OpenAI envisions teachers using its AI-powered tools to create lesson plans and interactive tutorials for college students. But some educators are concerned in regards to the technology — and its potential to go unsuitable.
Today OpenAI released one free online course Designed to assist K-12 teachers learn tips on how to integrate ChatGPT, the corporate's AI chatbot platform, into their classrooms. Created in collaboration with nonprofit organization Common Sense Media, with which OpenAI has an lively partnership, the one-hour, nine-module program covers the basics of AI and its educational applications.
OpenAI says it has already deployed the course in “dozens” of colleges, including the Agua Fria School District in Arizona, the San Bernardino School District in California and the Challenger Schools charter school system. According to the corporate's internal research, 98% of participants said this system offered recent ideas or strategies they might apply to their work.
“Schools across the country are grappling with recent opportunities and challenges as AI reshapes education,” Robbie Torney, senior director of AI programs at Common Sense Media, said in a press release. “With this course we’re taking a proactive approach to supporting and training frontline teachers and preparing for this variation.”
But some educators don't think this system is useful — and consider it could actually be misleading.
Lance Warwick, a physical education instructor on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, worries that resources like OpenAI will normalize AI use amongst educators who’re unaware of the technology's ethical implications. While the OpenAI course covers a few of the limitations of ChatGPT cannot grade students' work fairlyWarwick found the info protection and security modules to be “very limited” – and contradictory.
“In the sample prompts (provided by OpenAI), one asks you to include grades and feedback from previous assignments, while one other asks you to create a prompt for an activity about teaching the Mexican Revolution,” Warwick noted. “The next module on security tells you to never enter student data, after which it goes into the bias inherent in generative AI and the problems with accuracy. I’m undecided if these are compatible with the use cases.”
Sin á Tres Souhaits, a visible artist and educator on the University of Arizona, says he has found AI tools helpful in writing project guides and other supplemental course materials. But he also says he's concerned that OpenAI's program doesn't directly address how the corporate might exert control over content that teachers create using its services.
“If educators create courses and coursework under a program that offers the corporate the best to recreate and sell that data, that will destabilize so much,” Tres Souhaits told TechCrunch. “It is unclear to me how OpenAI will use, package, or sell anything generated by their models.”lo
In its terms of service, OpenAI states that it doesn’t sell user data and that users of its services, including ChatGPT, own the output they generate “to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law.” However, without additional assurances, Tres Souhaits is just not convinced that OpenAI is not going to quietly change its policies in the long run.
“For me, AI is like crypto,” said Tres Souhaits. “It’s recent and due to this fact offers numerous options – however it’s also so deregulated that I’m wondering how much I’d trust a guarantee.”
At the tip of last yr, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) pushed that governments regulate the usage of AI in education, including the introduction of age limits for users and policies on user data protection and privacy. Since then, nonetheless, little progress has been made on these fronts – and on AI policy generally.
Tres Souhaits also takes issue with the proven fact that the OpenAI program, which OpenAI markets as a guide to “AI, generative AI and ChatGPT,” makes no mention of any AI tools aside from OpenAI’s own. “It looks as if this reinforces the concept that OpenAI is the AI ​​company,” he said. “It's a sensible idea for OpenAI as an organization. But we have already got an issue with these technology poles – firms which have an outsized influence because they put themselves at the middle of innovation because the technology developed and made themselves synonymous with the thing itself.”
Josh Prieur, a classroom teacher turned product director at educational gaming company Prodigy Education, was more optimistic about OpenAI's outreach to educators. Prieur argues that there are “clear advantages” for teachers when school systems adopt AI in a “considered” and “responsible” manner, and he believes OpenAI's program is transparent in regards to the risks.
“Teachers proceed to have concerns about using AI to plagiarize content and dehumanize the training experience, and there’s also a risk of over-reliance on AI,” Preiur said. “But education is commonly key to overcoming fears about introducing recent technologies into schools, while ensuring the best safeguards are in place to make sure students are protected and teachers remain in full control.”
OpenAI is aggressively pursuing the education market, which it sees as a key growth area.
In September, OpenAI hired former Coursera chief revenue officer Leah Belsky as its first GM of education and tasked her with bringing OpenAI's products to more schools. And within the spring, the corporate launched ChatGPT Edu, a version of ChatGPT designed for universities.
After According to Allied Market Research, the AI ​​in education market might be price $88.2 billion inside the following decade. But growth has been sluggish, largely attributable to skeptical educators.
In one Opinion poll This yr, the Pew Research Center said 1 / 4 of public K-12 teachers said using AI tools in education is doing more harm than good. A separate one Opinion poll A study by the Rand Corporation and the Center on Reinventing Public Education found that only 18% of K-12 educators use AI of their classrooms.
Education leaders were similarly reluctant to try AI themselves or introduce the technology to the educators they supervise. According to educational consulting firm EAB, few district leaders consider addressing AI is a “very urgent” need this yr — especially given pressing issues like Understaffed And chronic absenteeism.
The mixed research on AI's impact on education has done nothing to persuade the disbelievers. Researchers on the University of Pennsylvania found that Turkish highschool students with access to ChatGPT performed worse on a math test than students who didn’t have access. In a separate one studyResearchers found that German students who used ChatGPT were in a position to find research materials more easily, but tended to synthesize these materials less skillfully than their peers who didn’t use ChatGPT.
As OpenAI writes in its guide, ChatGPT is just not a alternative for interacting with students. Some educators and schools may never be convinced that it’s a alternative for any step within the teaching process.
