An AI detection tool from Turnitin determined that about 10% of students are using artificial intelligence in their writing assignments. But is AI cheating really a concern? Whether they’re using AI or good old-fashioned crib notes, a minority of students have always found ways to cheat — and probably always will. Instead of fighting the use of AI in education, more teachers and schools are therefore embracing it, encouraging students to use AI tools to learn skills that will help them succeed in the workforce of the future.
It’s happening in schools of all types and at all grade levels. From teaching design thinking concepts to offering experiential lessons, here’s how AI for teachers is becoming more common.
Enhancing AI in Education
Having worked with educators around the world, Cartedo founder and CEO Shweta Homji has seen firsthand the major challenges that teachers face.
“There’s so much pressure on them,” Homji said. “They need to engage students, follow standardized grading systems and stay on top of new developments like AI, all while still recovering from the shift to digital during COVID.”
Students traditionally spent their time in the classroom memorizing math formulas and studying the periodic table. But those are now a quick online search away. More educators are therefore pivoting from “instruction” to “facilitation.”
“The question becomes: How do we prepare students for an uncertain future?” Homji asked. “The answer lies in teaching transferable skills like creative problem-solving, critical thinking and adaptability. These are skills that can be applied across any field or job.”
Entrepreneur and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman thinks the future of work is going to look different by the time today’s K-12 students begin their careers. If he’s right, allowing young people to explore new study areas and ideas will be essential.
“[It used to be that] you joined a company, and essentially, you worked your life in that company,” Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, told World Affairs in a 2017 interview. “[That’s] now extremely rare. You may not only work at multiple companies in your career, you may work at multiple industries. You may not actually, in fact, do your work fully as an employee. You may actually be working in the gig economy or have two to three gigs.”
If work no longer looks traditional, Hoffman wonders, why should education?
“A lot of jobs are going to change their nature by how automation either takes the job completely or changes the way that people do jobs,” Hoffman continued. “That transition is the thing we need to help prepare the entire workforce and all of society for.”
Given the impending arrival of the Intelligence Era — a forthcoming period in history where the cost of exquisite intelligence will approach zero — AI futurist, entrepreneur and author Steve Brown believes educators have a duty to teach AI concepts. Even as tools rapidly change and develop, learning the core concepts will set students up for success, he predicts.
“Educators should prepare their students for the Intelligence Era by teaching them about AI — what it is, what it can do, how to use a range of AI-powered tools, what AI will likely be able to do in the future and how it could transform the workplace,” Brown said.
Building on AI Concepts with Interactive Experiences
Teaching AI concepts is most effective when students see their results — even the silliest ones — play out, suggests Gabriel Cowan, developer of the AI tool TalkToo.ai, which allows kids to create AI characters that serve as bespoke tutors.
It’s all about embracing children’s natural curiosity and wonder, according to Cowan, whose 6-year-old son used TalkToo.ai to create a creature named “Fart Monster” that helps him practice school subjects.
“Fart Monster’s super cute, and he tells you stories where he takes you to Fartopia,” Cowan said. “The AI made all this up. The key is that when you make that character, you can instantly turn them into a personalized tutor.”
A tool like TalkToo.ai also can use AI to leverage existing characters. For example, imagine if a student struggling with mathematics could have a conversation with Tony Stark about The Avengers that explains the FOIL method for multiplying binomials. Previously attainable only through costly avenues like hiring a character actor or Robert Downey Jr. himself, these kinds of moments are now easily achievable with AI.
“I think educating through entertainment is one of many things that are going to be on the rise,” Cowan said.
Brown expects the same, believing that AI will tap into the creative power of children’s imaginations to help them learn.
“Students will be able to ‘talk’ to books and ‘meet’ historical characters,” Brown said. “They will explore AI-generated worlds in virtual reality and receive 1:1 tuition personalized to their learning style and pace.”
Educators want AI experiences to be inclusive for everyone. In Maine, immigrant and low-income students are therefore getting hands-on experience with AI and machine learning by studying puffins, a vulnerable bird that often nests in the Pine Tree State.
Using online data-science and machine-learning tools like CODAP (Common Online Data Analysis Platform) and Teachable Machine, students examine data about puffins and learn to identify them with the help of video and sound from puffin webcams. Classes work on activities such as growling like a puffin and designing a burrow to enjoy immersive experiences. Schoolyards have even installed AI bird feeders that use AI to identify and track the puffin population, creating an opportunity for students to learn about AI by interacting with a real-world AI instrument.
Homji applauds this type of hands-on education and hopes to use the same “learn by doing” approach to improve job training for young people. Her company, Cartedo, partnered with UNICEF to engage teenagers across Africa who had dropped out of school. Cartedo asked the teens to write down their passions, then used natural language processing to create a framework for turning their interests into actionable vocational skills.
“You give people a toolkit and a catalyst to activate the innate skills in them,” Homji said. “That’s what being human is. ‘Learn by doing’ is the only way we can establish ourselves over AI.”
In just four weeks’ time, Cartedo and UNICEF helped students launch 80,000 businesses.
“People can thrive when given the right tools and guidance to apply their skills in real-world contexts,” Homji said.
Teaching Ethical AI to Students
Because AI is as full of risk as opportunity, Brown and Homji believe educators are responsible for teaching ethical AI to their students. They’ll need trusted support from governments and tech companies to succeed.
“One big ethical concern in academia is who owns the content generated by AI. If I write the prompt and [ChatGPT] produces the result, who owns that content?” asked Homji, who said there are still many gray areas to address, including AI “hallucinations” that convincingly present incorrect information as if it were accurate. “If students don’t have a solid foundation in a subject, they might not even realize they’re being misled.”
Because it’s trained on data that’s related to human actions, behaviors and history, “AI is a mirror for humanity,” Brown said. “Like our children, we should wish for AI to be better than us. That means carefully curating the data it’s trained on and thinking about how it will be deployed in the world so it can be a force for good, accessible by all.”
Because they have always been on the front lines of creating informed and responsible citizens, teachers are already prepared to do their part. When it comes to AI and machine learning, they’ll help students navigate challenges the way they have always helped students navigate challenges — by inviting discussion and encouraging critical thinking.
“Educators should see AI as an ally, not a threat,” Brown concluded. “But nothing will replace the power of a human-to-human mentoring connection between an educator and a student.”
