The growing pushback to the overuse of technology in schools has moved beyond cellphones and Chromebooks to artificial intelligence.
In September, the nation’s two largest districts—the New York City Public Schools and the Los Angeles Unified system—hit the brakes on student use of AI tools. The Los Angeles school system’s policy restricts use of the technology for all students. New York prohibits it in elementary and middle school but allows limited use in high schools.
Yet many proponents of the technology argue that because it seems likely to reshape many aspects of society, today’s students need to have AI literacy to prepare for a world in which the platforms will be used regularly in careers and everyday life.
On Oct. 5, OpenAI, the creator of the generative AI tool ChatGPT, hosted a panel of experts in technology, learning, and youth mental health to discuss how teens can use AI safely.
The discussion was moderated by Chris Lehane, the chief global affairs officer for OpenAI, and the panelists included:
- Arthur C. Evans Jr., the chief executive officer and executive vice president of the American Psychological Association;
- Kate Ruane, the director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit that advocates for online civil liberties.
- Mathilde Cerioli, the chief scientist for everyoneAI, a nonprofit focused on ensuring that AI serves children and young people; and
- Chuck Melley, the senior vice president of policy, advocacy, and communities for CodeAI (formerly Code.org), a nonprofit focused on helping students build AI literacy.
Here are some of the takeaways from their discussion.
Teens need to learn how to use AI responsibly
AI brings great opportunities for supporting student learning—as long as parameters are applied, Melley said.
“It can help them deepen their thinking, as long as it doesn’t give them the answer,” he said. “It has the opportunity, if used correctly, to really help them think through challenges, think through computational issues, and how to get the best out of a dataset.”
But students need to learn how to use these tools responsibly, and schools are best positioned to teach students those skills, the panelists said.
Banning AI tools is not the answer, Ruane said.
“How do we actually teach kids how to become experts while using this technology and become experts in the technology itself, as they age?” Ruane said.
“We have to be integrating support for kids’ education throughout their life cycle,” Ruane said. “I don’t think bans necessarily accomplish that, so let’s think about it a little bit differently and in a more supportive way that guides them along the process.”
Lawmakers need to help, by creating AI literacy standards and funding professional development opportunities for teachers on how to use AI responsibly, Melley said.
AI tools need designs that reflect students’ development
AI tools for kids need to be designed differently because students’ brains are still developing, said Cerioli.
While research is still emerging about the effects of AI on kids’ development, there is already a lot of research about what children are experiencing. That research should inform software developers in determining what design choices will be good for kids and what will be harmful, she said.
Adolescents are in a very sensitive developmental stage. They’re more attuned to social cues and rewards; they’re in a stage where they need to go out into the world and explore and make connections outside of family, she said.
The role AI plays in adolescents’ learning during this period could “either support, increase autonomy, and get them to mastery, or [on the other hand] they learn around AI but then if you remove AI, they don’t know how to do it,” Cerioli said.
The question, Cerioli said, is how do we design and adapt AI tools based on a child’s age to make sure it’s safe and developmentally appropriate? There are many organizations working together to answer that question, she added.
Industry leaders, researchers, and policymakers can’t work in isolation
Designing AI tools that are safe for kids also requires collaboration between tech companies, lawmakers, researchers, educators, parents, and students, the panelists said.
Those groups shouldn’t repeat the mistakes they made with social media, Evans said.
“One of the things [the scientific community] learned [about social media] is that we needed to have acted much sooner, and we should have acted on the evidence that we had,” he said.
With AI, “we can’t sit back and wait,” Evans said. Researchers and industry need to work together to get the data necessary to examine the ways tech platforms and tools are affecting kids, he said.
Policymakers should think about children’s safety first, Cerioli said. It’s easier to relax regulations as we learn more rather than the other way around, she said. Policymakers should look at incentive responsible behavior in the corporate sector.
“We have a mental health crisis for teenagers, so parents are looking at [AI] companies,” Cerioli said. “What if the competition was who gets to be the safest? Who gets to be the product we pick because we know that’s where we’re comfortable putting our kids?”
