Using the AI Bill of Rights to Guide Education’s use of AI and the European Commission's “Ethical Guidelines for Teaching and Learning” to Guide the Future of AI in Education Part 1 of 2

In October 2022, the “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights: Making Automated Systems work for the American People” was published. Though the guidelines pertain to the overall uses of AI, how AI impacts our lives, and areas of concern when looking at the full spectrum of AI, it points to direct implications for the K-12 setting, and specifically, special education. The framework sets forth five principles with the “core message gleaned… [being] that AI has transformative potential to improve Americans’ lives, and that preventing the harms of these technologies is both necessary and achievable” (p. 4). 

The principles addressed should not seem too foreign to any teacher, or person, who has interacted within the classroom setting, especially since the boom of devices such as computers in education. They include safe and effective systems, algorithmic discrimination protections, data privacy, notice and explanation, human alternatives, considerations, and fallback. To summarize, each of these:

1. Safe and Effective systems developed in collaboration with diverse communities to protect proactively from unintended harms of using an automated system (i.e. inappropriate or irrelevant data)
2. Algorithmic Discrimination Protections ensure that the AI will be designed in an equitable way that will not discriminate treatment of people based on race, sex, gender identity, disability, ethnicity, etc. 
3. Data Privacy in that you should assume that the information that is collected has built-in safeguards and that permission should be granted to collect, use, access, transfer, and delete data. 
4. Notice and Explanation ensure that you know that you are interacting with an automated system and how it impacts you and the outcome. 
5. Human Alternatives, Considerations, and Fallback provide the opportunity to, where appropriate, opt out of the use of AI. 

The AI Bill of Rights cites a predictive model that identified race as an indicator of student dropout at the university level. This led to advisors gearing students towards or away from specific majors, which directly violates the principle of algorithmic discrimination. More specifically related to students with disabilities, the National Disabled Law Students Association expressed concerns over the use of remote proctoring and the way in which AI flags allowable accommodations such as screen readers, dictation, and breaks as potentially suspicious, in a report from 2020. 

Perhaps even more familiar to schools is the concept of data privacy and the impact AI will have on how we maintain and ensure student safety. Beyond giving access to monitor and maintain student data such as school records, AI is responsible for the surveillance of both the physical and digital worlds. The impact of this surveillance and the accompanying evaluations is noted to be responsible for impacting self-confidence, due to the fact that they are always being watched and evaluated. Other critics report that AI will reduce the critical thinking skills of students. There is no clear understanding as to how this data is currently being used, coupled with the fact that we do not know how it will be used in the future, which can lead to discriminatory impacts. 

The use of these principles needs to be adapted for each context and has specific implications in the world of education where privacy, accessibility, and safety are amongst top concerns. We are already seeing adverse impacts of AI in the educational setting in areas such as the ability to develop higher-order thinking. Articles and blog posts in local and national news outlets are citing fears over cheating and plagiarism as reasons that AI is being banned from schools. But, the question facing teachers, teacher-educators, and researchers should not be “how do we ensure that AI has no place in the classroom?” but instead “how do we leverage AI to best prepare our students for the world they will live in”. 

The truth is, we are still learning about AI and how it will change our roles as researchers, teacher-educators, teachers, and students. And, with that, come some exciting possibilities. In an earlier CIDDL blog post on the topic of AI and term papers, Drs. Basham, Fulchini Scruggs, and Vasquez shared ways in which AI could be used to enhance or alter current assignments, a concept that Anne Bruder is using in her own classroom. A recent EdWeek article discussed how using ChatGPT can be used to make the lesson planning process faster for teachers and even craft emails and letters of recommendation. And, amidst a time where several districts are calling for the ban of AI technology, others are promoting teaching teachers and students to use it as a learning tool.