OpenAI envisions teachers using its AI-powered tools to create interactive lesson plans and tutorials for students. But some educators are wary of technology – and its risk of getting out of control.
Today, OpenAI released a free online course designed to help K-12 teachers learn to bring ChatGPTthe company’s AI chatbot platform, into their classrooms. Created in collaboration with the non-profit organization Common Sense Media, with which OpenAI has active participation partnershipThe one-hour, nine-module program covers the basics of AI and its educational applications.
OpenAI says it has already deployed the course to “dozens” of schools, including the Agua Fria School District in Arizona, the San Bernardino School District in California, and the Challenger Schools charter school system. According to an internal company study, 98% of participants said the program offered new ideas or strategies they could apply to their jobs.
“Schools across the country are grappling with new opportunities and challenges as AI reshapes education,” Robbie Torney, senior director of AI programs at Common Sense Media, said in a statement . “With this course, we are taking a proactive approach to supporting and training frontline teachers and preparing for this transformation. »
But some educators don’t view the program as helpful — and think it might actually be misleading.
Lance Warwick, a sports professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, worries that resources like OpenAI’s will normalize the use of AI among educators unaware of the technology’s ethical implications. Although OpenAI’s course covers some of the limitations of ChatGPT, like this one I cannot fairly evaluate student workWarwick found the privacy and security modules “very limited” – and contradictory.
“In the sample prompts (given by OpenAI), one asks you to incorporate notes and comments from past assignments, while another asks you to create a prompt for an activity aimed at teaching about the Mexican Revolution ” Warwick noted. “In the next module on security, he asks you to never enter student data, and then he talks about inherent biases in generative AI and accuracy issues. I’m not sure these are compatible with the use cases.
Sin à Tes Souhaits, a visual artist and educator at the University of Arizona, says he has found AI tools useful for writing homework guides and other supplemental course materials. But he also says he’s concerned that OpenAI’s program doesn’t directly address how the company might exert control over content teachers create using its services.
“If educators create courses and courses on a program that gives the company the right to recreate and sell this data, that would be very destabilizing,” Tes Souhaits told TechCrunch. “I don’t know how OpenAI will use, package or sell anything generated by their models.”
In its terms of service, OpenAI states that it does not sell user data and that users of its services, including ChatGPT, own the results they generate “to the extent permitted by applicable law.” However, without additional assurances, Tes Souhaits is not convinced that OpenAI will not quietly change its policies in the future.
“For me, AI is like cryptography,” Tes Souhaits said. “It’s new, so it offers a lot of possibilities – but it’s also so deregulated that I wonder how much I would trust any guarantees.”
Late last year, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) pushed for governments to regulate the use of AI in education, including implementing age limits for users and safeguards around data protection and user privacy. But little progress has been made since then on these fronts – and on AI policy in general.
Tes Souhaits also disputes the fact that the OpenAI program, which OpenAI markets as a guide to “AI, generative AI and ChatGPT”, does not mention any AI tools other than OpenAI’s. “It feels like it reinforces the idea that OpenAI is an AI company,” he said. “It’s a smart idea for OpenAI as a company. But we already have a problem with these tech hubs – companies that have outsized influence because, as technology developed, they placed themselves at the center of innovation and became synonymous with the thing itself.
Josh Prieur, a teacher turned product manager at educational games company Prodigy Education, has a more optimistic view of OpenAI’s teacher outreach. Prieur says there are “clear benefits” for teachers if school systems adopt AI in a “thoughtful” and “responsible” way, and he believes OpenAI’s program is transparent about the risks.
“Educators remain concerned about the use of AI to plagiarize content and dehumanize the learning experience, as well as the risk of becoming overly dependent on AI,” Prieur said. “But education is often key to overcoming fears around adopting new technology in schools, while ensuring the appropriate safeguards are in place to ensure students are protected and teachers have full control.” »
OpenAI is aggressively going after the education market, which it sees as a key area of growth.
In September, OpenAI hired former Coursera chief revenue officer Leah Belsky as its first general manager of education and tasked her with bringing OpenAI products to more schools. And in the spring, the company launched ChatGPT Edu, a version of ChatGPT designed for universities.
According to According to Allied Market Research, the AI in education market could be worth $88.2 billion over the next decade. But growth is off to a slow start, largely because of skepticism among educators.
In a investigation This year, according to the Pew Research Center, a quarter of public K-12 teachers said the use of AI tools in education did more harm than good. A separate survey by the Rand Corporation and the Center on Reinventing Public Education found that only 18% of K-12 teachers use AI in their classrooms.
Education leaders are also reluctant to try AI themselves or introduce the technology to educators they supervise. According to educational consulting firm EAB, few district superintendents consider AI to be a “very pressing” need this year — especially in light of pressing issues such as lack of staff And chronic absenteeism.
The mixed research on the educational impact of AI has not helped convince non-believers. University of Pennsylvania researchers find that Turkish high school students with access to ChatGPT performed worse on a math test than students who did not have access. In a separate studyResearchers observed that German students using ChatGPT were able to find research materials more easily, but tended to synthesize these materials with less skill than their peers not using ChatGPT.
As OpenAI writes in its guide, ChatGPT is not a substitute for engagement with students. Some educators and schools may never be convinced that this replaces any step in the teaching process.
