OpenAI envisions teachers using its AI-powered tools to create lesson plans and interactive tutorials for students. But some educators are wary of the technology — and its potential to go awry.
Today, OpenAI released a free online course designed to help K-12 teachers learn how to bring ChatGPT, the company’s AI chatbot platform, into their classrooms. Created in collaboration with the nonprofit organization Common Sense Media, with which OpenAI has an active partnership, the one-hour, nine-module program covers the basics of AI and its pedagogical applications.
OpenAI says that it’s already deployed the course in “dozens” of schools, including the Agua Fria School District in Arizona, the San Bernardino School District in California, and the charter school system Challenger Schools. Per the company’s internal research, 98% of participants said the program offered new ideas or strategies that they could apply to their work.
“Schools across the country are grappling with new opportunities and challenges as AI reshapes education,” Robbie Torney, senior director of AI programs at Common Sense Media, said in a statement. “With this course, we are taking a proactive approach to support and educate teachers on the front lines and prepare for this transformation.”
But some educators don’t see the program as helpful — and think it could in fact mislead.
Image Credits:OpenAI
Lance Warwick, a sports lecturer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is concerned resources like OpenAI’s will normalize AI use among educators unaware of the tech’s ethical implications. While OpenAI’s course covers some of ChatGPT’s limitations, like that it can’t fairly grade students’ work, Warwick found the modules on privacy and safety to be “very limited” — and contradictory.
“In the example prompts [OpenAI gives], one tells you to incorporate grades and feedback from past assignments, while another tells you to create a prompt for an activity to teach the Mexican Revolution,” Warwick noted. “In the next module on safety, it tells you to never input student data, and then talks about the bias inherent in generative AI and the issues with accuracy. I’m not sure those are compatible with the use cases.”
Sin á Tres Souhaits, a visual artist and educator at The University of Arizona, says that he’s found AI tools to be helpful in writing assignment guides and other supplementary course materials. But he also says he’s concerned that OpenAI’s program doesn’t directly address how the company might exercise control over content teachers create using its services.
“If educators are creating courses and coursework on a program that gives the company the right to recreate and sell that data, that would destabilize a lot,” Tres Souhaits told TechCrunch. “It’s unclear to me how OpenAI will use, package, or sell whatever is generated by their models.”lo
In its ToS, OpenAI states that it doesn’t sell user data, and that users of its services, including ChatGPT, own the outputs they generate “to the extent permitted by applicable law.” Without additional assurances, however, Tres Souhaits isn’t convinced that OpenAI won’t quietly change …