Browsing by Author "Vacarelu, Marius"

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Artificial Intelligence and Higher Education Legal Limits
(Springer Nature, 2023) Vacarelu, Marius
Human knowledge has undergone a constant process of information accumulation—first about nature, then about space, and finally about most of the social processes in which a human being is involved during life. Obviously, not all this knowledge is exhaustive, but libraries are impressive witnesses to the work of so many generations of researchers and teachers, and no doubt we can appreciate it objectively as positive results in many areas. The evolution of knowledge has made a huge leap since the invention of printing, and from that moment, a growing category of people have access to knowledge about contemporary realities, as well as cultural and artistic “products”. Knowledge has become increasingly “popular” in the background, meaning that the price of access to culture and information about every day realities has dropped to a level easily reached by more than half of each country's population. The second great transformation brought by the human mind appeared at the time of the Internet creation, which today has been extended to the dimension of new technology, called artificial intelligence. In this new paradigm, education is about creating new directions of action, and as a result, changing the entire human society. Within this great transformation, higher education—carried out in universities—will play a fundamental role, and the legal limits of the activities that these huge research centers are doing well in turn influence the next decades of all nations and countries, with no exception.
Malicious use of artificial intelligence in political campaigns: Challenges for international psychological security for the next decades
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2023-06-10) Vacarelu, Marius
The generalization of Artificial Intelligence’s (AI) use in the following decades will create huge pressure on the voters’ mental security. The frequency of political campaigns—predominantly electoral—and globalization makes us face a real universalized political campaign, in which territorial boundaries matter less. AI has a rapidly increasing impact on how citizens seek, receive, impart, and access information in political campaigns and elections, especially through online platforms and social media networks. These platforms use AI as part of highly complex and opaque systems to curate content, resulting in a significant impact on freedom of expression. A wise legislator must understand that the strength of AI can collide with the reasoning processes of people, leading to serious disorders of the psyche—both individually and in groups—that can create dangerous behaviors in public space, disrupting important levels of society. Thus, it becomes necessary to study the effects that the malicious use of artificial intelligence will have on the psychology of people, as well as the general security of society and states, with the goal of creating a new international and national legal framework to prevent and sanction any AI use that is outside the moral limits stipulated by that framework.
The relevance of open educational resources for post-soviet higher education in the digital age
(Routledge, Taylor & Francis Inc., 2024) Dneprovskaya, Natalya; Shevtsova, Inessa; Vacarelu, Marius
The digital era has seen the rise of innovations such as online training platforms and digital toolkits for teaching and learning whilst at the same time open access initiatives are losing the attention of educators. The problem under consideration in this paper is the replacement of open educational resources (OER) with digital innovations in higher education (HE). The purpose of this study is to identify the relevance of OER to post-Soviet HE in the digital age. The research employed methods of descriptive analytics to process data on users' activities extracted from OER repositories with web-analytic apps. The survey was conducted among 441 lecturers to elucidate their request for access to and patterns of usage of digital OER. The findings confirmed the relevance of OER in contemporary education through the similarity of lecturers' experience worldwide. During the urgent transition to remote learning owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, OER helped lecturers access informed digital practices through appropriate methods and content. OER has thus retained its relevance against the backdrop of the emergence of digital innovations in HE. The international comparison of findings demonstrates the existence of a shared awareness of the importance of OER and similar drivers for OER production and usage.