Artificial intelligence is here, but still in its infancy.
While reporting for this AI series, a recurring insight came up: There’s way more nuance to the spectrum of AI haters and AI lovers.
But, as AI’s public sprawl continues into industries and the University of Minnesota’s digital infrastructure, AI-hater ethics are necessary in AI spaces to help raise what could be seen as an unruly, bad-mannered slop machine.
The haters believe AI’s consequences outweigh the justifications of possibility, innovation and efficiency, and thus are reluctant to engage with it. I, too, am concerned about the ethical implications of AI. However, there’s an argument to be made that deep opposition is actively needed in conversations about AI’s development and dissemination.
Public generative AI models have already transformed industry landscapes. Computer science and engineering associate professor Dan Knights said he doesn’t even write code anymore as a programmer. AI gets that job done now, and that’s just in the last few months.
Knights sees his role as an educator in the age of AI as a conversation facilitator. The programming lab he will teach next semester will cover the basics of AI-assisted coding and hold space for deeper conversations about AI.
Education is his main intention, Knights added. First, people need to be equipped with information about AI’s uses, limitations, proponents and drawbacks.
“Then, encourage people to recognize their own viewpoint and perspective and what lens they’re looking through,” Knights said. “And to listen to others who have potentially different perspectives and also have valuable insights.”
Classes and conversations like this can be a way for people to create a foundation of ethics as this technology inevitably alters industry landscapes. Students, who will witness AI’s maturation, are ultimately the people who move into the world with it.
Students are our future policymakers and business owners, artists and historians. They must enter AI’s shifting landscape with a solid foundation of what it means to be interacting with AI and all its ethical implications.
For University advertising associate professor Claire Segijn, learning the tools isn’t enough. The emphasis should be on the framework of how people approach AI or any innovation.
“It’s really important to not teach students how to use one specific tool, but really to provide them with a framework so that they can learn about how to approach new technological developments in the future as well, to be open-minded,” Segijn said.
Educators and students need to have discussions about their concerns surrounding AI, especially issues of transparency, copyright, environmental impact, labor, digital vulnerabilities and biases, Segijn added. A practical and ethically-grounded foundation can help students navigate their own position and ethics on AI.
“The AI that we’re using today is going to be the worst AI that we’re going to use in our lives,” Segijn said.
Segijn designed what she calls “S.M.AI.R.T.E.R,” intended to give students a framework to do smarter work with AI tools. It’s an evaluation system that emphasizes scope, merits, areas of improvement, review and comparison, team and monetization, ethical considerations and reasoning.
While she created the framework, Segijn said AI helped design the name.
“Practice what you preach, right?” Segijn said, referring to the ethics of being transparent around AI use.
Still, many students are skeptical. I have a friend who said her personal ethics around AI are simply not engaging with it. Her feelings stem from environmental concerns and a sense that AI contributed to a devaluation of human interaction, creativity and agency. It could also cause the collapse of civilization, she added.
Haters do not want to adopt the metaphorical AI infant, and maybe AI shouldn’t be compared to a living, growing, precious thing, anyway.
“What is really important is that there’s always a human in the loop,” Segijn said. “In the end, you’re responsible.”
If you engage with AI, you have a responsibility to consider its ethics.
If you do not engage with AI, you still have a responsibility to consider its ethics.
“Everyone has a responsibility to ethics,” Knights said. “We all want to do the right thing.”
The answer is much messier than “Yes AI” or “No AI.” But, as students are the world’s rising leaders and AI is now an inseparable part of the global narrative, everyone’s ethics are called upon to mold our future.