance, if you are planning to choose Xfinity, you can call Xfinity customer service to get all the details regarding their internet plans, speeds and pricing.This will be enough to start learning from anywhere. Because Xfinity’s countrywide hotspots keep the users connected from anywhere.
AI tutoring software is built to enhance and augment the learning experience of each student, empowering them to customize each interaction. Moreover, most online learning platforms have inbuilt AI tutors that streamline the feedback system and offer virtual assistance and educational bots.
With so many features and enhanced functionalities, one gets curious about the workings of these AI tutors.
Well, an AI tutor is designed on the same AI principles and technologies as any other AI tool. The three pillars behind the seamless working of AI tutors are natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and adaptive learning algorithms.
Since most users and developers are already familiar with all these technologies, using AI tutors is much easier for everyone.
Moreover, these tutors come with a complete customization experience, so users can customize and optimize these tutors for a better learning experience. From covering foundational concepts to polishing skills and learning advanced professional expertise, AI tutors are a perfect learning aid for every goal.
Benefits of AI Tutors in Online Education
Personalized Learning Experiences
The feedback cycle is an excellent way to help the learner work on their strengths and overcome their weakness. This is the same reason exams, tests, and quizzes are a huge part of the education system. However, the current education system has many loopholes. Most of the exams are marked on single criteria without keeping the individual strengths in mind.
AI addresses that issue by offering a personalized experience where the learner gets to set preferences based on strengths and weaknesses. This way, learner gets individual attention, learn at their own pace, and target areas of interest.
24/7 Availability
Globally, school and college timings have always been a debate. While the majority have come to terms with the current timing of educational institutes, others argue that the body clock is different for everyone. Moreover, some people have prior obligations like taking care of the family, while others want to learn something new for career growth along with the job.
AI tutors offer flexible learning experiences where students can learn anytime, anywhere, regardless of the time zone. This also liberates the student from feeling restricted about the time, availability, or location.
Instant Feedback and Assessment
As mentioned earlier, the feedback cycle has a huge impact on the overall learning progress of the student. However, in a conventional learning setup, feedback is delayed due to bulk work, which can eventually slow down the progress of the student.
With the help of an AI tutor, each student gets instant feedback. Apart from feedback, AI tutors also help the learners to polish their expression, helping them explain and answer each question better.
Cost-Effectiveness
Financial status has been a steering force behind many education-related decisions. Individuals from low financial status generally go for professional degrees that can offer them better earning opportunities. Similarly, arts, designing, writing, and other degrees are considered leisurely pursuits.
AI is now working as the great equalizer, helping everyone learn without being buried under debt. Students can learn any new skill, polish previously learned skills, update their knowledge, or just learn something practical with the use of AI tutors.
Challenges and Limitations of AI Tutors
While the benefits of using AI tutor as a learning augmentation tool are undeniable, it also comes with some challenges. Here is a quick overview of some of the challenges and limitations that learners and users might experience:
Lack of Human Interaction
There is no doubt that AI tutors are much better at explaining the information and have a much wider information repository; however, AI lacks the magic that humans bring to the table. With human interaction, both parties involved in the communication get to build a report, a connection, and a perception.
These simple observations during communication eventually help both parties communicate better. Since AI lacks the human touch, it is unable to understand, empathize, and build a deeper learning connection which is very important for learning.
Limitations in Understanding Complex Queries
AI is trained and built on open-source online information, which means it has a huge library of all the essential information about all industries. With such a vast information bank, extracting the right information and filtering the data can be quite challenging.
This is where the role of prompt engineering comes in. With the right prompt, you can extract, sort, and filter the data easily. However, this leaves room for contradiction because the user can easily manipulate data by changing the prompt and changing the tone. Moreover, AI tutors sometimes struggle with complex student queries and critical questions.
Over-Reliance on Technology
As AI tutors are becoming more common, keeping a few AI apps for data extraction is very common. Students download and train AI tutoring apps, so they can ask subject-related questions.
Overreliance on AI tutors can hinder students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Students may become overly dependent on AI for answers, neglecting to develop their own problem-solving abilities.
Data Privacy and Security Concerns
With the wide spread of AI, data privacy concerns are also growing. Most users are not familiar with how AI was trained and where the data was extracted from. Moreover, AI tutors are still in the training phase so the more a user gets to interact with them, the more precise the answer is.
However, this means the data of the student that is used for training AI can be sold or leaked as well. This also raises a lot of questions about the possible security risks that can impact the user experience.
AI Tutors vs. Human Tutors: A Comparison
To better understand the role of AI and human tutors, let us dive deeper into their strengths and weaknesses.
| AI Tutors | Human Tutors |
| Efficiency and Scale | |
| AI tutors can handle large numbers of students without getting distracted. Moreover, with personalized training, every user gets individual attention. | Human tutors have an individual capacity, especially because the interaction is one-on-one. Most classes have a strength limit, exceeding that number might affect the learning experience as well. |
| Cost Comparison | |
| Most AI tutoring software offers monthly subscriptions while others have one-time purchases. Regardless of the subscription style, AI tutoring is an affordable option for everyone. | Human tutors are quite expensive with time limitations, location limitations, individual differences, etc. Moreover, the long-term cost is much higher considering tutors might get sick or take leave sometimes. |
| Personal Touch and Human Experience | |
| While AI tutors can efficiently process and present information, they lack the empathy and personalized guidance that human tutors provide. This can lead to a less engaging and effective learning experience. | Human tutors are emotionally intelligent, more empathetic, and offer personal experience, helping every student make the most out of their learning experience. |
| Creative Liberty | |
| AI tutors offer flexibility, allowing students to revisit lessons or personalize their learning experience. | Human tutors have individual teaching styles so, the student has to adjust according to the pace of the teacher and class. |
Based on the comparison, it is safe to say that both AI tutors and human tutors have their own benefits and limitations. To find the perfect balance, it is important to seek a synergy between both. Human tutors should collaborate with AI tutors for maximum output. This will help the student learn better, get personalized experience, and enjoy a learning experience that can benefit both.
The Future of AI Tutors in Education
The future of education is AI tutors. However, this does not mean that human tutors will soon be replaced; instead, human tutors will get to work side by side with AI tutors. This collaboration will benefit the human tutors with monotonous and repetitive tasks. Similarly, AI tutors will get to benefit from the human touch and creative flare that human tutors can offer.
To understand the future of AI tutors, here is an overview of everything that you can expect from AI tutors:
Personalized Assistance in Pocket
For the longest, learning was equivalent to memorizing information and then retrieving it when needed. With AI tutor-based mobile apps, learners no longer have to memorize information; instead, they will be able to seek guidance when needed and make informed decisions accordingly.
Upskilling for Professionals
As technology is changing at such a fast pace, employed individuals, feel the need to upskill. However, enrolling in conventional-style learning classes means learners will get to match the pace of the class even if they have years of in-field experience. However, in the coming years, upskilling via AI tutors will become a norm. More companies will offer AI-based upskilling courses that employees can complete at their own pace.
AI Teaching Assistance
Teaching assistance is an important job that was formally offered to bright students or junior teachers. However, more universities will now leave these assistance tasks for AI. This will help the teachers stay organized leaving the mundane tasks for the AI while focusing on tasks that are more relevant and important.
Skill Based Learning
Previously, learning was more theory-based, where students were taught to be book smart. Eventually, these students would enter the job market with subpar skills leaving a lot of room for learning and a higher risk of making mistakes. With AI, students will gain skill-based learning so they can enter the job market with some hands-on experience.
FAQ’s
Will AI Replace Teachers In Education?
AI tutors cannot replace human tutors; however, they can facilitate human tutors to improve the overall learning experience for the student.
Is AI Better Than Human Teachers?
There is no way to conclude that AI tutors are better than human teachers. Both human and AI tutors have their strong points and limitations.
How AI Can Facilitate Teachers?
AI will be able to assist teachers with mundane daily tasks like tasks like grading, data maintenance, and data filtration, lesson planning, and offering personalized student support.
