Triple-Entry Accounting and Other Secure Methods to Preserve User Privacy and Mitigate Financial Risks in AI-Empowered Lifelong Education

Abstract

Within the past five years, and as Artificial Intelligence (AI) increasingly pervades the academic and educational landscape, a delicate balance has emerged between leveraging AI’s transformative potential and safeguarding individual privacy, which needs to be carefully maintained. The preservation of user privacy entails severe financial risks via penalties for the violation of directives such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This manuscript examines three neoteric approaches to data privacy protection in AI-empowered lifelong education. The first method uses Triple-Entry Accounting (TEA) together with Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT); the second method uses a transaction Merkle tree that can be used as a “proof of existence” so that the users can safeguard their personal information; and the third approach examines the advantages and disadvantages of an offline AI-tutor multimodal model that can operate without internet access. Finally, the ethical implications of deploying such technologies are critically discussed, emphasizing the necessity of achieving privacy while retaining the human factor in education.