الذكاء الاصطناعي ومستقبل التعليم | AI in Education

Hello and thank you for joining us here again today. Today we turn our minds to the world of artificial intelligence and its intersection with education. We're delighted to be joined by Tar Jundy, the chief executive officer of Ankerbutt. Tar, thank you for joining us and welcome to the show. Thank you, Matthew. Thank you for having me. Look, think the first place where we have to start this conversation today is obviously in relation to the current climate we have in the Middle East. There's ongoing regional conflict going on and in particular in relation to education, there's obviously been some disruption when it comes to the school ecosystem. How does technology played role in building that sort of resiliency in the education sector and helped withstand the pressures that we're seeing in the current market? Absolutely, Matthew. If we're talking about the UEE in specific and and UAE has built resilient systems across the board with all sectors, education is no exception here. And when we speak about resiliency, we speak about running national infrastructure running connected ecosystems running remote learning capabilities introducing AI but also not only from tools perspective but also from foundation from governance and also from an ecosystem standpoint. So we are the whole country is running as usual and education definitely is is is is part of the full the full perspective of economy and and what we have done for example in Ankaboot when you are part of the ecosystem is the partnership which partnership we have just announced with Wii video is to enable you know remote learning to enable institutions enable the educators leverage technology where they can have access to all the video adaptive adaptive learning tools to improve the engagement to give back to community and to be part of the community that trying really to stand together to ensure that we are resilient across the board. This is obviously unfortunately not the first time that the UAE education system has had to undergo distance learning. It very famously happened few years ago during COVID 19. Yeah. And tools were introduced really for the first time. Today we sit in completely different world when it comes to technology. Artificial intelligence for instance has become by word. Everyone in the market is talking around it. How have these tools changed with relation to integration with AI? How has that changed the future of education and how does that connect to some of the things you were just telling us about? Actually when we speak about AI typically the conversation really focuses on tools on models on you know LLMs etc etc where reality is different because the challenge is not with the tools and not with AI. The challenge is actually with the system itself and education is the most important system. the way we look at education is not only about curriculum because it's where talent is shaped is where research is created and where knowledge is actually aggregated and transferred. So when when we look at the system here the the the the stronger the system is okay the stronger whatever we have built on top of it with our AI with our innovation and whether entrepreneurship and here where let me give an example if in in any mature ecosystem mature countries usually university they are not you know isolated they are connected to its peers they are connected to the government that connect to the industry. So when any breakthrough happens in any part of this chain, okay, it actually spreads quickly across the whole ecosystem and this is you know here the secret sauce of building connected ecosystem that mean everything you run of it will be scaling and will be also sustainable. mean talking about growing and scaling an ecosystem is simple enough concept to understand but that is not simple enough idea in practice. How is the UAE going around building that education ecosystem? Where are the pushes and the levers coming from? It's not secret that the UEE has very bold ambition and and this bold ambition is really not to be consumer and users of technology but to be producer of knowledge and innovation and this doesn't happen only through funding. Okay, it happens through building cohesive an end to-end comprehensive ecosystem that would require when building ecosystem to build this to produce knowledge to scale it and also to export it to be an international competitive player and if bring here another example if there is any let's say research advancement in AI in one of the universities if it's not shared with other entities is if it is not shared with industries or not shared with government to bring and to amplify the results here you know the impact will be very limited. Okay. But the UAE figured out how to fix it through running really system you know wide digitally advanced ecosystem. if we look to to bring another example as well but actually on the contrary if there is let's say an AI model was achieved in many of the universities for the healthcare sector okay if the data is securely shared okay if the model is trained across broader data sets okay and if it's governed properly through the involvement of of of of government here we see an evolution it's not anymore about single project. It's about national capability. So again the discussion here will be shifted from do we have good university versus do we have complete great competitive international ecosystem and also to do so and how we can enable this system uhwide digital advancement is by ensuring that every institution is digitally mature on its own. Okay. they're connected to national platform and also last but not least they are sharing common also national infrastructure to make sure that all those best practices is leveraged and shared in the proper way. Tara, there's one thing you said in there which found really interesting. I'm just going to ask you to expand on it slightly which is when you say the UAE has bold ambitions. agree that's that's very obvious. But you mentioned this idea about exporting these technologies or or or this ecosystem. What would that actually look like in practice as as an export? Export of of knowledge, export of talents and also export of the complete end-to-end ecosystem. meaning that all the investment the UE is doing in AI, it's actually it's not about only about funding those big data centers or big AI GPU clusters. It's to enable the industries is to because UEE has let's say very advanced oil and gas sector. When you connect industries to research, okay, to study and you come up with comprehensive eventually product that would solve real problem solution or industry challenge, you can export this internationally. So here you're exporting the package not exporting only let's say curriculum or not exporting only knowledge exporting an ecosystem of solutions that would enable to companies to scale. We see today's startups actually being incorporated in in the UAE. We've never seen this before. We've seen international startups actually having headquartered and actually recruiting tenants here in the region. So we we don't live in an isolated you know environment anymore. We should interact with all those best practices, interact with international dynamics, interact inter interact with our peers and this is where having national infrastructure what we call it NRN national research education network which is connected to whether internet 2 in the US whether gant in in Europe this will make sure that we actually we operate the same level of innovation and the same no level of knowledge transfer I'm bit of layman here when it comes to how technology can integrate into education. So, forgive me in my own ignorance. What exactly would these tools of the future and this technology look like in an education in in in the context of education? How will artificial intelligence actually change education? How will that impact distance learning? just want to know specifically what these tools will look like. Yeah. so the tools is scattered across all possible use cases. So you can implement AI in student admission system, you can apply AI on analytics for research environment, you can apply AI for crowd management in campus. Okay. But when you apply them and the systems itself they are segregated and disconnected the impact will be very much limited. So you can see let's say in most institutions they have multiple you know redundant systems they have multiple data foundation layers and they have multiple experiences when say experience is the journey that any students actually will go through or educator will go through all fragmented okay so bring AI and introduce AI as said to student affairs or introduce automation into operation but since they those systems are fragmented. Okay, the impact of AI will be very limited because the AI will be more powerful when you have holistic connected ecosystem. If we look at things actually the other way around, imagine unified environment. Okay, where you have one common data platform, when you have one unified seamless digital experience across let's say one super app that the students could really check their grades change you know temperature of the room they can even pay their fees in seamless digital experience from one platform. imagine situation where you have real time analytics that runs constantly across the whole life cycle of student. Here where AI really could help us ensure that we have customized learning experience. We have predictable student success and student performance. we have as well very importantly alignment between learning and the job market. So this is where that you see the real impact not only only with the tools but also this orchestration layer. Sounds like you're really banging the drum for this idea of building unified ecosystem to beat this idea of fragmentation. Absolutely. do have one question for you in that context though. mean, I've spoken to many people who work directly in the this technology as well with with AI or or or big technology corporates and and one thing these guys tend to say when they're speaking honestly is keeping up with the technology themselves is massive challenge. mean, it is moving so incredibly fast. How do you go around building unified platform, unified ecosystem for technology that is moving at almost unprecedented speed? Excellent question, Matthew. we go back to basics. Build your foundation properly. Okay? Everything will be built as puzzle. today you have data everywhere. You have data in your learning management system. You have data in your building management system. You have data in your ERP, your CRM. So every time you want to introduce any AI use case, it will take forever because the data is is not data is fragmented, the data is not structured. Okay. And what we are doing here by going back to basics is actually breaking down the barriers between all those applications building connectors and applications APIs okay to allow the data to move seamlessly. So we're building this foundation of data consolidated. So the time to introduce any AI use case will be much faster. So whatever technology would evolve we have our consolidated system. We have our foundation. So you can build anything whatever it comes AI machine learning whatever the new innovation or the new you know invention would be our basics is built right and we're ready for any new technology. So the idea is clean up all the data so that you can then use it in whatever use case turns up along the way. Absolutely. Absolutely. Again turning back to this idea the UAE's own ambitions. Yeah. The leadership of the UAE is incredibly ambitious and have set very ambitious goals and they tend to put their money where their mouth is and they make the effort to hit those goals. Yeah, there's very strong top- down leadership pushing for success in in education and and in technology. Absolutely agree with you there. What's your feeling on this bottom down approach and and there's two parts to this on the institutions themselves? I'm talking about universities, schools, and educators, but also for students. Do you see an acceptance of this kind of technology in education? Are they primed for it here in the UAE more uniquely than elsewhere in the world, or is there still some sort of, you know, trepidency about embracing these tools? You'd be surprised that students are ahead of us, always ahead of us, because they are the ones who are experimenting with tools every day. Gen Gen Alpha, they are demanding the change of the system. They're demanding the connectivity. They're demanding what apps they want to see. So guess it's like top down but also bottom up in in in in some areas. And you were right because the leadership sets the strategic direction but where challenges usually lie is not with the vision is with execution. Okay. And here are most challenges we we see and we we try to tackle because to manage this execution right you need really to have an integration capabilities interoperability capabilities vision really to seamlessly connect and build AI enabled platforms so here exactly what we're trying to do as anaboot is try to be the execution ution agent for this ambitious vision when it comes to enabling education really not only to support the economy but also to play major role in cross- sectors innovation and cross- sector transformation because it start with education and it ends with education and for me education is not what we used to call as education 1.0 or is like about certificate and degree. This is behind us. It is about an experience. It's about the skills and it's not always about 3, four years, 5 years and you study. No, it's about lifelong journey and we're here to enabling the lifelong journey. This is where we need to keep this channel open with the consumers of technology which is students educators and while aligning with the vision of the country. Just to ask you on point there. You said education 1.0 is certificates. Which education.0 are we up to at this point? think we are evolving from 1.0 because believe that certification alone will not last will not be enough if we don't equip our next generation with the right skills and and with the right experience. They will be challenged to find the right career path. And here where again the ecosystem has to evolve and the ecosystem has to develop also post education type of engagements and technology here will ensure that there is sector in technology called continuing education and in ankaboot we are dividing the market into those three areas to2 high education and research centers and continuing education and real impact will be in the continuing education because it will never stop with only certificate if we don't support it with the right you know internship the right on job training the right enablement of this workforce again this is what the UE is trying to do to export talent as well not only to import talent but to export talent and we cannot do it without you know evolving from education 1.0 to to education 2.0 mean it's the reason why asked that is because think there's this this interesting argument to be made that education is bit of weird sector in comparison to to most of the rest of the world. Yes. if you went into classroom 100 years ago, you'd still find teacher at the front and students sat in the classroom. If you look at any other sector in the economy, they've all been transformed. There's been massive productivity gains. Yes. But really, education has not changed fundamentally. Obviously the the the way we teach subjects, but from fundamental level, it's still teacher at the front and number of students in the class. What does the classroom of the future in education 2.0 look like? It is evolving as we speak. Matthew, it will never be only classroom. As we speak, we have invented what we call AI tutor where the time of professors or the time of the teacher will not be spent on explaining the content to the students. They can do it on their own. Okay. The time of the professors or the teacher will be spent on projects will be spent on enablement will be spent on collaboration and even the students could run their own exams remotely through AI what we call it AI tutor tool so evolution from classroom based what we mean by the future of education is about high performance computing okay it's about access to compute power it's about access to connectivity It's about access to AI enabled platforms. If you bring in another dimension here, which is the campus itself, whether it's school campus or whether it's, you know, university campus, when you bring in intelligence into the equation, then you can get into, you know, energy system you know, sustainability, you can get into space utilization, intelligently, you can get into improving security. So this is the elements of the smart campus. You combine it with the consolidated data layer. You add to it the unified digital experience. Here where bingo you reach what we call unified digital ecosystem for education. So you see the evolution from one you know you know student and teacher classroom type of like setup to complete transformed ecosystem and industry. Right. You referred to yourselves Anchor earlier as the execution agent of the vision. Yeah. One thing that I'm very sure about is being the execution agent is not cheap thing to do. Yeah. So performing any large scale transformation is an expensive operation. I'm not just referring to you in this question, but how is the UAE going around financing this? Is the investment there? how are investors approaching it? What what does that look like? It's it's not cheap but also the potential is huge and also if we are to execute on the vision to export knowledge and to export success that means we need to expand beyond the borders of UAE and this is exactly our vision. So we have five years vision today starting with enabling and acting as the ATTE server provider of choice for the UAE. Okay. Second, we are expanding regionally as well because when you when you build capabilities and when you build scalability, you need to travel with it and you can travel domestically through the region GCC and then you can go on worldwide basis. That's exactly what we are doing. So we are growing organically and also we're going through acquisition. So part of our ambition, our plan is also to acquire startups or companies and invest in innovation that either will give us access to market or access to technology or access to talent or all of them at the same time. And this is where we are we're heading and and to be honest once you mature in building platforms and platforms here they have vertical characteristic and they have horizontal characteristic. When you build this foundation of resented characteristic, you can scale to adjacent sectors as well. Healthcare for example because school is clinic, hospital isos is university in terms of like the engagement. Of course technology could have different distinguished services when it comes to the vertical aspect of any platform. So back to the investments here it is private sector investments it's government investments and also very important is we are owned as Ankaboot by KUAC which is an incubator an accelerator for startups. So we invest in IPS we invest in patterns that comes out of any research institution in the region here we invest in them we have incubation programs to help them be sustainable startups. then Ankaboot will take them and to be their goto market engine to scale whether the UEE or abroad as you say it's it's about helping to to build the ecosystem there 100%. Last couple of questions for you think there's growing concern when it comes to artificial intelligence around trust think it was Dar Asmay the the the CEO of Claude who recently said to the New York Times that he actually sees there being to certain degree backlash to AI technology in 2029. Yeah. How do you go around building this kind of ecosystem in sector like education which has its own unique challenges in terms of trust we're dealing with kids and students and maintain that trust and security throughout the whole project and and and through building the ecosystem. Very good question Matthew and actually it resonate very well with what's happening you know on worldwide basis and also here in the country. So the more AI is embedded with educa within education okay the more the conversation is evolving beyond capabilities it's about ownership it's about control it's about risk okay because here we're dealing with the most sensitive data is students data okay it is organization has to rethink okay about how they are managing their data how they are governing their system and how they are you know allocating resources because in this AI journey we tend to really jump ahead of ourselves with innovation ahead of governance ahead with the right foundation okay so the risk is is is here will be mitigated by building trusted building trusted sovereign okay AI enabled infrastructure and that's not to slow innovation ation or prohibit innovation, but rather to help innovation really be sustainable and be secured on the long run. This is exactly what we're doing in Ankaboot because we have national sovereign cloud services and AI services to ensure that the governance is embedded without governance without data management okay and data structure all the outcome of AI will not be credible. Right? Without having governance in place, the risk will be increased. Okay? So, we need to make sure that number one, we are investing in the right infrastructure. We are building this consolidated data platform and we are building framework for governance. If we do so, think the risk will be mitigated. The idea of sovereignty, think, is very very interesting. Absolutely. Yeah. Look, last thing just to ask you there is it would be remiss of me not especially given the current context we're in just to ask about what the future looks like for you and for for Anchor over the next year. Yeah. Where you're predicting where your growth plans are and how you see the future unfolding. we are investing in our own products and in our own IP that's one area of growth and also we are investing in partnership and bringing international best practice and ecosystem into the country like the partnership that we have announced with vi video when it comes to our own IP and our product we're investing in today three main areas is about smart campus and we call it we call it an AI digital operating system of of of the universities because this is where you can build this foundation. Second is building data products and framework to consolidate this fragmented ecosystem. And last but not least, we're building digital experience platform ankaboot XP. this is where you'll have one centralized super app with unified journey for students, unified journey for educators and unified journey for staff. These are the three areas of technology that we're investing in. Okay. geographically speaking when we reach the status of the tech service provider of choice for the UEE this could be like maybe 18 month from now as mentioned before we're going also through acquisition to other countries and also in maybe four years from now we will evolve into other sectors try to you know leverage all those best parts we've built and enable in other sectors there is one strong proposition for us that we were born in education. So we understand education as you know it's our DNA. So when we bring in innovation we bringing out of real challenge that we have left real need that we see. So it's actually it's it's we're we're very close to the environment that would make any solution we introduce is very you know adaptable, very scalable and also as said you know because of the security concerns is very sovereign. Well mean look watching these things happen in education is going to be absolutely fascinating. I'm sure speak with everyone when we'll be very excited to see what happens. Tara only exists to thank you for your time today and for joining us. Thank you very much. Thank you, Matthew. Thank you very much.