Education Minister Anthony Garcia is moving to introduce in all schools artificial intelligence for students.
Garcia made the announcement yesterday, following the launch of the history textbook Foundation Readings on the History of Trinidad and Tobago at Government Campus building, Port-of-Spain.
His comment came minutes after Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley who delivered the feature address at the launch said: “our curriculum is ineffective in developing the quality of our citizens that Trinidad and Tobago should anticipate.”
Rowley said this problem cannot be rectified by spending more money on the same things.
“It is rectified by the components of what goes into the education system. We need a revision of our national curriculum for relevance.”
In the absence of that, Rowley said we would keep repeating the same mistakes and stand in the same place while others leave us behind.
The PM also spoke about a document from the Ministry of Education which had been authored by some experts, who he refused to name, coming before Cabinet for approval, which was not granted.
“Because what the Cabinet was being asked to do is reduce the number of subject areas that would be focused on this new curriculum.”
Rowley said in the document identified geography and history be removed from the curriculum.
“That was the offering of experts. Could you imagine if that was accepted?” Rowley said.
Questioned about the PM’s call for a revision of the curriculum, Garcia said that has always been a subject by the ministry.
“In fact, only yesterday at a meeting of our strategic executive team we are looking at certain aspects of the curriculum...and we are looking at revising some of these aspects. One of the areas we want to pay special attention to is in terms of artificial intelligence. We have therefore empowered the director of planning to start looking at how we can introduce artificial intelligence from early childhood right on to the tertiary level,” Garcia said.
Garcia did not say when this will be introduced.
What is Artificial Intelligence
AI is an area of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans.
Some of the computer activities with artificial intelligence are designed to include speech recognition, learning, planning, knowledge, reasoning and problem-solving.