OpenAI has introduced a free online course for secondary school teachers that covers the basics of artificial intelligence (AI) and its applications in education. Participants in the course note its usefulness, but some educators worry about the ethical implications and lack of control over the use of data that may be entrusted to AI.
Image Source: Unseen Studio/Unsplash
OpenAI is committed to integrating its AI-based tools into the educational process, helping teachers create curriculum and interactive tools. The free online course, which was developed in collaboration with Common Sense Media, an American non-profit organization that provides guidance and educational materials on the use of AI for children, consists of nine modules and covers the basics of AI and its application in pedagogy. According to TechCrunch, the course has already been implemented in dozens of US schools, and 98% of participants noted its usefulness.
Schools across the country are facing new opportunities and challenges as AI transforms education, said Robbie Torney, director of AI programs at Common Sense Media. “With this course, we are taking a proactive approach to supporting and training teachers on the front lines and preparing for this transformation,” Thorney explains.
Image source: OpenAI
However, some educators are skeptical. Lance Warwick, a sports science professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, worries that the use of ChatGPT and other similar AI bots could lead to ethical implications. In particular, Warwick finds the course modules on privacy and security to be “very limited and inconsistent,” especially regarding recommendations for the use of any student data.
University of Arizona teacher Sin á Tres Souhaits recognizes the usefulness of AI tools for creating educational materials, but expresses concern about the lack of clarity over the control of content teachers create using OpenAI services. “To me, AI is like cryptocurrency—it’s a new technology with a lot of potential, but it’s so unregulated that I doubt the reliability of any of its stated guarantees,” he notes.
At the same time, Josh Prieur, a former educator and current director of product at Prodigy Education, expresses a more optimistic view of OpenAI’s educational initiative. He believes that, if done correctly, the implementation of AI can clearly benefit teachers, while noting the OpenAI program’s transparency about possible risks.
Despite OpenAI’s strong push into the education market, which Allied Market Research predicts could reach $88.2 billion over the next decade, adoption of the technology has been slow. A Pew Research Center study found that a quarter of U.S. public high school (K-12) teachers believe that the use of AI tools in education does more harm than good, while a Rand Corporation survey found that only 18% of K-12 educators are using AI in their classrooms.
Interestingly, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found that Turkish high school students with access to ChatGPT performed worse on a math test than students without access. Another study found that German students using an AI bot were faster at finding information, but were less proficient at summarizing it than their peers not using ChatGPT.