FTT - What Our Students Need To Know About Artificial Intelligence

 What Our Students Need To Know About Artificial Intelligence

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

If you have seen the movie War Games with a young Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy, you will recall that the computer comes to the conclusion that "the only winning move is not to play." If you have not seen it, sorry for the spoiler but that movie is 40 years old so I felt safe dropping the ending here. It's still definitely worth watching, and I'm pretty sure you can stream it from Amazon video. Anyway, we are now at at inflection point with AI in education. We can work to ban, discourage, and attach negativity to AI use or we can learn and teach about it, and explain to students how to be responsible with it because it is most definitely not going anywhere. To simply not play is not an option here. 

What is AI? As you have seen in previous posts, artificial intelligence is a catchall term for technology that mimics human intelligence to perform tasks and iteratively improve. Subfields include machine learning and deep learning. AI is only as good as its data set and there are plenty of examples of why we should be critical of results and especially aware of bias that exists in all data.

I found this video to be extremely interesting.

But while we are learning and growing our capacity to understand AI and its impact on the world, we need to simultaneously teach and model responsible AI use for our students. Furthermore, just as you need to know how to effectively enter search terms into a search engine, or recognize when a spellcheck or grammar check should be ignored, in order for our students to use AI effectively, there are certain skills they need to learn.  We want our students to be able to use AI to solve real problems and build useful solutions. 

Here are the top skills needed to help our students be purposeful and responsible with effective AI use:

1. Good Output Starts With Good Input- Know How To Effectively Ask

In order to get the output you want, you need to know how to make a precise input request. Just like with our Google Drive, Gmail, or spreadsheets, if you are not good at searching you will be frustrated that you can't find what you are looking for or get the results you want. 

2. Critically Assess Outputs

Outputs cannot be blindly trusted and our students need to be able to evaluate the responses they receive. I can imagine the educational shift and outrage when students were allowed to bring calculators to school. The math teachers must have thought they would soon be out of a job. Of course, we now understand that when you use a calculator you need to evaluate the answer that you see and ask yourself, "Does this make sense?" Is this the type of response I am expecting? How does this response fit in with my knowledge of the question? Thinking critically is key to utilizing AI as a problem-solving tool. 

3. Know What's Underneath The Hood: Basic Data Literacy

The AI tool is only as good as the data set that it is using. Students must have a working knowledge of data analysis, data collection, and visualization. AI relies on very large data sets and in order to make proper use of AI our students need to know about the data being used.

4. Know What An Algorithm Is

Basically understood as a set of rules or patterns for problem-solving, our brains use algorithms constantly and AI tools rely on them. Our students need to have a familiarity with the fundamentals of how algorithms work and their potential applications.

5. Understand Problem-Solving

AI is all about solving complex problems. Developing problem-solving skills, critical thinking, and the ability to decompose problems into manageable parts is crucial. Our students need to know how to zoom in as well as zoom out of a big problem, when they understand the pieces that make up the whole, they will be better equipped to use AI well.

6. Ethics 

Understanding the ethical implications of AI and data use is essential. Students should be aware of privacy concerns and responsible AI development.  We can teach ethics while not having all the answers. Let's work together with our students to discuss and figure out how to manage the ethical implications of AI use both in and out of the classroom. 

Want more information about AI in education? Feel free to reach out!