I've been thinking a lot about how quickly AI is changing everything, from our beliefs to our way of life. AI is all around us now, affecting our daily lives, choices, and even what we think is true. It impacts both individuals and established infrastructures.
Qadri’s research highlights several ways generative AI introduces serious ethical and societal risks, including political propaganda and media weaponization, social engineering and psychological manipulation, and economic and legal impacts of synthetic media. In the Real or Fake podcast by KRQE, guest spoeakers Melanie Moses and Sonia Rankin of UNM see AI as both thrilling and risky. Similar to our class discussions, Moses and Rankin see AI as possibly biased and misleading, but it sounds so convincing that it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not, and warning us that AI technology can not just keep spreading without any control. It is up to us to understand what AI can achieve, where it falls short, and how it gradually alters what we trust, whether it is information, companies, or even each other.
AI is not just about the technology itself, rather the ethics and how it all affects us as humans. AI is forcing us to rethink how we do things, from schooling to what we even consider real. Using the value of money, the speakers linked AI's potential to construct fake individuals to fake realities, underlining that the concern is not lying, but the erosion of trust, which is more damaging than what is being put out there.
There is an a need for us to slow down, to think things through, and point out the fakes when we spot them. How does this work in school settings? Sometimes spotting fakes is easily said than done. But again as fakes come like wolves in sheep clothing. Moses and Rankin threw out the idea that we need to experiment and see what the limits of these AI tools are, while still staying connected to tactile learning (hands-on learning and real-world experiences). Afterall, school should not just be about getting quick answers. It is about the process of learning: learning how to think, ask questions, and be creative.
At the same time, there's a lot of potential here. AI could make learning better, boost creativity, and show us new things we never thought about. But to shape that future and control how AI impacts us, we need to decide what kind of world we want to create with it. People will always want something real, those with a human touch in it: real voices, real art, real relationships. What we need right now is to use these tools wisely, stay informed, and speak up about how we want them to change. There are things to be careful about, but there's also a lot to be excited about. With AI, we just need to pay attention to both.
Some videos I found on the internet about misinformation, fake news and deepfakes:
Reflective Question:
When AI can create things that look real, what human skills and learning experiences should schools focus on to keep learning meaningful and authentic?
Great question and one I think is at the heart of AI in education. Since you framed it by talking about creating things, I think it begins with agency. When a 5 year old writes a story or draws a picture, its value is that it was done by them. This I suppose is true for everyone but a 5 year old is better at expressing pride and joy when they have created something. In that respect, their parents and friends share not only in the actual product but in knowing how much it means to the creator. This isn't a full response but I guess one aspect of it.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteThanks for sharing your thoughts, Dean. Reminds me of one of my Grade 5 students in Hong Kong who wrote an essay about how schooling gradually killed her imagination and creativity. (I still keep the photos of her essay.)
DeleteHer writing stayed with me because it reflected how easily student agency can be diminished when learning focuses more on outcomes than on meaning. I believe that whether we use AI or not, preserving learners’ ownership of the process is essential. Like the 5 year-old you described, the value of learning lies in knowing that it came from one’s own thinking and experience.I beleive that schools in an AI-rich world need to be intentional in protecting the space for agency, reflection, and personal connection as these are things that remain deeply human.
Hi Kris, thank you for the insightful post. When AI is so good at generating answers, our schools should seek to develop student’s innate qualities such as values, judgements, and purpose. These elements help a learner to think and reflect while navigating the world, and this prepares them for the drastic change in the near future, where AI becomes more prominent. Lastly, I believe that education isn’t meaningful because of what it produces but the learning process. Having successful test takers will not help students adapt in a rapidly changing world.
ReplyDeleteHi Kris, this post is from me. See you next class.
DeleteThanks, Sun. I agree that the learning process is more important that the product we require students to provide. This makes me thing sometimes my practice of the ensuring that students meet deadlines, resulting to them leaning towards using AI in completing their work. Students have innate qualities, and it's up to us educators to maximize them and use them into perspective.
Delete