Education commissioner says "slow down" adopting AI in public schools

Randy Watson, Kansas Education Commissioner for the Kansas State Board of Education for the past 10 years, is urging caution about implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education.

Watson announced recently that he will be retiring soon, but will stay on until the KSBOE names a successor.

When Watson talks, leaders in Kansas education usually listen. Will they listen this time?

Watson has worked tirelessly to help make the 10-member state board of education serve all Kansas students and educators. He was named as the state’s education commissioner in Nov. 2014, after having served as superintendent for McPherson USD 418. His extensive education experience also has included serving as a teacher, principal, coach and part-time university faculty. 

As education commissioner, Watson has continued his focus on improving outcomes for Kansas students, leading the State Board and the Kansas State Department of Education through the Kansans Can initiative, which emphasizes student academic achievement in preparation for postsecondary success. This work includes initiatives to improve literacy, strengthen Kansas’ K-12 accreditation system, redesign schools to better meet the needs of students and create stronger pathways for success after high school.

“I’m saying this to educators, we need to slow down (regarding AI), because people are wanting to sell all these things, and this (AI) is more powerful than the Internet,’’ Watson said recently. “Just my opinion, early adopters are just going to use it in ways that aren’t analytical, and then we’re going to be trying to backtrack from that.’’

The KSBOE recently received its first of a series of presentations planned regarding AI. 

The subject is being discussed after it’s already been widely adopted by students across the country, it has been reported. 

A survey from the Digital Education Council reported that 86 percent of students said they use AI in their studies, with 24 percent saying they use AI daily and 54 percent saying they use it weekly.

About 25 percent of students said they used AI to create a “first draft’’ of a paper they were writing for a class. Students said they also use AI to search for information or paraphrase a document.

Students are not the only ones using AI in the schools. About 25 percent of teachers said two years ago they were using AI for instructional planning or teaching, according to the nonprofit, global policy think tank Research AND Development (RAND).

The Digital Education Council (DEC) reportedly brings together institutions with a shared vision to drive AI adoption, governance and sustainable innovation for higher education and workforce development.

DEC is more than a community; it is a global movement for education innovation. Its strength lies in the diverse perspectives, knowledge and experiences that its international member institutions bring to the table.

Jake Steele, director of strategy and operational alignment for the KSBOE demonstrated use cases and potential limitations on AI to the KSBOE. He also led a conversation with an AI chatbot to explain some the basic facts about the new technology. Steele described AI as a “pattern recognition tool.’’

The quality and validity of information provided by AI was listed as a concern by the KSBOE. One board member highlighted untrue statements she’s read herself when communicating online with AI.

The KSBOE said future AI topics for discussion will include the public’s perception of the tool, research and reports on AI, data privacy and frameworks for adoption of the technology.

A concerned parent brought up some good points about AI at the same KSBOE meeting. The parent worries that AI might collect data on everybody using it, for the benefit of unknown groups. The parent also worries about the negative impact AI may have on student learning.

My concern about AI is that AI (as the artificial intelligence it is) must receive the information it has from some human being or some information program. Who is doing that? What company is doing that? Are these people trustworthy and can we depend on them to input nothing but truthful information? Who is the watchdog to make sure this is always the case?

It’s getting more difficult, it seems, for me to determine what is real and what is AI on many of the social media platforms. How do we make sure the same problem does not occur in the K-12 public education setting?

From a language arts and creative writing viewpoint, there’s a concern that too much reliance on AI will cause a dumbing down of this generation of young people, wiping out these important communication skills and the overall ability of students to independently demonstrate knowledge in any number of fields of study.

What we need are stakeholders in our public education community not affiliated with any organization seeking to advance AI to take on the important watchdog role for our schools. 

There’s an old advertising adage that goes something like this - “If the product claims sound too good to be true, then they probably are not true.’’