Can Students and Teachers Learn to Trust Each Other in the Age of A.I.?

“I ’m worried if I use an em dash they’ll think it’s A.I.,” I told my mom from where I sat at the kitchen counter, trying to work on one of my college essays.  Despite her reassurances to the contrary, I wasn’t convinced. All I could think about was last spring when my friend, a non-native English speaker who loves to write, told me that her history teacher accused her of using A.I. to write an essay, his reasoning being that she had included too many “big words.” He didn’t even have a conversation with my friend before giving her a zero. But is her teacher really the villain here? He and his peers have few resources to help them navigate the rise of A.I., and in lots of ways, teachers and students are in the same boat when it comes to figuring out how to adjust to this technological revolution. Somehow, in the process, students have ended up being pitted against teachers. Illustrated by Cloe Moreno One approach would be to rethink homework. Someone recently told me about a professor they know who no longer assigns essays to do at home, and the reasoning makes total sense: The educator said that the idea of walking into his classroom and immediately feeling like he distrusted his students was horrible. He said that he missed being able to look at someone’s work and simply be proud of them, and because of that he was going to have his students write essays solely in class moving forward.   While this approach follows a certain logic, it feels detrimental — to students and to teachers — to scrap the whole concept of writing essays outside of class. At the same time, while, at its best, the classroom is a community space full of joyful exploration, how can we create that space if everybody enters it with mistrust? And if teachers come into the classroom automatically distrusting their students, how are we, as students, ever supposed to trust ourselves? Weighed down by negative news? Enter your email below to receive our smart, uplifting newsletters. Or click here to choose exactly which ones you want [contact-form-7]   I was thinking about exactly these sorts of questions when I discovered the Center for Digital Thriving , a research group based out of the Harvard Graduate School of Education that works with experts, educators and young people to create resources that support teens in their relationship with technology.  Based on the principle of the Disability Rights Movement, which is “nothing about us, without us,” the Center for Digital Thriving believes that young people should not simply be spoken about, but should be able to speak, to be given a voice at the table when it comes to things that impact them so immensely. Given that 64 percent of U.S. teens use A.I. chatbots , and almost one in three of those use chatbots daily, it makes sense that research being done about teenagers and A.I. would directly involve them. Illustrated by Cloe Moreno As part of the development of every report, resource guide and lesson plan published by the Center, teenagers are being asked to share their stories and tell experts how A.I. is actually impacting their lives. A core part of this are the teen advisory boards that the Center works with. These are groups of young people who are asked to look at the Center’s research — whether on “ grind culture ” or “ thinking traps ,” and how they’re enhanced by technology — and give their insights and feedback. The Center makes sure that teenagers are directly involved in their process, enabling their research and lesson plans to be genuinely applicable. Educators, in turn, are being given resources for how to deal with A.I. and connect with their students. In one lesson plan, called Align on the Line , teachers are asked to give students a list of activities they might do in that class (for example, a literature class would have steps to writing an essay) and are asked to place them on a spectrum of whether or not they feel the activity could be done with A.I. The spectrum ranges from “totally fine” to “crosses a line,” and allows students and teachers to work with one another, instead of against, to define what they feel is acceptable. Teenagers often say they use A.I. because “it listens.” Just by listening, by being open to hearing what teenagers have to say about their lives, the Center for Digital Thriving is building trust around tech between adults and teens. The goal of the Center is not stopping the use of A.I., but simply creating communities that are informed and on the same page. Wait, you're not a member yet? Join the Reasons to be Cheerful community by supporting our nonprofit publication and giving what you can. Join Cancel anytime It may seem small, but oftentimes it is the conversations and the communities formed, whether at the kitchen counter or around the seminar table, that begin to chip away reliance on A.I., a dependence which can come from loneliness and a lack of feeling understood. By showing teenagers that they are trusted and that their opinions matter, teenagers may be encouraged to rely on themselves more and A.I. less. Having a space, especially one where research is being done, where teenagers are taken seriously and asked for their insights, is a model for what it can look like to restore young people’s faith in themselves.  This article was illustrated by Cloe Moreno, who contributes drawings for podcast episodes and comics that unpack the anxieties and feelings of daily life for This Teenage Life . The post Can Students and Teachers Learn to Trust Each Other in the Age of A.I.? appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful .