Fledgling Thoughts on AI from Four Assigned Readings

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The following shares some thoughts on AI in education, based on four scholarly papers on the subject. The content below includes two big ideas that stood out per article, followed by one(ish) sentence on how it changed what I think of AI or how it might apply to my work. Truth be told, I have done very little reading in AI, so nearly everything I read changed my thinking. The reflections below represent the concepts that stood out most to me.

Nemorin, S., Vlachidis, A., Ayerakwa, H. M., & Andriotis, P. (2023). AI hyped? A horizon scan of discourse on artificial intelligence in education (AIED) and development. Learning, Media and Technology, 48(1), 38-51.

SUMMARY: The study seeks to understand how the AI ecosystem might be implicated in a form of knowledge production which reifies particular kinds of epistemologies over others. Using text mining and thematic analysis, this paper offers a horizon scan of the key themes that have emerged over the past few years during the AI-Ed debate.

• The following is a paraphrase quote: Despite the consensus that AI should be ethical, there is also disagreement on what comprises ethical AI, and the ethical criteria, technical standards and protocols necessary for its implementation. The values attached to many of these systems are deeply intertwined with the values of those who create it, and these do not necessarily translate to all contexts and traditions.  “Intercultural information ethics scholar Pak-Hang Wong warn, there is a danger of dominance of ‘Western’ ethics in AI design … to the exclusion of other value systems…” With this in mind, when AI systems designed external to the context within which they are to be introduced, whose knowledge becomes privileged when said systems are fully integrated into education through policy and practice? This is especially important when thinking about education as a space where ideology is passed down (IEEE, 2018).
  REFLECTION: Whose knowledge is privileged? Terrifying?

• First of all is the design and development of resources to use education as a tool to contribute to poverty reduction. This trend hinges on the importance of education for national economic growth and development. …Education is not only seen as a good that nurtures human flourishing; it is also a sector from which significant profits can be made, especially in light of innovations in AI educational technologies. AI in education is a path to a global market share valued at US$1.1 billion in 2019, and it is expected to reach US$6 billion in 2024 and US$25.7 billion by 2030 (Holmes et al, 2021).
  REFLECTION: AI in education is driven by market interests, and the development of STEM skills has been tightly connected by many major international organizations to economic dominance. Why does this surprise me?

Sofia, M., Fraboni, F., De Angelis, M., Puzzo, G., Giusino, D., & Pietrantoni, L. (2023). The impact of artificial intelligence on workers’ skills: Upskilling and reskilling in organisations. Informing Science: The International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline, 26, 39-68.

SUMMARY: This paper aims to investigate the recent developments in research and practice on the transformation of professional skills by artificial intelligence (AI) and to identify solutions to the challenges that arise. Excellent paper!

• Before 2030, it is estimated that 375 million people (14% of the global workforce) may need to change jobs due to AI-related technological advancements. It is estimated that the share of key skills will change by 40% in the next five years, and 50% of all workers will need retraining and further education (World Economic Forum (WEF), 2020). Key skills that are expected to increase in importance by 2025 include technical skills critical for the effective use of AI systems and soft skills (also called transversal skills) such as critical thinking and analysis, problemsolving, and self-management (WEF, 2020).
• Artificial General Intelligence: AGI could have a significant impact on human skills in organisations, either by automating tasks currently requiring human intelligence and problem-solving abilities and the need for workers to acquire new skills or retrain for different roles, or by augmenting human intelligence and problem-solving abilities, leading to increased productivity and efficiency, as well as the opportunity for workers to focus on more complex tasks requiring higher-level thinking.
• Even if the scope of these tasks and the intelligence required can vary from job to job, as AI has pushed back mechanical labour, humans will need to focus on tasks that AI is unlikely to take on, namely those that require “thinking” and “feeling” skills (Huang & Rust, 2018; Huang et al., 2019).
  REFLECTION: Especially in medical diagnosis,I can see how AI could help a service provider synthesize the massive amount of information available that is impossible to keep in one’s mind at all times, especially staying up to date on new research. AI can serve as a cognitive assistant while the human person can focus on the feeling skills at work—compassion, care, warmth, connection.
• AI can help organizations automate some processes, but employees still need to use their creativity to come up with new ideas, think outside the box, and solve problems that AI systems cannot. AI systems can save time by automating or speeding up the time-consuming or repetitive low-level tasks, leaving employees to use their brainpower to focus on tasks requiring creativity, innovation, empathy, or other qualities that are unique to humans.
  REFLECTION: I hadn’t thought through some of the potential benefits of this, though I do think that sometimes it’s good to have those mindless tasks to prime the mind for bigger, more creative endeavors. The human brain is not typically able to be creative 100% of the time. The balance of mindless tasks fills the gap and helps make the “non creative” time continue to be productive.

Touretzky, D., Gardner-McCune, C., Martin, F., & Seehorn, D. (2019, July). Envisioning AI for K-12: What should every child know about AI?. In Proceedings of the AAAI conference on artificial intelligence (Vol. 33, No. 01, pp. 9795-9799).

SUMMARY: This article presents the findings of a joint task for on AI in education as presented at The Thirty-Third AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence in 2018. According to and implied in the report: Because AI is the newest disruptive technology that is shaping the future (and present) of AI (what many call “the fourth industrial revolution”), it is prudent for countries concerned with maintaining economic dominance to follow China’s lead and ensure that its citizens are educated about AI, both as users and potentially as developers. This document outlines 2018 US national guidelines for teaching AI to K-12 students made by a joint working group of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA).

• Understanding people is one of the hardest problems faced by intelligent agents. This includes tasks such as conversing in natural language, recognizing emotional states, and inferring intentions from observed behavior. Students should understand that while computers can understand natural language to a limited extent, at present they lack the general reasoning and conversational capabilities of even a child. In grades 3-5 students should be able to distinguish a chatbot from a human, and analyze natural language examples to determine which ones would be difficult for a computer to understand, and why.
  REFLECTION: Adults should too!
• “In grades 3-5 students should be able to distinguish a chatbot from a human, and analyze natural language examples to determine which ones would be difficult for a computer to understand, and why. In grades 6-8 students should be able to use parser demos to demonstrate syntactic parsing of sentences, and construct sentences that purely syntactic parsers will mishandle due to problems such as erroneous prepositional phrase attachment (e.g., ‘I pour syrup for pancakes from a bottle’).”
  INTERESTING: Human knowledge of grammar will still matter!

Deruty, E., Grachten, M., Lattner, S., Nistal, J., and Aouameur, C. (2022). On the Development and Practice of AI Technology for Contemporary Popular Music Production. Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval, 5(1), 35–49. DOI: https://doi. org/10.5334/tismir.100

SUMMARY: A team from Sony Computer Science Laboratories (CSL) in Paris provided recently developed Sony AI tools and prototypes to six artists. The artists applied the tools to music creation, and then shared feedback on what they liked and did not like, alongside observations on how it affected their creative process. The paper presented recommendations for the use of AI in contemporary popular music based on artist feedback.

• AI-generated ideas helped “break creative habits” and allowed the artist to “reflect on one’s own creative practice and aesthetic values.” This resonates with thinking on the nature of creativity, which has moved beyond seeing creativity as a function of individuals but rather stemming from interactions between individuals in a social environment according to conventions and attributes of a specific domain. This idea has important implications for teaching creative endeavors in an online setting, and points to the critical importance of finding ways to increase student-to-student interaction in creative projects through group work or other forms of cooperation and idea sharing.
  REFLECTION: What role can AI play in increasing student interaction… or… gasp… serving as a proxy for student interaction?

• Many issues may surround the use of authorship and creative ownership when using AI in-studio music creation. AI further complicates an issue that is already in play. “Composition” and “ownership” today is more complex than the traditional more linear view, which involves a single composer or artist(s) realizing their vision with the help of producers and engineers. Now, music is created in-studio and the final production emerges as a team effort of the musicians as well as the multiple individuals engaged in the production and editing process.
  REFLECTION: What happens when we add AI to the composition mix? Artists in this article expressed interest in having AI as a tool that they would incorporate into their creative process—but not replace it. Who benefits from the creation of an AI system that operates autonomously—creating music independently of any inputs from human artists?