Facilitating the understanding of Physics: Risks and benefits of Artificial Intelligence in an African context

Recently, we showed the benefits of an open inquiry approach in quantum physics instruction for college students, as compared to traditional lecture-based teaching strategies. Higher levels of thinking abilities can be achieved by “driving” the students to personally experience the world and struggle for finding solutions to real problems, involving them in highly interesting learning projects and strongly motivating them to actively participate in the scientific endeavour. The challenges presented by the emergence of Artificial Intelligence are major societal issues to the academic culture. The present communication aims to discuss the role that Artificial Intelligence could have in facilitating (or not) the comprehension of Physics, highlighting risks and benefits in an African context.