Testing Fate: Is AI Fair in Higher Education?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an ubiquitous presence in our lives—there are few industries or sectors that are untouched from its implications. Post-secondary education is no exception; AI can be used a tool in student admissions, recruitment, data analytics, and learning assessment to lessen the administrative burden.

It seems that through computation and mathematics, AI can equal or even surpass the decision-making abilities of humans. But the data it relies upon is ultimately provided by humans, and is subject to faults and biases. With this, we are presented with a dilemma: is it ethical to trust AI?

Simon Fraser University (SFU) researchers Tenzin Doleck and Bahar Memarian investigated how notions of Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics—or FATE—are identified in AI relating to its use in higher education.

Doleck is a professor in SFU’s Faculty of Education, an associate member of the School of Computing Science, and Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Analytics for Learning Design. As CRC, Doleck is developing a learning environment and software tool known as DaTu to enhance post-secondary education for data science students.  

Memarian has a background in engineering and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at SFU. She is an interdisciplinary researcher and educator with more than ten years of research and teaching experience at the intersection of applied and social sciences (e.g., human factors engineering, education, engineering education). She has designed and executed research projects as both a team leader and a member, and has an interest in research collaborations on topics that are significant for today’s society.

Memarian and Doleck’s paper, Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics (FATE) in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and higher education: A systematic review, is the first study of its kind to examine the literature around issues of AI in higher ed.