Pegasystems Inc. today unfurled an online tutor that makes use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) to interactively teach end users how to get the most value from its software.
Announced at the PegaWorld iNspire conference, the Pega GenAI Socrates tool, rather than presenting users with a set of monotonous canned online presentations, is designed to interactively adapt to the skill level of each individual using a combination of video, graphics, voice and text.
Pega GenAI Socrates will ultimately make the various tools and platforms that Pegasystems provides much more accessible to a wider range of users, says Kate Lepore, senior director for learning strategy and solutions for Pegasystems.
In fact, generative AI is going to fundamentally change every aspect of education, she adds. “It changes the way we learn,” says Lepore.
Pega GenAI Socrates, in essence, replicates the two-way conversation a human teacher uses to engage students in a classroom via a series of open- ended questions that are tied to each learning objective. It currently supports 10 languages, including English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Swedish, Polish and Japanese.
Pega GenAI Socrates can also personalize lessons to address weak spots by, for example, prompting students to analyze real-life scenarios in their own words and then adapting teaching materials in real time to provide a more relevant experience, including content tailored for specific vertical industry use cases.
It is also designed to enable students to learn at their convenience, rather than having to binge content for hours or days at a time.
As a result, it also becomes more likely students will retain what is taught compared to existing teaching methods that result in 90% of the material being forgotten within a week, she noted.
Pega GenAI Socrates is today integrated with the Pegaystems System Architect training course, with additional integrations planned in the months ahead.
It’s not precisely clear how AI is about to transform education, but the role teachers play in the process is going to need to evolve. Traditional classroom experiences will still be needed, but rather than the teaching process ending when a bell rings, students that can now more easily become life-long learners should be able to acquire new skills more easily.
From a software perspective, this approach should also make it simpler for end users to master all the features of an application. Today it’s not uncommon for 80% or more of the capabilities of an application to not be used, simply because discovering how to use them takes too much time and effort.
In the meantime, educators of all kinds will surely be watching closely as more generative AI tools for teaching become available. As is the case in every industry, job roles across the education sector will change. For example, some professors are already foregoing essays on the assumption that students will use generative AI tools to write them. Regardless of approach, the end goal should be to make sure that humans retain the right kind of knowledge needed to succeed in an era where machines will increasingly be able to handle more of the cognitive load.
