Invited Lecture in Artificial Intelligence for Science and Society
Assessing Human Skills in the Age of AI
Speaker: Alina von Davier, Chief of Assessment at Duolingo
Date and time: Friday, March 20, 2026, 10:00 AM (registration from 9:30 AM)
Place: Czech Academy of Sciences, Národní 4, Prague 1, Conference Hall 205
Registration: Please register for the event via this survey.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming both scientific inquiry and its societal applications, reshaping how knowledge is generated, evaluated, and used. This presentation examines the role of AI in education and assessment as a case study of the broader opportunities and challenges AI presents for science and society. Focusing on language proficiency assessment, it illustrates how advances in machine learning, natural language processing, and generative AI enable more adaptive, scalable, and accessible measurement of complex human skills. AI-driven systems support personalized testing pathways, innovative task designs that better reflect real-world language use, and continuous quality monitoring at a scale previously unattainable. At the same time, the presentation emphasizes that scientific rigor and societal trust depend on maintaining strong theoretical foundations, transparent methodology, and robust validation practices. Human expertise and governance remain essential in defining constructs, interpreting evidence, and ensuring fairness, accountability, and ethical use. Situating AI-powered assessment within the wider landscape of AI in science, the presentation highlights the need for interdisciplinary collaboration among domain scientists, psychometricians, and AI researchers. More broadly, it argues that AI should be understood not as a replacement for human judgment, but as an augmentative technology that, when responsibly designed and governed, can advance scientific progress while promoting equity, access, and social benefit.
References:
von Davier, A. A. & Yan, D. (Eds.). (2026). Artificial intelligence in educational learning and assessment [Manuscript in preparation]. Springer.
Burstein, J., LaFlair, G. T., Yancey, K., von Davier, A. A., & Dotan, R. (2024). Responsible AI for test equity and quality:
The Duolingo English Test as a case study.
arXiv:2409.07476
Alina von Davier
Alina A. von Davier is a researcher, innovator, and an executive leader with over 20 years of experience in educational assessment. She is currently the Chief of Assessment at Duolingo, where she leads the Duolingo English Test research and development area. She is also the Founder and CEO of EdAstra Tech a service-oriented EdTech company. In 2022, she joined the University of Oxford as an Honorary Research Fellow, and Carnegie Mellon University as a Senior Research Fellow. In 2025, she was inducted as a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), in recognition of her outstanding contributions to educational research. Her current research interests involve developing novel approaches to test development using techniques incorporating AI, machine learning, data mining, and computational psychometrics. She is also interested in developing methodologies for measuring social and emotional skills, such as critical thinking, creative thinking and collaboration.
