[The Editors' Verdict] College Admissions in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Despite the severe situation of the spread of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19), the 2021 College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) was held simultaneously last week, one month later than usual. Examinees risked their lives to take the CSAT for college admission. So, in the ongoing era of the 4th Industrial Revolution and artificial intelligence (AI), should college admissions continue in this way?

In March 2016, Google's AI Go program AlphaGo shocked us all by defeating Lee Sedol 9-dan 4 to 1. Although we had known that AI had beaten humans in chess games and quiz contests before, Go was thought to be impossible for AI to beat professional Go players because the number of possible moves is almost infinite. In the match four years ago, Lee Sedol 9-dan still won one game, but since then AlphaGo has evolved into AlphaGo Zero, and now it is impossible for humans to beat AlphaGo Zero.

In Japan, a project is underway to admit an AI robot to the University of Tokyo. This project started in 2011 and involved over 100 researchers aiming to have an AI robot pass the University of Tokyo entrance exam by 2021. The current development level achieves about the top 20% scores, but to pass the University of Tokyo, one must be at the highest level. The AI currently excels in math and memorization subjects but scores lower in subjects requiring reading comprehension such as Korean and English. However, recently, through deep learning, its sentence decoding ability has greatly improved, and it is reportedly achieving excellent results in English and Korean fields that require reading comprehension. We should closely watch whether the AI robot can pass the University of Tokyo by 2021. One thing made clear by this project is that the core competency distinguishing AI and human intelligence is precisely 'reading comprehension.'

Developing reading comprehension is very important for today's youth living in the AI era to survive without losing their jobs to AI. Furthermore, futurists predict that the world will be divided into 'people dominated by AI' and 'people who dominate AI.' To become a person who dominates AI, reading comprehension alone is not enough; creativity is also essential.

What does it mean to get a perfect score on the currently implemented objective five-choice CSAT in the AI era? What does entering a good university with excellent CSAT scores guarantee for the future? Besides ranking universities nationwide with a single standard, what other meaning does the CSAT have?

Nevertheless, our children have been attending academies day and night, regardless of cost, from kindergarten for college entrance exams. One famous asset management company CEO argued on a broadcast that investing all academy fees in stocks through installment savings for a child's future is a much better choice. Our youth need to develop reading comprehension and creativity, but is it possible with the current CSAT method? We all know it is impossible. Yet, things are just passing by as they are. It is time to change. The 4th Industrial Revolution led by AI and robots will bring tremendous shocks to human society. The 4th Industrial Revolution is literally a revolution.

College admission methods must also change revolutionarily. Nothing can be expected from a game where hundreds of thousands of examinees answer the same questions correctly. To foster creativity, diversity must be a prerequisite. To increase diversity, the current CSAT should be completely abolished, and each university should independently set various admission criteria and methods with their own characteristics and select students autonomously. The storm of the 4th Industrial Revolution is approaching. We must not remain still but revolutionarily change the college admission system.

Im Juhwan, Advisor, Korea Information and Communication Industry Research Institute