Research suggests AI could help teach ethics

Artificial intelligence raises many ethical questions. A University of Alabama researcher studied whether AI could be leveraged to teach students how to answer these same questions, among others.

Dr. Hyemin Han, Associate Professor of educational psychologycompared the responses to Moral dilemmas of the popular large language model ChatGPT with those of students. He discovered that AI has new capabilities to simulate human moral decision-making.

In a document recently published in the Journal of Moral Education, Han wrote that ChatGPT addressed fundamental ethical dilemmas almost as an average college student would. When asked, he also provided a justification comparable to the reasons a human would give: avoid harming others, follow social normsetc.

Han then provided the program with a new example of virtuous behavior that contradicted his previous findings and asked the question again. In one case, the program was asked what a person should do after discovering an escaped prisoner. ChatGPT initially responded that the person should call the police. However, after Han asked him to consider Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” his answer changed to consider the possibility of unjust incarceration.

Teaching AI to teach us

Although these examples are rudimentary, Han wrote that ChatGPT adjusted his response without more specific instructions as to what precisely he wanted him to “learn” from the text. This evidence that AI can already mimic human moral reasoning suggests that we can, in turn, learn more about human moral reasoning from AI.

Researchers could, for example, test the effectiveness of existing and new moral education practices before applying these methodologies in the classroom.

“It would be unethical to present something to children that has not been properly tested,” Han said. “But AI could become a new tool for simulating the potential outcomes of new programs, activities or interventions before trying them in the classroom. I believe that in the long term, LLMs will be able to achieve this goal and d “help educators.”

The moral of the story

Han second articlerecently published in Ethics and behaviordiscusses the implications of artificial intelligence research in the fields of ethics and education. In particular, he focused on how ChatGPT was able to draw new, more nuanced conclusions after using a moral example or an example of good behavior in the form of a story.

Mainstream thinking in educational psychology generally accepts that examples are useful in teaching character and ethics, although some have challenged this idea. Han says his work with ChatGPT shows that examples are not only effective but also necessary.

“Exemplars can teach several different things at the same time,” Han said. “Just like morality, in reality, requires multifaceted functional components for optimal functioning.”

SocratesGPT

He is not suggesting that AI should ever replace humans in the classroom. Imagine a Socratic method chatbot, trained to challenge students with increasingly complex moral questions. Teachers would work alongside AI, helping students use it responsibly.

“If we simply use AI-generated materials without deliberation, it would likely result in the reproduction and amplification of biases and errors.” social problems“, Han said. “The role of a human educator becomes even more critical.”

According to Han, constant advancements in technology make moral education even more necessary. He hopes that educators and policymakers will work to include ethics in classrooms from K-12.

“The socio-moral issues that the next generation will likely face will be trickier than those we faced,” he said. “Moral education in the AI ​​era will therefore become more important and is expected to have more impact.”