Giving Compass' Take:

• This Skoll Foundation post discusses the potential of artificial intelligence in education, how it can forge "viable multiple pathways for success" for more students.

• The key is still equity, making sure that everyone has access to the technology (not just a select, privileged few). Who are going to be the gatekeepers of AI in the future?

• Here are 32 ways AI is already improving education.

The world is both fascinated by and fearful of artificial intelligence (AI). Very few of us understand the technology behind it and even fewer can clearly articulate the implications of this new technological frontier across a range of social, political, and economic dimensions.

In my role as CEO of an education think-tank, I have given the topic a considerable amount of thought.

My first point is that, despite popular fiction, AI does not equate to conscious, intelligent androids poised, terminator-like to take over the world, at least for the foreseeable future. Instead, my view of AI is that of a form that is very much with us today: computer-based, algorithm-driven programs capable of making decisions, increasingly self-learning, and perhaps in the not too distant future, self-programming. In other words the kind of AI that is being developed by Google’s DeepMind and others to perform a range of complex tasks from driving cars to diagnosing cancer.

Secondly, I believe that the future of AI and its impact on humanity is not pre-determined. Technological determinism – the idea that technology is the principal driver of history and we are all mere passengers with a one-way ticket—has been fashionable for quite some time now. The proponents of this view are also the same people who once believed that globalization was irreversible.

But I believe that the future has yet to be written. And there is both promise, peril, and everything in between.

Read the full article about charting a path for AI in education by Stavros Yiannouka at Skoll Foundation.