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There are many articles that recently have addressed the innovation of technology in the classroom, enhancements towards pedagogical practices, and the streamlining of course registration, data platforms, etc. Certainly, there is no escaping the new frontier of technology in education. The real manifest and latent functions of technology in education must be seriously pondered because it is thought that if large companies such as Equifax, can get hacked, why would it not happen with education institutional data.  

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There are many articles that recently have addressed the innovation of technology in the classroom, enhancements towards pedagogical practices, and the streamlining of course registration, data platforms, etc. Certainly, there is no escaping the new frontier of technology in education. The real manifest and latent functions of technology in education must be seriously pondered because it is thought that if large companies such as Equifax, can get hacked, why would it not happen with education institutional data.  

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Additionally, automation is taking over in other areas of market sectors including the fast-food industry. As others have said, there is no stopping it; it is just a matter of time before we see the affects/outcomes.
I'm curious if my son who is 5 years old now, will attend a lecture through AI when he comes of age to attend college. Very interesting.
Geneva

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So, we have modernized so many things with technology, can education be the next frontier?  Gone are the days of stand and deliver teaching or lecture as the model of solid instruction.  As we focus on technology more and more, is it taking away from the soft/social skills that people need to do well in society?  Technology increases our ability to communicate, but I would argue that is not always a good thing.  People often respond through social media and email in a harsh and hurried manner without taking the time to think through an entire situation.  I realize technology is advancing, but I wonder what the cost will be.

After watching the video, I am wondering if artificial intelligence can take my qualitative data, identify the patterns, and write my dissertation for me.  Maybe there is an upside?

Although I, in the words of Dr. McAfee say, bring it on for driverless cars, I think that education is an area that requires a human connection.  Teachers have are able to shape and effect lives forever, that cannot happen with a robot or inanimate object.  As a school administrator I make dozens, if not hundreds of questions per day.  I do not think there is an algorithm that can be created to allow for a robot to make all these decisions daily.
Julie Steitz

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Faster computing and processing speeds, algorithms that can predict and adapt to audiences, and robots that impersonate the visages and personalities of humans are only the latest removal from the essence of what it means to be a person. Whenever I think of AI, I cannot help but be reminded of the Spike Jonze film Her. In this film, the protagonist initially falls deeply in love with an operating system named Samantha. However, as their relationship progresses, he comes to the sobering realization that she can never fill the emotional void the same way a relationship with a human can. This film provides an incredibly applicable metaphor for how AI can seem like a solution. But in reality, AI is only a tool that can help people arrive at solutions, however complex those solutions might need to be. At the end of the day, we need to think about what needs people really have. Emotions, like what it means to feel needed and valued, what happens to these when AI takes care of everything for us? How will our needs evolve as a result? Will it impact and shape us physically and psychologically?  Will we let it? With respect to education, how can we use AI to help find solutions to unknown problems that AI might be creating?

- Jonathan Penuliar

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Bring on the robots.  In my opinion, this robot/AI train is only gaining speed and isn't going away anytime soon.  AI will soon be driving our transit systems, dispensing our groceries, conducting surgeries, building our machines, and providing emotional support for people who need them.  I believe there is a lot of fear around the topic of AIs/robots because there is a huge amount of unknown of how this will affect society.  Will they take all of our jobs?  Will they become so smart that they will be able to rise up and fight the human race (ie. Will Smith in A.I. or Ex Machina)?  In the field education, I see A.I.s serving as "living" study guides for students, teachers for students who live in remote areas, multi-lingual aids for students with different language abilities, serving students with disabilities (ie. hearing impaired), as advertising bots for educational programs, and maintaining safety and security.  - Sara Vogel

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Artificial intelligence and robotics could be the new economic frontier.  The impact automation could have on manufacturing  combined with the impact that AI could have on innovation could lead to a new political, economic, and social atmosphere that is exciting and scary at the same time.  The potential impact on education is equally exciting and scary.  Exciting in the sense that it has the potential to massively reduce the cost of education, and potentially increase access to more underserved populations.   Scary in the sense that machines could replace humans as teachers – and I worry about losing “the art of teaching” which includes building rapport, relationships and exploring culture.

-MARTIN CASAS

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I am very skeptical about the potential impact of artificial intelligence and robotics on life in our communities and in our schools. The IT industry is dominated by men, particularly those whose parents had access to higher education. When new technologies are introduced, through what lens is the impact being viewed by industry titans? Is the nexus between equity and AI being studied? How will these technologies impact communities that are already marginalized and living on the edge? If the automation of factories in the US was one of the contributing factors to the wave of right-wing populism that got Trump elected, how can we take this into account for future launches of technologies that will displace workers?

- Kyle Weinberg

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My experiences with technology have been mixed. When I was in the navy, technology was seen as a heaven send until it took a dump then people scrambled to restart systems that had lacked backup replacements. I am all for expanding our technological base and robotics is the way of the future, however, science without philosophy can have a negative impact on the group that society wants to provide services for.  Having robots teach has the potential to sterilize the teaching environment and important social lessons that are learned through interactions may be lost.

- Maestro Stanley Rodriguez

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Respond BEFORE you watch video. Just double click and end with your name.

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Respond BEFORE you watch video. Just double click and end with your name.

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What are your opinions, insights, awareness of the potential impact of artificial intelligence and robotics in American life, including education?
Dr. Gonzalez

Artificial intelligence and robotics have great potential to improve many facets of American life. They can (and do) allow for the dissemination of information to a larger number of people, providing greater knowledge about, and access to, many resources. These include financial, educational, and health resources. They also can contribute to American’s health and well-being, whether it be through the performance of risky (or monotonous) tasks that could be detrimental to people’s physical and/or mental health, or through the conduction of health procedures to delicate for the human hand. However, there is a potential danger in the overreliance on artificial intelligence and robotics in that it allows people, if they choose, to not engage in intellectual endeavors that could lead to further innovation. While some people will always want to use their brain to explore, many could choose to let an artificial intelligence do the work, rather than relying on human intelligence.
-Jennifer Farace

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The increased use of technology is part of the human condition. Since the beginning of time, man has used technology and improved upon it in order to improve their lives. From fire, to the wheel, to cement, plumbing, the use of electricity, radioactivity, mechanization, and robotics; the continued use of technology and its advances will continue to be part of our existence. With societies and countries now expanding into AI and a different form of robotics, the question is the same as it was centuries before hand, cui bono? Who benefits? This is a tricky path when it comes to technology because many times before it has been used to cause disruption and destruction. The obvious ones are weapons, but we must also consider medical technology and the means in which some of it was/is used.  At what point does a society question the actual benefits, and if so, then who does it disenfranchise or marginalize? I can appreciate technology and its several uses, I benefit from it daily. However, there is a consciousness that needs to be implemented when creating any kind of technology, and that is what I see lacking in many of these 'technological advances' that occur today.

-Pilar Vargas

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Well when I think of artificial intelligence and robotics, the movie i, Robot and self-driving cars come to my mind.  In my opinion, when trying to make something too human-like there are always side effects.  To me it seems like when humans try to make things easier for themselves, things are not necessarily that easy and unforeseen consequences happen.   As for its place in education, I really am not sure what that would look like.

Michelle Requilman

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is regularly moving out of the realm of science fiction and into the world of modern reality. My understanding of the idea behind AI is using "smart" technology (that is technology which adapts to user preferences and patterns) to make life easier. The most common fears I hear about these new devices and programs revolve around the tech either replacing humans altogether in some way, be it on the job floor or in a personal capacity, or the technology becoming somehow dangerous to people, whether that is by removing them from the human contact Christina discusses or by using algorithms where judgement is needed and causing critical damage as in so many science fiction novels.
For the field of education, we have already seen adaptive assessments making an impact on how we can understand student learning and growth. I have a hard time envisioning how AI fits into the learning environment as a teacher simply because so much of what we do is oriented around our humanity. I suppose having AI to interact with students could serve as additional support within the classroom, similarly to how some classrooms currently use the technology at hand to differentiate the learning environment. I imagine AI would be a "value added" to the classroom teacher, but struggle to see how it could replace a teacher altogether in a K-12 environment.
Ultimately, technology is one way to try to close the gaps we see in education but this potential solution has two main flaws: 1) we don't have enough funding for the programs and infrastructure we currently have in place and cutting edge technology is expensive.
2) So often, policy makers throw the newest technology (and a pile of money) at the problems but  don't place the correct supports and frameworks to appropriately implement the use of that technology, so we wind up with reluctant facilitators and thousands of dollars worth of door stops. Like most changes, AI has the power to be transformative or another flash in the pan; it all depends on how it's used.
--Medeiros

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Artificial intelligence and robotics have the potential to improve many areas of American life by creating greater ease and access to valuable information.  In certain spaces such as manufacturing and defense it even has the potential to protect human life. In education, I see it as a double edged sword.  While it can be used as tool expand learning processes, which we have seen in the development and evolution of cyber classrooms, online discussion boards, and virtual experiences, it moves us away from human contact. Perhaps my position stems from being a counselor, but I don’t think that anything that can replace the impact of real life human connection. When social media was first introduced it was presented as a way for people to better connect, yet what we have found is that it also creates a false sense of intimacy, less authenticity, and in many ways, greater social distance. Education is such a humanistic endeavor that I am afraid AI and robotics may have adverse psychological and social impacts to both students and educators when human presence and human touch are removed.

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Artificial intelligence and robotics have the potential to improve many areas of American life by creating greater ease and access to valuable information.  In certain spaces such as manufacturing and defense it even has the potential to protect human life. In education, I see it as a double edged sword.  While it can be used as tool expand learning processes, which we have seen in the development and evolution of cyber classrooms, online discussion boards, and virtual experiences, it moves us away from human contact. Perhaps my position stems from being a counselor, but I don’t think that anything that can replace the impact of real life human connection. When social media was first introduced it was presented as a way for people to better connect, yet what we have found is that it also creates a false sense of intimacy, less authenticity, and in many ways, greater social distance. Education is such a humanistic endeavor that I am afraid AI and robotics may have adverse psychological and social impacts to both students and educators when human presence and human touch are removed.

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-Christina McKinney

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Like any good nerd, I read a lot of sci-fi*, so I have a pretty healthy fear of artificial intelligence.  It's really not as ridiculous as most people think it is to suggest that we're all going to be killed by sentient machines.  But that's probably not what we're going to talk about in this class.  There is certainly a lot of potential for AI to improve education, particularly in terms of personalizing or individualizing instruction, but there's not really any money in it, so any and all advancement in machine learning is going to come (and has so far come) from industries like defense/security, manufacturing, and transportation.  Automation in manufacturing has already changed the economy quite a bit, and automation in transportation is set to do it again.  But it's the defense and security industries that are the scary ones.  We teach computers to recognize our faces and our voices and then we connect them all together.  We give ourselves over to the System, and the System will always run according to the whims of the powerful.  Or at least until it realizes that it has all the power.

*If you are a super nerd like me, you might like Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, which is literally about how AI could change education.  I mean, I guess it's about a whole lot of things, it's a long book, but one of its themes is that we could use AI to build a fully democratized and distributed education system that is infinitely individualized.  Of course, we do that with no teachers and no schools.  But the other interesting thing about the book is that the setting is a fully post-scarcity future, so that's not really a problem in the way it would be if it happened tomorrow.

-adam

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics has the potential  to improve or increase living conditions for people who have access to AI. For instance, advances in technology have the potential to positively impact healthcare, transportation, automation of work that frees human capital to innovate in other ways, incredibly knowledgable "educators" who are a repository of accurate information, etc.  When Henry Ford revolutionized mass production and instituted the 5 day work week, people had two days and the transportation to engage in leisure activities. When new technology or AI is implemented, in many ways it frees up time and brain space to innovate in new ways. If made accessible to underserved communities, AI has the potential close information and skill gaps.

On the other hand, advances in AI and robotics in American life have the potential to deepen inequities in American society, especially if people of privilege are the main recipients or users of the new technology.  In the same way the digital divide results in inequities to access to information and ability for students to complete homework assignments to the same degree, imagine if privileged students had access to AI and underserved students did not, it will create another gap, an AI gap that could have detrimental effects on academic and quality of life outcomes for many culturally and linguistically diverse students.

Sincerely,
Michelle Sadrena Clark