Imagine you are training as a dentist and must treat a patient with sensitive teeth, a nervous disposition and a challenging diagnosis.
Now imagine that patient is powered by artificial intelligence, programmed by your professor and designed to help you develop a pleasing, jargon-free chair-side manner.
The scenario is one made possible by an Australian AI platform developed at the University of Sydney and published on Microsoft Marketplace that is being adopted by universities around the world.
Its creators say the technology is not designed to replace educators but let them design their own teaching aides and direct their students' AI use.
The development comes amid heightened focus on artificial intelligence, including a warning from Pope Leo about its impact on humanity, and research highlighting concerns that AI will have a bigger impact on education than the arrival of the internet.
University of Sydney educational technologies professor Danny Liu said he had the idea for the Cogniti platform in February 2023 after powerful AI models launched and teachers and students expressed fears about the technology.
Rather than dictate what educational apps should include, the platform lets teachers create their own AI agents to meet students' needs.
"We don't want people seeing the AI as a replacement for teachers - we want teachers to deepen their relationship with students because they can use AI to do things they've always wanted to do," he told AAP.
"The teacher can set up a custom AI agent in Cogniti to pretend to be a dental patient, pretend to be a kindergarten teacher or pretend to be a community member."
Role-play had become a popular use for the technology, Prof Liu said, to help early medical students test conversations with virtual patients.
One primary school teacher also created an AI app to mimic a poorly performing maths student, who human students could gently correct and teach.
Other Cogniti apps provided feedback on assignments based on a teacher's writing style and course guidelines, he said, and educators could check anonymised chat histories to see if students were getting stuck on particular subjects.
"Every educator should be sceptical about AI," he said.
"But educators get (this) because they see it as AI that is not just happening to me but it's AI that I can actually control and be in the driver's seat for."
New Zealand university Unitec had used the AI platform to assist nursing students, digital learning manager Dr James Oldfield said, and they had logged hundreds of conversations with it.
"It's not a quick fix," he said.
"The important thing is making sure we're designing these agents in a way that enhances learning for the student and doesn't do the learning for them."
Australian Associated Press
