While New York and LA are making headlines for their imposition of moratoriums on AI use in K-12 schools, the policy landscape varies widely.
Peter Greene makes the case that Pennsylvania (and, likely, all states) needs to get serious about setting up some guardrails for AI use in school.
The state has a page devoted to “Implementing AI in Schools.” But it consists simply of a series of questions and issues that school districts ought to consider, somehow. Student data is sensitive, so the AI should comply with federal and state rules. Schools might want to see if the AI helps test scores go up. Districts should look at the program’s terms and conditions. The AI should meet accessibility requirements.
These are not guardrails. They are a suggestion of a framework for a concept of some thoughts about guardrails.
Greene highlights some reasons why schools need to teach about AI and its effective use - but also, raises some concerns about completely unrestricted use of AI in K-12 settings:
A paper from researchers at Carnegie Mellon, Oxford, MIT, and UCLA found dramatic results with even mild use. Spend 10 to 15 minutes with AI answering your questions, and you may even feel helped, even smarter. But immediately afterwards you not only perform worse on the same task, but you are more likely to give up.
Another paper by a different team, “Faster Completion, Less Learning: Generative AI Reduced Study Time on Math Problems and the Knowledge They Build,” found that students have spent less time on math word problems (the kind that a chatbot can help with) over the past three years, and now students have 25% less math knowledge than before the creation on chatbots.
The answer to what to do about AI seems to lie somewhere between a complete ban on its school-based use and a completely unregulated use of AI in schools.
Greene suggests:
It makes sense to do the same for students when it comes to AI. They need to learn what it is, how it works, what it can and can’t do (a topic on which too many adults are woefully ignorant), and consequently what it can and cannot be safely used for.
We need guardrails, and it would help if the state imposed them.