GPT has become nearly synonymous with large language models (LLMs), an increasingly popular term in AIED proceedings. A simple keyword-based search reveals that 61% of the 76 long and short papers presented at AIED 2024 describe novel solutions using LLMs to address some of the long-standing challenges in education, and 43% specifically mention GPT. Although LLMs pioneered by GPT create exciting opportunities to strengthen the impact of AI on education, we argue that the field's predominant focus on GPT and other resource-intensive LLMs (with more than 10B parameters) risks neglecting the potential impact that small language models (SLMs) can make in providing resource-constrained institutions with equitable and affordable access to high-quality AI tools. Supported by positive results on knowledge component (KC) discovery, a critical challenge in AIED, we demonstrate that SLMs such as Phi-2 can produce an effective solution without elaborate prompting strategies. Hence, we call for more attention to developing SLM-based AIED approaches.

The field of AIED, as defined by the work conducted under the auspices of the International Society of Artificial Intelligence in Education, has been built on big and well-intentioned ambitions to understand, devise and scale-up best learning and teaching practices to as many students as possible. This ambition has been bolstered most notably by the Bloom (1984) studies, which are still routinely cited throughout the AIED literature as a key justification and motivation for the field. This ambition had bootstrapped much of the work within the field and it has spurred in-depth research examining how specific populations of students learn, what are the prerequisites (cognitive, affective, and pedagogic) for successful learning, and how AIED technologies might be designed to help develop and capitalise on such learning prerequisites. Personalisation through adaptivity of assessment and feedback (for the purpose of this article used in the broad sense of pedagogical support) remains at the heart of the work conducted by AIED researchers, regardless of their specific areas of specialisation, or their philosophical or epistemological perspectives. This is why, to date, the AIED community repeatedly voted to retain its long-debated connection with the wider field of AI - a domain like AIED insofar as its central paradigm of adaptive agent technologies, but unlike AIED as far as its aim to emulate human capacities only to the extent that it is useful to a given application's success in achieving its specific goals.

The adoption of Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) holds the promise of revolutionizing educational practices by offering personalized learning experiences, automating administrative and pedagogical tasks, and reducing the cost of content creation. However, the lack of standardized practices in the development and deployment of AIED solutions has led to fragmented ecosystems, which presents challenges in interoperability, scalability, and ethical governance. This article aims to address the critical need to develop and implement industry standards in AIED, offering a comprehensive analysis of the current landscape, challenges, and strategic approaches to overcome these obstacles. We begin by examining the various applications of AIED in various educational settings and identify key areas lacking in standardization, including system interoperability, ontology mapping, data integration, evaluation, and ethical governance. Then, we propose a multi-tiered framework for establishing robust industry standards for AIED. In addition, we discuss methodologies for the iterative development and deployment of standards, incorporating feedback loops from real-world applications to refine and adapt standards over time. The paper also highlights the role of emerging technologies and pedagogical theories in shaping future standards for AIED. Finally, we outline a strategic roadmap for stakeholders to implement these standards, fostering a cohesive and ethical AIED ecosystem. By establishing comprehensive industry standards, such as those by IEEE Artificial Intelligence Standards Committee (AISC) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO), we can accelerate and scale AIED solutions to improve educational outcomes, ensuring that technological advances align with the principles of inclusivity, fairness, and educational excellence.

The advent of big data, and of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications that collect and consume such data, has led to fundamental questions about the ethics of AI designs and to efforts aimed to highlight and safeguard against any potential harms caused by the deployment of AI across diverse domains of applications. Typically, questions raised relate to the trustworthiness of AI as agent technologies that autonomously or semi-autonomously operate in human environments and that have the ability to alter human behaviour. Other questions concern the role that AI may play now and in the future in either resolving or amplifying pre-existing social biases and any resulting harms. Specifically, Ethical AI as an emergent area of AI research and policy, has been spurred by the revelations of AI applications (usually unintentionally) promoting and amplifying many of the discriminatory and oppressive practices, and assumptions that underpin pre-existing social and institutional systems, e.g., historical biases against non-dominant populations, against users characterised by some divergence from the so-called cognitive or physical'norm', or those who are socio-economically disadvantaged (Crawford, 2017a; Madaio et al., 2022; Porayska-Pomsta and Rajendran, 2019; Williamson, Eynon, Knox & Davis, in this volume). Numerous examples of AI bias are both well-documented and rehearsed throughout the emergent ethics of AI literature, in hundreds of policy reports about AI ethics and governance that have been published to date (c.f.

Over the past decade, there have been increasing proclama5ons from diverse stakeholders that humanity is at an inflec5on point due to advances in Ar5ficial Intelligence (AI) technologies (e.g., Crawford, 2017). The general public are condi5oned by this messaging to expect both big (though so far largely non-descript) changes to our lives, including to the way that we learn and teach. Warnings have been also ar5culated regarding whether and how AI might fundamentally change the way we perceive reality, how we form our beliefs, or interact with one another (Bostrom, 2017). More recently, ques5ons started to emerge about AI's transforma5ve poten5al (for beLer or worse) for our func5oning at neurocogni5ve, socio-emo5onal, individual and collec5ve levels (UNESCO, 2022; Pedro, et al., 2019, Porayska-Pomsta, 2023), along with concerns regarding the ethical implica5ons of using AI for suppor5ng human decision-making in contexts that are both high-stakes (e.g., for medical diagnoses or for student assessment) and rela5vely low-stakes, e.g., selec5ng movies on streaming sites. Such hope-fear rhetoric is also present in the context of AI applica5ons to suppor5ng human learning in formal and informal contexts. Recent hopes for AI in educa5on (AIED) largely relate to delivering learning at scale across different geographical and cultural contexts, especially in light of growing global teacher shortages and diminishing funding for educa5on in many countries (UNESCO, 2023). These hopes are increasingly used to fuel poli5cally and market mo5vated discourse about the need to'release teachers from tedious tasks' such as standardised assessments to allow them to focus on the'things that maLer' (Gen5le et al., 2023), or to jus5fy the narrowing of the formal educa5on curricula mainly to STEM subjects.

International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education is calling for submissions to our Collection on New advances in artificial intelligence applications in higher education. There has been growing interest in the educational potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications within the field of educational technology for the past decade. Despite the recent peak of excitement towards advanced features and techniques of AI-driven language models and OpenAI's ChatGPT, their actual impact on higher education (HE) institutions and participants have been largely unknown. Thus, the discussions in the field have continuously remained, mainly consisting of overstated hype and untested hypotheses, either optimistic or pessimistic, about the impact of AI applications. About three years ago, the editors of the ETHE Special Issue "Can artificial intelligence transform higher education?" However, a lot has happened since then.

The world around us has undergone a radical transformation due to rapid technological advancement in recent decades. The industry of the future generation is evolving, and artificial intelligence is the following change in the making popularly known as Industry 4.0. Indeed, experts predict that artificial intelligence(AI) will be the main force behind the following significant virtual shift in the way we stay, converse, study, live, communicate and conduct business. All facets of our social connection are being transformed by this growing technology. One of the newest areas of educational technology is Artificial Intelligence in the field of Education(AIEd).This study emphasizes the different applications of artificial intelligence in education from both an industrial and academic standpoint. It highlights the most recent contextualized learning novel transformative evaluations and advancements in sophisticated tutoring systems. It analyses the AIEd's ethical component and the influence of the transition on people, particularly students and instructors as well. Finally, this article touches on AIEd's potential future research and practices. The goal of this study is to introduce the present-day applications to its intended audience.

Artificial intelligence (Al) is increasingly having an impact on education, bringing opportunities as well as numerous challenges. These observations were noted by the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers in 2019 and led to the commissioning of this report, which sets out to examine the connections between Al and education (AI&ED). In particular, the report presents an overview of AI&ED seen through the lens of the Council of Europe values of human rights, democracy and the rule of law; and it provides a critical analysis of the academic evidence and the myths and hype. The Covid-19 pandemic school shutdowns triggered a rushed adoption of educational technology, which increasingly includes AI-assisted classrooms tools (AIED). This AIED, which by definition is designed to influence child development, also impacts on critical issues such as privacy, agency and human dignity – all of which are yet to be fully explored and addressed.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Education has been said to have the potential for building more personalised curricula, as well as democratising education worldwide and creating a Renaissance of new ways of teaching and learning. Millions of students are already starting to benefit from the use of these technologies, but millions more around the world are not. If this trend continues, the first delivery of AI in Education could be greater educational inequality, along with a global misallocation of educational resources motivated by the current technological determinism narrative. In this paper, we focus on speculating and posing questions around the future of AI in Education, with the aim of starting the pressing conversation that would set the right foundations for the new generation of education that is permeated by technology. This paper starts by synthesising how AI might change how we learn and teach, focusing specifically on the case of personalised learning companions, and then move to discuss some socio-technical features that will be crucial for avoiding the perils of these AI systems worldwide (and perhaps ensuring their success). This paper also discusses the potential of using AI together with free, participatory and democratic resources, such as Wikipedia, Open Educational Resources and open-source tools. We also emphasise the need for collectively designing human-centered, transparent, interactive and collaborative AI-based algorithms that empower and give complete agency to stakeholders, as well as support new emerging pedagogies. Finally, we ask what would it take for this educational revolution to provide egalitarian and empowering access to education, beyond any political, cultural, language, geographical and learning ability barriers.

The world is now at a crucial point in technology evolution. The future depends on its deployment across all industries today, including in higher education. Artificial Intelligence-based technologies are thought to promote rather than hinder democratic values including freedom, equality, and transparency. AI-based technologies can become a tool to promote equity and personalized learning. For the past 20 years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made some advances in higher education, but not enough.