This week we focused on learning about generative AI, how to optimized generative AI use and had some discussion about the potential risks/benefits to using AI in education. I explored Perplexity during out in class practice time.
I think the largest limitation with generative AI is accuracy and the spread of misinformation. I also think the bias within AI can be potentially very dangerous and extremely limiting. While bias exists in all of us and can create many issues in day to day human interactions I think it could be generally worse in AI since AI lacks any emotional intelligence or ability to critically think. For example you may hold an internal bias against the colour blue, you absolutely despise the colour. In this scenario you are teaching someone who’s favourite colour is blue and wears a blue shirt everyday. As a reasonable adult with the ability to critically think, you wouldn’t mistreat or unfairly mark that students work because of their shirt but if an AI model was trained on your bias it may do those things or worse. Generative AI also currently uses a lot of valuable resources and energy which is expensive and possibly unsustainable.
At this point in time I’m not sure what grades I want to teach but I’m leaning towards younger ages and my Link2 Practice classroom is a grade 1/2 split. I don’t think that age of students would benefit much from using AI in class but as their teacher I might. I could use AI to help develop lesson plans, create lessons for TOCs, help find behavioural/classroom management strategies for students, and find formatting for different assignments/newsletter/etc. I also think AI could come in handy when explaining brainstorming to students, however you run the risk of under developing a student’s learned ability to brainstorm without the use of AI.
Personally I haven’t found generative AI to be very helpful throughout my education. I don’t remember hearing about it or using it in high school and once I started university it was still pretty new and all my professors scared me out of even exploring it. Last year (my second year of uni) I tried it a couple times but I couldn’t figure out how to use it well, and it never gave me the answers I was looking for so I stopped using it. This seemed to be the common experience shared by the members of my learning pod, none of us had had much experience or luck in using generative AI. Until today ChatGPT was the only generative AI model any of us had tried. I hope to develop my skills around using generative AI but I also feel very uncertain about AI and it makes me a bit uneasy. I fear what the future of AI is and how it will affect the world and humanity generally. I think it’s a pretty average feeling to be a bit uneasy in the face of big tech advancements but it’s also important to stay informed. Today’s class developed my skill and comfortability with generative AI and how to use different models.
Image from Pixabay