The article below is from Common Sense Education, a partner of ours in the realm of digital citizenship. It discusses an issue that we have started to see in our schools. Children are using generative A.I. tools such as character.ai to connect with something in a way that they feel uncomfortable doing with another human. How children speak to an A.I., what they converse about, and how they interpret the responses are all crucial topics for discussion both at home and in Olympia classrooms.
Include Loneliness in Discussions About AI
By Daniel Vargas Campos
Senior Program Manager, Education
When ChatGPT took the world by storm last year, the conversation about AI and education quickly turned into a debate about plagiarism and bans. Now, everyone's scrambling to come up with AI literacy plans and policies for use. But as the focus of the conversation shifts, I find myself thinking about AI's impact on social connection. Young people are thinking about it too. According to early research from IDEO, young people are concerned about:
- The role that AI will play in the areas of creative expression, human relationships, and mental well-being.
- The impacts that AI might have on their identity formation and sense of self.
- How AI companions might influence their expectations of genuine and complicated humans.
There are concrete reasons for these concerns. In the past few months, we've seen Snapchat release an AI chatbot to all its users, and influencers create "AI clones" of themselves then charge their followers to access them. The National Eating Disorder Association shut down its AI-powered chatbot after it gave users weight loss advice. But why is everyone trying to invent synthetic social connections?
Loneliness is a real problem—an epidemic, in fact. And schools are feeling the impacts in the form of decreased mental health among teachers and students, challenges with teacher retention, and lower academic achievement. So as the surgeon general calls attention to how tech may contribute to social disconnection, AI positions itself as a solution.
Many educational AI chatbots are even being marketed as tools to alleviate some of these issues. But the hype to address academic success with AI tutors, or solve teacher burnout with "lesson copilots" glosses over the fact that both are examples of how social connection happens at schools. Collaborative lesson planning often provides teachers with the space to connect with their team and grow professionally. And in the case of tutoring, there's evidence that mentorship programs based on the promotion of caring and meaningful relationships foster increased social well-being and academic achievement.
So what are our next steps around social connection and AI?
Loneliness isn't an individual challenge: Together, we have the power to make conscious decisions to prioritize human connection and use these tools responsibly to help our students feel more connected with school and their peers. Even as tech companies blur the line between AI and human connection through design choices, we can help our students.
In fact, we can learn from the impacts of social media. As Nate Green, a Common Sense Ambassador, says in this article, "We should learn from our social media mistakes and teach students how to use, understand, and be skeptical of AI. Done right, our lessons will spark discussions that embrace complexity, enhance critical thinking, and build empathy—precisely the values that social media has eroded."
Here are some resources to help you dig into these issues:
- Free Resources to Explore and Use AI
- SEL in Digital Life Resources
- Activities from the MIT Media Lab's Day of AI
- IDEO video featuring teens sharing their feelings about AI
- KQED lesson and video: Why is Gen Z the Loneliest Generation?
We're all learning what AI will mean for the world. In the absence of more clear guidance, consider this: AI "literacy" might be more than teaching kids to understand AI or how to be productive in the jobs of the future. In addition to addressing those issues, our approach to AI literacy will require us to prepare our students to nurture human connection at a time when it's lacking.
Until next time,
Daniel
Link of the Week: Here's an anti-loneliness video.