Imagine a stuffed animal that can record children and transmit the recording to their parents. If the child is getting bullied at school, the parent will find out.
But is it ethical to record one鈥檚 own child without their knowledge or consent? What about other people鈥檚 children? Teachers? Does it matter how old the children are?
Eamon Marchant, a STEM teacher and technology coordinator at Whitney High School in Cerritos, Calif., presents quandaries like this to his students all the time.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 the whole period, if not a couple periods, taken up by their discussions,鈥� Marchant said June 27 during a virtual panel discussion that was part of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference.
Marchant is one of more than 1,500 糖心动漫vlog participating in ISTE鈥檚 , which provides 糖心动漫vlog and students with tools to develop AI-related projects and learn about the increasingly complex role of artificial intelligence in society. The June 27 panel focused on the importance of training students to look at AI through the lens of equity and ethics.
Here are a few ways 糖心动漫vlog suggest doing that: Get educated on the prevalence of A.I.鈥攁nd biases within it
To some, artificial intelligence feels like a foreign concept, or science fiction. But in reality, panelists said, it鈥檚 already everywhere, from algorithms that suggest television shows and music, to search engines that surface Internet content.
Biases are quite prevalent within AI as well. Women using the Apple Credit Card were than men with comparable credit scores; Twitter鈥檚 image cropping tool , facial recognition software used for school security . For further reading on this subject, panelist Molly Dettmann, a teacher and librarian at Norman Public Schools in Oklahoma, recommends reading Safiya Umoja Noble鈥檚 book .
Students can be teachers, too
Dettmann uses Jamboard to show students examples of online misinformation, like that rigorously transpose one person鈥檚 face with another person鈥檚 voice. Then she asks them to bring up their own examples.
鈥淭hey found all types of things I never even thought about that I now reuse in other lessons,鈥� she said.
This approach works well for students who prefer to generate their own learning experiences rather than having teachers lead their own approach, said Noora Aabed, a recent high school graduate who provided the panel with a student perspective.
鈥淓ven if a teacher did tell me what to do, I would probably not listen,鈥� she said.
That doesn鈥檛 necessarily mean teachers should not be leading lessons, Aabed said. During her time with the program for Black and brown students, she watched as a teacher with no coding experience led several seminars on coding.
鈥淭his technology is growing or changing, and that means learning isn鈥檛 only for the students,鈥� Aabed said. 鈥淵our frame of reference won鈥檛 be enough to service future generations.鈥�
Start early teaching students how to use AI ethically
Students don鈥檛 need to know the meaning of the word ethics to start absorbing the concept as it relates to technology, said Pattie Morales, technology innovation specialist at the private Indian Community School in Franklin, Wis. She led a second-grade class project to create a chatbot that can distinguish between kind and mean comments online.
Incorporating artificial intelligence into other classes can be a savvy way to infuse students鈥� learning experiences with the tools they鈥檒l need to navigate today鈥檚 high-tech world.
Marchant said he often wonders how much of his writing is his own, thanks to auto-complete tools that finish his sentences for him. That kind of question would fit well in an English or social studies class, he said.
Ultimately, he said, educating students on the ethics of artificial intelligence is valuable because 鈥渘o matter where they are in the computer science pipeline, using it or making it, they need to be able to make their own decisions about how to use it.鈥�
Panelists also recommended checking out resources from the , the , , and the .
ISTE registrants can watch the .
