In this school, the computer science course now includes criticism of chatbots
Marisa Shuman's computer class at Young Women's Leadership School in the Bronx began as usual on a recent January morning.
Just after 11:30 p.m., energetic 11th and 12th graders burst into the classroom, sat at communal study tables, and pulled out their laptops. Then they turned to the front of the room, looking at a whiteboard on which Ms. Shuman had posted a question about wearable technology, the topic of today's lesson.
"I don't care if you learn anything about wearable technology today," Ms. Shuman told her students. "We're evaluating ChatGPT. Your goal is to identify whether the lesson is effective or ineffective."
Across the United States, universities and school districts are scrambling to master new chatbots that can generate human-like text and images. But while many are rushing to ban ChatGPT to try to prevent its use as a cheating aid, teachers like Ms. Shuman are leveraging the innovations to stimulate more critical thinking in the classroom. encourage their students to challenge the hype around rapidly evolving artificial intelligence tools and to consider the potential side effects of the technologies.
The goal, according to these educators, is to train the next generation of technology creators and consumers in "critical computing". It is an analytical approach in which to understand how critical r computer algorithms is as important - if not more important than - knowing how to program computers.
New York City Public Schools, the largest district in the nation, serving some 900,000 students, trains a cohort of computer science professors to help their students identify the A.I. potential biases and risks. Lessons include discussions of flawed facial recognition algorithms that can be much more accurate at identifying white faces than darker-skinned faces.
In the In Illinois, Florida, New York and Virginia, some middle school science and humanities teachers are using an A.I. literacy program developed by researchers at the Scheller Teacher Education Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One lesson asks students to consider the ethics of powerful A.I. systems, known as "generative adversarial networks", which can be used to produce fake media content, such as realistic videos in which well-known politicians utter sentences they never actually said.
With generative AI, technologies proliferate, educators and...
Marisa Shuman's computer class at Young Women's Leadership School in the Bronx began as usual on a recent January morning.
Just after 11:30 p.m., energetic 11th and 12th graders burst into the classroom, sat at communal study tables, and pulled out their laptops. Then they turned to the front of the room, looking at a whiteboard on which Ms. Shuman had posted a question about wearable technology, the topic of today's lesson.
"I don't care if you learn anything about wearable technology today," Ms. Shuman told her students. "We're evaluating ChatGPT. Your goal is to identify whether the lesson is effective or ineffective."
Across the United States, universities and school districts are scrambling to master new chatbots that can generate human-like text and images. But while many are rushing to ban ChatGPT to try to prevent its use as a cheating aid, teachers like Ms. Shuman are leveraging the innovations to stimulate more critical thinking in the classroom. encourage their students to challenge the hype around rapidly evolving artificial intelligence tools and to consider the potential side effects of the technologies.
The goal, according to these educators, is to train the next generation of technology creators and consumers in "critical computing". It is an analytical approach in which to understand how critical r computer algorithms is as important - if not more important than - knowing how to program computers.
New York City Public Schools, the largest district in the nation, serving some 900,000 students, trains a cohort of computer science professors to help their students identify the A.I. potential biases and risks. Lessons include discussions of flawed facial recognition algorithms that can be much more accurate at identifying white faces than darker-skinned faces.
In the In Illinois, Florida, New York and Virginia, some middle school science and humanities teachers are using an A.I. literacy program developed by researchers at the Scheller Teacher Education Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One lesson asks students to consider the ethics of powerful A.I. systems, known as "generative adversarial networks", which can be used to produce fake media content, such as realistic videos in which well-known politicians utter sentences they never actually said.
With generative AI, technologies proliferate, educators and...
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