Nemorin, S., Vlachidis, A., Ayerakwa, H. M., & Andriotis, P. (2023). AI hyped? A horizon scan of discourse on artificial intelligence in education (AIED) and development. Learning, Media and Technology, 48(1), 38-51.
- AI Tech policies could potentially be another form of western imperialism since the West is making up the rules governing AI usage in industry.
- AI Tech is not inherently inert – its use takes people and turns them into data that can (and will be) exploited.
Nemorin et al. (2023) changed my view of AI use because there are many implications to those who make the rules shaping the narrative, which will inherently erase people as it collects all the data it can from them; that data will be used to change the world.
Sofia, M., Fraboni, F., De Angelis, M., Puzzo, G., Giusino, D., & Pietrantoni, L. (2023). The impact of artificial intelligence on workers’ skills: Upskilling and reskilling in organisations. Informing Science: The International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline, 26, 39-68.
- AI use requires workers to be skilled and trained critical thinkers, collaborators, and problem solvers in order to effectively leverage AI to maximize potential in the workspace.
- Humans have unique skills that are not replicable by AI (yet – I mean, I have seen Battlestar Galactica and AI could become sentient at some point) and they have to use AI to free up time to work within skillsets AI cannot replicate.
Sofia et al (2023) have a theory that functions on the idea that skilled workers need to develop new skills, which rely being educated in critical thinking, collaboration and problem solving – but in a society that increasingly diminishes the value of those skills, AI may not be as helpful as imagined in the future.
Touretzky, D., Gardner-McCune, C., Martin, F., & Seehorn, D. (2019, July). Envisioning AI for K-12: What should every child know about AI?. In Proceedings of the AAAI conference on artificial intelligence (Vol. 33, No. 01, pp. 9795-9799).
- AI researchers need to make their work available and accessible to K-12 teachers and students in intellectually appropriate ways.
- Students across the K-12 spectrum are capable of and should be using and evaluating AI tools as part of their education.
Touretzky et al (2019) reaffirm what I have been hearing as higher ed administrator for years: kids today are preparing for jobs that don’t even exist yet and will need skills we don’t have yet – by providing them the time and space to experiment with known technology, they’ll be more flexible in learning new skills in the future.
Park, C. S.-Y., Kim, H., & Lee, S. (2021). Do less teaching, more coaching: Toward critical thinking for ethical applications of artificial intelligence. Journal of Learning and Teaching in Digital Age, 6(2), 97-100.
- AI has the huge potential to change classroom teaching, but educators have to teach students to think critically when using AI
- There are many ethical implications, that if not considered, could undermine the educational goal of critical thinking
Park et al (2023) emphasize that educators need to teach the implications of AI in relationship to critical thinking along side the content.
Adding in ideas from Peers
Susan Lindsay pointed out “AI in education” is driven by market interests. As an administrator in higher education, overseeing a writing department, I have been heavily involved in discussions related to AI use in the classroom and its implications. Community partners are now coming back to advisory boards and noting that they want to see graduates who are comfortable working alongside AI technology. This opens up a lot of questions for beginning writing classes, where critical thinking for academic thinking is often first introduced. The biggest question is: How can we teach students to think critically if we immediately embrace AI technology? It’s an interesting question to grapple and leads to larger questions about the intersection of education and jobs training. Until recently college education wasn’t about being trained for a specific job – it was about gaining the “soft skills” – critical thinking, broad base knowledge, and professional discourse foundations – to be successful on the job.
Martha Ducharme also commented along the same vein about adding AI instruction in to K-12 educational spaces. I had not viewed the recommendation Touretzky et al. (2019) made to teach AI technology along side other content, as a skill, as a “rip and replace” approach. But, I can see how it can be viewed that way. AI has come into play the same way the Internet did. Heck, I remember when I was in the 6th grade in the late 90s and we started learning basic computer programming – and it was seen as revolutionary for us to make a turtle avatar make geometric shapes across a screen. We had computer class twice a week, instead of once a week, and it was a disruption, but we still learned all the other basic subjects. So, I think it’s really important to prepare students from a young age to be comfortable with the foundational aspects of AI because by the time they enter the work force, AI won’t be novel, it will be integrated into life. And if we don’t make the AI visible, they won’t have the necessary skepticism to think critically about it as Park et al. (2021) warned about in their work.
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