The Development and Operation of Artificial Intelligence

In this text, we will become acquainted with the development and characteristics of artificial intelligence (AI), which has become part of our everyday life. We will focus on generative AI, such as ChatGPT and DALL-E, which are spontaneously penetrating edu­cation and bringing opportunities for individualisation of learning as well as various chal­lenges. In the first part, we will explore the basics of AI – systems that learn from data. We distinguish between narrow AI (today‘s specialised systems) and general AI (does not yet exist). This will be followed by a historical overview from the Turing test (1950) to contemporary transformers. We will continue with generative AI, which creates new content and operates multimodally. We will explain how large language models (LLMs) statistically predict words but do not understand the world causally, which causes hal­lucinations. We will point out that AI is not unbiased and reflects the biases of training data. We will conclude with a key danger – cognitive debt, where excessive reliance on AI weakens critical thinking. We will emphasise that AI must remain a tool for expanding thinking, whilst the teacher remains an indispensable leader of the learning process.