Is it the Responsibility of Educators to Teach Students How to Use AI Effectively and Ethically? Maybe Not

I realize the AI-in-Education-Evangelical Movement and faithful will find that which I post here, questions posed on the edge of blasphemy, but this uncritical acceptance of Silicon Valley’s latest begs some serious questions and needs a counter-viewpoint.

Why is it every time Silicon Valley dumps one of its new inventions on the world it is suddenly the . ' responsibility of educators to sanitize that technology’s use by teaching students how to use it ethically? Why is there absolutely no responsibility for these companies to engineer safe-to-use products to begin with? Perhaps, because Silicon Valley keeps dumping these products on us, they should pay a special education tax to pay for all the work educators have to engage in to put out the fires generated by these so-called “innovative” products.

In the mid-1990s, at the emergence of the internet, teachers were tasked and admonished to adopt and teach students how to use the internet ethically and effectively. With all the garbage on there now, it can rather be easy. Just treat it like teachers treated the National Enquirer in the 70s: they told us to simply don’t believe what you read in those things.

Fast forward to the advent of social media. Again, we as educators were told that we have to adopt social media in order to better communicate and teach students how to use it ethically and correctly. This quickly became impossible because these companies, like Facebook, engineered their products through their algorithms to promote the bull - - - -, and the most outrageous over anything else like the boring truth, all for the sake of click-profits. 

Has anyone stopped to think that perhaps it is time to hold these Silicon Valley companies responsible for the products they foist upon the world? Europe is starting to get it. I realize in a country that has the “guns-don’t-kill-people-people-kill-people” mentality this is blasphemy. After all social media products don’t spew misinformation and nonsense, people do, even though social media is an engineered megaphone for that.

Now, AI is foisted on the world, with its engineered flaws for potential abuse and ability to generate  nonsense, and we are allowing companies like OpenAI to shift responsibility to educators in a sanitation project to make their products more useful, ethical and safer.

In my opinion, that is twisted ethical thinking. Why not make these tech companies responsible for their flawed products to begin with instead of letting them focus on padding profits and CEO salaries?

Maybe instead of AI sanitation for these companies we need to choose purposely to not engage or participate until they clean up their act. That is also a perfectly ethical choice too.

#AIEducation #AILeadershio #AI #ChatGPT #OpenAI