Azlan Othman
The Ministry of Education (MoE) is monitoring ChatGPT and is ready with steps to prevent its misuse in academia, said Minister of Education Yang Berhormat Datin Seri Setia Dr Hajah Romaizah binti Haji Mohd Salleh during yesterday’s 19th Legislative Council (LegCo) session.
ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by OpenAI. “ChatGPT is a hot topic and its usage is becoming significant,” said the minister. “It is a new technology. Foreign institutions and universities are still analysing its usage and researching it.”
The minister noted that this technology will both open opportunities and pose challenges to the country’s education system.
“ChatGPT has its strengths and weaknesses. It can only predict solutions through a large data set, hence its answers are not 100 per cent correct and humans are still required to verify its accuracy,” she said.
CODING CLASSES
LegCo member Yang Berhormat Chong Chin Yee inquired on the ministry’s efforts to integrate computational thinking and coding to the school curriculum.
The minister in her reply said that the Curriculum Development Department and the Science Technology Environment Partnership Centre (STEP Centre) is working with the Authority for Info-communications Technology Industry (AITI) to carry out programmes and workshops to enhance computational thinking and coding skills for children aged six to 11.
She said basic coding programmes are taught to Year 5 students taking information and communication technology (ICT) and Scratch Coding is taught to Years 4, 5, 7 and 8. For Year 7 and 8, Scratch is taught in business, art and technology subjects.
In higher learning institutions, new courses have been offered – data science, AI, robotics and cybersecurity – in Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) as well as an AI programme in collaboration with Google and IBM.
At Universiti Teknologi Brunei, a digital media programme is offered, she said. “Our students have also triumphed at international ICT competitions,” she said.
