SAIL: AI Literacy, Ethics (as always), DALL-E, Pair Programming, Colonial AI
Hi all,
A few things of note in the world of AI and learning this week:
Here's a practical use for AI in the lives of students: cleaning their social media before seeking employment.
Ethical considerations of AI continue to gain attention. Which isn't really surprising when Alexa offers voices of dead relatives (with one researcher understating "I don’t feel our world is ready for user-friendly voice-cloning technology"), scientists condemn GPT-4chan (last week's "worst AI model"), robots are racist and sexist etc. While it might be interesting to have Albert Einstein or bell hooks to read their texts to students, concerns of voice and voice ownership may be future litigation spaces. Or we'll have to add to our wills "I want all voice imprints destroyed on death".
Speaking of ethics, Microsoft released an updated framework for building AI responsibly. Other big tech partners have similar frameworks. Considerations of environmental impacts are generally absent in these frameworks, even though that should be a significant element and one that will grow in importance as AI advances.
DALL-E has been getting attention. A simple prompting statement "fish riding a horse over the moon" will result in AI producing an image/art to (hopefully) capture your intent. Of course, this raises ethics issues.
A key goal of AI is to augment and support human cognition. Given the digital and code-based nature of our society and economy, it only makes sense that supporting programmers with AI Pair Programming improves how humans and AI team.
AI, like any tool/technology/ideology that remakes systems, excludes many voices: "AI is impoverishing the communities and countries that don’t have a say in its development". For educators, the dynamics of power and representation should figure prominently in their planning and deployment of AI, notably central questions of "who is impacted who has not been heard".
An interesting article on parents and children co-developing AI Literacy (pdf posted by lead author). AI literacy and leadership development in planning/resources/implementing AI are two key issues I addressed during an Intel panel last week. The lack of quality frameworks is both areas is concerning, especially when considering how "behind the scenes" AI deployment can be with parents/students/teachers having only limited input.
We (GRAILE) is hosting a webinar in a few hours on the Infrastructure for AI in Education. Free registration.
Enjoy the rest of the week!