Over 70 per cent of teachers use AI tools in classrooms: Survey
The survey, which covered over 5,000 educators from across India, revealed that AI adoption is especially high among teachers with more than three years of experience. Nearly 75% cases are reportedly active. While 67% of teachers rated their AI expertise at 6 or higher on a 10-point scale, only 57% could correctly identify a basic AI misconception, highlighting a gap between perceived and actual understanding.
The findings underscore the need for structured training programmes. 'AI is rapidly becoming part of the modern classroom, but there remains a clear gap between adoption and genuine comfort among teachers,' said Ramya Venkataraman, founder and CEO of CENTA.
The survey also captured concerns about AI from a wider group, including parents and students. About 84% of respondents voiced apprehensions—23% about AI's accuracy and 34% about job displacement in education.
Participants came from diverse backgrounds—teachers, school leaders, parents, and students—representing schools across different fee segments and regions, from no-fee government schools to high-fee private institutions.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hindu
an hour ago
- The Hindu
The ‘right to repair' must include the ‘right to remember'
In May 2025, the Indian government took a significant step toward promoting sustainable electronics. It accepted a report proposing a Repairability Index for mobile phones and appliances, ranking products based on ease of repair, spare part access, and software support. New e-waste policies now include minimum payments to incentivise formal recycling. These are timely moves. But as India takes steps toward making repair a consumer right, we must also treat it as a cultural and intellectual resource — a form of knowledge that deserves preservation and support. India's digital and Artificial Intelligence (AI) policy landscape is evolving rapidly. Initiatives such as Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and the National Strategy on Artificial Intelligence (NSAI) emphasise innovation, data-driven governance and economic efficiency. Yet, the systems that quietly sustain everyday life — especially the informal repair and maintenance economy — remain largely invisible in digital and policy frameworks. In an age of cloud backups and algorithmic processing, it is easy to forget the value of knowledge that cannot be codified. Much of India's repair expertise lives in muscle memory, quiet observation, and years of hands-on improvisation. This tacit knowledge is vital to India's material resilience. From mobile fixers in Delhi's Karol Bagh to appliance technicians in Chennai's Ritchie Street, repairers keep devices working well past their planned obsolescence. 'If we don't fix it, who will?' says a mobile repairer in Ritchie Street. 'People throw things out. But we see what can be made new.' Their tools may be modest and their workshops discreet, but their work reflects deep ingenuity. They restore devices not by consulting manuals, but by diagnosing faults through sensory cues, reusing components, and adapting creatively to constraints. Yet, this ecosystem is gradually eroding. As product designs become less repairable and consumer habits shift toward disposability, informal repairers find themselves increasingly locked out of markets, of skilling programmes, and of policy attention. What risks being lost is not only economic opportunity but also a vast, undocumented reservoir of knowledge that has long supported India's technological resilience. Also Read | India's rising e-waste, the need to recast its management Why tacit knowledge matters 'I learnt by watching my uncle,' says an appliance repairer in Bhopal. 'He never explained with words. He just showed me once, and expected me to try. That's how we pass it on.' Tacit knowledge refers to forms of skill and intuition that are difficult to formalise. In India's repair economy, this expertise is typically passed down through mentorship, observation, and repetition — not through formal training or certification. It is inherently adaptive and context-sensitive, qualities that structured digital systems, including AI, often struggle to replicate. As AI advances, it increasingly draws on insights shaped by this kind of labour. However, mechanisms to acknowledge or equitably involve the contributors of this knowledge are still evolving. The result is a growing imbalance: AI systems continue to improve, while the communities enabling that learning often remain unrecognised. Globally, the Right to Repair movement has gained momentum. The European Union recently introduced rules requiring manufacturers to provide access to spare parts and repair documentation. In India, the Department of Consumer Affairs launched a Right to Repair framework in 2022, followed by a national portal in 2023 covering electronics, automobiles, and farm equipment. Meanwhile, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 12 promotes repair as part of responsible consumption. India now has the opportunity to lead by recognising repair not just as a service but also as a form of knowledge work. The blind spot in India's digital policy In 2021-22, India generated over 1.6 million tonnes of e-waste, becoming the world's third-largest producer. The E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022 introduced Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) — a principle that makes manufacturers responsible for post-use product management. However, while these rules encourage recycling, they make only a passing mention of repair as a preventive strategy. National skilling programmes such as the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) focus on short-term certifications for formal industrial roles. Repair work, which requires improvisation, diagnostic skill and creative reuse does not easily fit this framework. Similarly, the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 celebrates Indian knowledge traditions and experiential learning but offers little guidance on how to support or transmit hands-on repair expertise. Campaigns such as Mission LiFE (LiFEStyle For Environment) promote repair and reuse, but complementary efforts are needed to support the workers who make such sustainability practices possible. While policies now champion circularity, they risk leaving behind the very workforce whose skills make it real. As sustainability becomes a national priority, policymakers and technologists are reconsidering how we design, discard, and extend the life of everyday products. One emerging idea in research is 'unmaking' — the process of taking apart, repairing or repurposing devices after their first use, revealing design flaws and opportunities for reuse. Breakdowns and repairs are not failures; they are feedback loops and sources of practical insight. A discarded circuit board can become a teaching tool. A salvaged phone part can restore someone's access to work or school. A broken appliance can be repaired and reused. Informal repairers perform this work daily. Their labour sits at the centre of the circular economy, where reuse is not an afterthought but a design principle. Recognising them as stewards of sustainability — not marginal figures — can reshape how we think about environmental and digital innovation alike. AI-enabled solutions for repair justice India's culture of jugaad and frugality long pre-dates today's tech-forward policies. Repairers have always adapted across devices and decades, with minimal support. As the country invests in AI infrastructure and digital public goods, it must align these ambitions with the ground realities of repair. Most modern gadgets are built for compactness and control, not repair. According to a 2023 iFixit global report, only 23% of smartphones sold in Asia are easily repairable due to design constraints. To change this, design norms and procurement policies must include repairability from the start. To make technology genuinely sustainable, public policy must consider not only how products are manufactured and used but also how they break down, are repaired, and find new life. A shift toward designing for 'unmaking', where disassembly and repair are anticipated from the outset, should inform both hardware standards and AI-integrated systems. This transition will require coordinated institutional action. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology can embed repairability criteria into AI and procurement policies. The Department of Consumer Affairs could expand the Right to Repair framework to include product classification and community involvement. Platforms such as e-Shram, under the Ministry of Labour and Employment, can formally recognise informal repairers and connect them to social protection and skill-building schemes. The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship can consider training programmes to account for the tacit, diagnostic nature of repair work, which does not conform to standardised industrial templates. To support this, decision trees can help codify typical repair pathways, while Large Language Models can capture, summarise, and translate tacit repair narratives into structured, shareable knowledge, enabling broader learning without stripping local context or expertise. Supporting this ecosystem is not merely a question of intellectual property or technical efficiency. It is about valuing the quiet, embodied labour that sustains our digital and material lives — an essential step toward a just, repair-ready technological future. As philosopher Michael Polanyi observed, 'We know more than we can tell.' By choosing to remember what cannot be digitised, we preserve the human wisdom essential to a meaningful technological future. Kinnari Gatare is a researcher in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and a former UX Design Consultant, National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), Indian Institute of Technology Madras
NDTV
3 hours ago
- NDTV
Godfather Of AI Warns Technology Could Invent Its Own Language: 'It Gets Scary...'
Geoffrey Hinton, regarded by many as the 'godfather of artificial intelligence' (AI), has warned that the technology could get out of hand if chatbots manage to develop their language. Currently, AI does its thinking in English, allowing developers to track what the technology is thinking, but there could come a point where humans might not understand what AI is planning to do, as per Mr Hinton. "Now it gets more scary if they develop their own internal languages for talking to each other," he said on an episode of the "One Decision" podcast that aired last month. "I wouldn't be surprised if they developed their own language for thinking, and we have no idea what they're thinking." Mr Hinton added that AI has already demonstrated that it can think terrible thoughts, and it is not unthinkable that the machines could eventually think in ways that humans cannot track or interpret. Warning about AI Mr Hinton laid the foundations for machine learning that is powering today's AI-based products and applications. However, the Nobel laureate grew wary of AI's future development and cut ties with his employer, Google, in order to speak more freely on the issue. "It will be comparable with the industrial revolution. But instead of exceeding people in physical strength, it's going to exceed people in intellectual ability. We have no experience of what it's like to have things smarter than us," said Mr Hinton at the time. "I am worried that the overall consequence of this might be systems more intelligent than us that eventually take control." Mr Hinton has been a big advocate of government regulation for the technology, especially given the unprecedented pace of development. His warning also comes in the backdrop of repeated instances of AI chatbots hallucinating thoughts. In April, OpenAI's internal tests revealed that its o3 and o4-mini AI models were hallucinating or making things up much more frequently than even the non-reasoning models, such as GPT-4o. The company said it did not have any idea why this was happening. In a technical report, OpenAI said, "more research is needed" to understand why hallucinations are getting worse as it scales up its reasoning models.
Indian Express
3 hours ago
- Indian Express
Mohali's tech rise: From satellite town to digital powerhouse
Written by Shivangi Vashisht Once a quiet satellite town of Chandigarh, Mohali is now a rising IT and (information technology enabled services) ITeS hub, backed by policy, investment, and talent. The city is now reaping the benefits of a movement that started in 2018 when a committee led by veteran economist Montek Singh Ahluwalia highlighted start-ups as job creators. Punjab's new IT policy targeting 55,000 jobs while offering tax incentives, and world-class infrastructure, has given another big push to this digital drive. Ashish Mehta, COO of Innovation Mission Punjab (IMP), a state-supported public-private initiative conceptualised in 2020, says, 'One start-up can generate 10 jobs'. With Rs 10 crore in state funding, IMP has facilitated Rs 33 crore in start-up investment and created 4,000–5,000 jobs in the last three years, he adds. Adding to the momentum, the Centre has committed $1.2 billion to upgrade Mohali's Semi-Conductor Laboratory (SCL), an autonomous MeitY body led by Dr Kamaljeet Singh, signalling strong national backing for Mohali's high-tech ambitions. Start-ups, scale and social impact Global outsourcing firm TaskUs, blockchain pioneer Antier, AI road-safety innovator Road Athena, and digital services company QORWeb are among the plethora of companies redefining the start-up narrative in the city. 'We call ourselves disruptors in the outsourcing market,' says Sapna Bhambani, India head of TaskUs, which now employs over 4,000 people in Mohali, the company's second-largest India site. Bhambani says cities like Mohali offer a unique mix of ambition, humility and opportunity. 'We're not here just to run an operation, we're here to build people. Mohali gives us that canvas.' For Antier, which began operations in 2004 and now employs over 700 people, Mohali offered the right ecosystem from the start. 'We didn't have to be in Bengaluru or Hyderabad to build world-class blockchain products,' says CEO Vikram Singh. 'What we had was clarity of vision, deep execution, and a hunger to build from where we belonged.' Singh, who is self-taught and not a college graduate, is often cited by IMP as a symbol of Mohali's grassroots ambition. 'Stories like his show the power of local determination,' an IMP representative says. Start-ups like Road Athena have shown what's possible with the right support. The AI-based road condition and safety platform grew over 500 per cent year-on-year, bagging accolades from NASSCOM and a World Bank showcase. 'They came to us at MVP stage,' IMP notes. 'Now they've raised Rs 2 crore under the HPCL programme.' 'We didn't need Silicon Valley to build what we're building,' says Road Athena's co-founder Prerna Kalra. 'We needed engineers who could solve local problems, and a city that understood ambition. Mohali gave us both.' QORWeb co-founder Manpreet Singh, who started his digital marketing firm with a single desktop, now has a global client base. 'People used to think talent only came from metros. Mohali just needed to be seen,' he says. Infrastructure that delivers Mohali now boasts infrastructure that rivals India's biggest tech centres. The Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) Mohali facility features a Tier-III data centre with 10,000 sq ft server space and 160-rack capacity. In the financial year 2020–2021, the region exported IT/ITeS services worth Rs 1,471 crore to clients across the US, Canada, Norway and Australia. Facilities like Quark City, BESTECH Towers, and the upcoming IT city project have made plug-and-play workspaces easily accessible. For Road Athena, having a local data centre made a tangible difference. 'We handle massive volumes of video and image data. Being close to the infrastructure cut our cloud costs and sped up analysis,' Kalra says. Talent that transforms The city's rise is also powered by a strong talent pipeline. Institutions like IIT Ropar, IISER, Panjab University, PEC, Chitkara and Chandigarh University have fed the region with engineers trained in AI, blockchain, full-stack development and more. 'We've trained hundreds of engineers from Tier-2 and Tier-3 backgrounds, they're now leading blockchain deployments worldwide,' says Antier's Vikram Singh. Manpreet Singh of QORWeb adds, 'I've trained people who had zero tech background. Today they're leading projects for US clients. That's the real story of Mohali, it's not just producing talent, it's transforming lives.' Through its PINE (Punjab Innovation and Networking Ecosystem) platform, IMP connects start-ups with 27 incubators and facilitates prototyping, 3D printing and industry-academia collaborations. Its Campus Ambassador Programme reaches over 70 colleges, embedding entrepreneurship into the curriculum. 'There's no dearth of capability here,' says Bhambani of TaskUs. 'We've been able to build high-performing teams from scratch. People just needed a platform that believed in them.' The road ahead 'In the last three years, we've worked with over 6,000 entrepreneurs and changed the orbit of more than 1,000 start-ups,' says IMP's Mehta. 'There's an ecosystem here. Everyone is building something. Everyone wants to stay.' As India's digital economy decentralises, Mohali may no longer be an alternative. It may just be the advantage. The author is an intern with The Indian Express
