AI Revolution: Learning to weigh the benefits and risks of AI – at 8 and 9 years old

LOGAN – Flying cars, power-hungry robots, and farm equipment that handles almost all the harvesting.

Just some of the helpful – or potentially harmful – ways a group of Utah third graders recently predicted that artificial intelligence would shape their lives when they grow up.

That wasn’t the whole assignment, though. On a recent school day, teacher Cami Player asked her third graders to think beyond AI’s capabilities: What about its weaknesses? And what are students’ own responsibilities in harnessing this powerful technology?

“We’ve got to learn how to use it as a tool – not to replace things,” she told her class at the Edith Bowen Laboratory School on the campus of Utah State University. “We want to be the ones in charge.”

Player’s third graders aren’t alone. Congress, the Utah State Board of Education, and teachers throughout the state are also focused on tapping into the benefits of AI and tech platforms, while also managing risks.

In one experiment, Player’s students asked an AI bot to generate pictures based on their own descriptive writing.

“Almost every page had something wrong,” one student said in assessing the bot’s work.

Lu Lawrence, an expert in instructional technology at USU, said that’s a key takeaway for students, teachers and parents.

“The AI doesn’t always get it right,” Lawrence said.

It’s not just about the answers a bot gives, Lawrence added, but also the data certain platforms may be collecting from young users.

“It’s having that skepticism a little bit of, ‘What is it telling me? What’s being collected? What are the privacy and ethical concerns from a teaching perspective, but also from the students as well?” Lawrence said.

Those questions are a focal point in Washington, D.C.

A package of bills before Congress would set stricter limits on tech companies, in part by banning targeted advertising for teenagers and creating a so-called “eraser button” to delete a child’s personal information. If they pass, these proposals could lay the groundwork for limits on the use of AI.

In Utah, the state school board’s guidance tells educators to protect students’ privacy and coach them to be “critical consumers” while experimenting with—but not over-relying on—AI.

That balance is top of mind for Player as platforms like Chat GPT seem to get savvier by the day.

“You can just tell it what to write, and that’s a concern – that they’re not going to learn how to think and how to like process through those things,” she said of her students in an interview. It’s one reason she’s teaching her class to use technology as a stepping stone and not a magic wand.

Before sitting down to speak with KSL, Player ended her class with a reminder.

“Remember, my job is to teach you how to what?” she asked.

“Manage ourselves!” her class responded.

“And if you guys are going to be successful in the future,” Player said, “we’ve got to learn technology!”