Topic 6 – Provincial EdTech ProD Day
I chose to attend the Artificial Intelligence Lessons seminar this morning because I am very interested in learning different perspectives on AI’s place in the classroom. In the session we talked about how AI works, we discussed that it breaks data into the smallest understandable chunks called tokens, and puts a probability on it to do with what word comes next for responses. My background knowledge with the inner workings of AI is fairly extensive, and I understand how computers ‘think’ but I liked the way that Cari described it, it was very understandable for everyone.
We also discussed the ethics and privacy of AI tools, a question posed was who owns the things that AI creates? Is it the prompter? and does AI train off of our personal data? Cari explained that some AI trains off of personal data, and it has happened to her because AI knows about her blog and what kind of work she does.
AI also hallucinates, which was mentioned during the session today. I know that these hallucinations are bad if they are blindly trusted, but I also think that anything on the internet should be analyzed with a fine tooth comb. Perhaps using these hallucinations to help teach students about AI literacy would make for a really awesome lesson that students would have fun with!
Then we talked about the environmental impact of AI, with the stress that balance is important. An example that was given was that buying the newest I-phone every year is bad for the environment as well, and when talking about environmental damage we shouldn’t focus on only one aspect. The Cari mentioned that Finland is using the heat energy that data centers produce to heat homes and businesses, I think that that is a great idea, especially in colder climates because energy can be hard to come by, and if we have a method of creating energy with the biproducts of computer centers why not use it! It is much more green than oil and gas anyways.
Finally we discussed AI literacy lessons, Cari said that the goal is to teach 1 per month and she kindly provided the slide deck to us and said we could share it with anyone, so I have pasted the link below. She has been teaching these lessons in her district and she says they have gone over well because they are geared towards helping kids/teachers learn about AI and not tell them that they can’t use it.
In my previous post about AI I went over the benefits as well as the downsides, I still think that the pro’s outweigh the con’s and that if we tell students they can’t use something (it was wikipedia for me, and calculators for my dad) then they will just use it sneakily, and not know how to use it to their biggest advantage. Teaching students AI literacy has become extremely important since the beginning of AI, I think that showing them how to use the tool effectively will help them in the long run, and diminish some of the downsides. It is my belief that using AI properly does not prevent critical thinking, but can enhance it in some cases, and why not give our students the leg up for their future, that is our job after all.
see the slide deck for Cari’s AI lessons here.