Issues around the responsible use of GenAI in education:

Environmental Impacts

According to the Sustainable Agency here are a couple of statistics:

• One GenAI image can equal out to half a charge on a phone (thesustainableagency.com)
• A carbon-intensive image generates the amount of carbon equivalent to 4.1 miles driven (about 6 km) and the least carbon-intensive image generates 6,833 times less carbon, equivalent to 0.0006 miles driven by a similar vehicle (thesustainableagency.com)
• Training bigger AI models is like taking 300 return flights from New York to San Francisco (infographic attached)
• Generating 1,000 texts costs 9% of a smartphone charge (infographic attached)
• By 2030, AI will be using the amount of energy that Japan uses today (infographic attached)

See image below for reference:

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Property Rights

According to the Government of Canada, property rights and GenAI are relatively new and constantly changing and evolving.

An increasing number of stakeholders in the creative industries have expressed concerns about the impact of this technology on the copyright framework. For a number of stakeholders, they see AI undermining rights holders’ ability to consent to the use of their creative works and to receive due credit and compensation.^Footnote 3 Particularly, they are concerned about the uncompensated use of copyright-protected works in the development of AI systems, the potential for AI-generated outputs to infringe existing copyright-protected works, and the lack of practical enforcement remedies for rights holders.^{Footnote 4} 

-Consultation on Copyright in the Age of Generative Artificial Intelligence

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Learning – Positive & Negative Related Issues

Pro’s of AI in schools:

• Helps students who need more personalized learning (scaffolding)
• Helps lessen time constraints for teachers. Can create lesson plans, such as MagicschoolAI
• Accessibility. Text to speech, speech to text, summaries, visuals
• Interactive: Games, simulations, virtual field trips, etc
• Administrative: Attendance, scheduling, record data

Con’s of AI in schools:

• Privacy concerns: Student names and identities, data collecting, consent
• Equity concerns: Some students may not have access to technology at home, lower income families, AI can show biases, school funding
• Misinformation: Can’t tell right from wrong, incorrect information
• Academic motivation issues: Relying on a quick answer rather than using critical thinking skills, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
• Cost: Funding, subscriptions, technical support

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My Personal Thoughts

I never realized how much AI affects our environment until I attended one of our AI workshops through the EKTEP program. It’s so sad that the tools that can help people in different ways, can create such negative impacts. Moving forward, I want to try and be mindful how I’m using AI and when I am, ask myself the questions “Do I really need a quick answer?” “Can I figure this out on my own and not use AI?”

I couldn’t imagine putting so much effort into creating a piece of art or writing a scholarly paper, only to be uncredited and uncompensated for it. Basically someone else claiming your work as their own. As a university student, I found all the GenAI workshops very helpful so that you don’t take credit for someone else’s work or accidentally plagiarize. I think with everything evolving within the technology world, being as educated as you can be on a challenging topic is key in being a successful student and future teacher.

Lastly, we talked about how there are concerns with using GenAI in schools and the negative impacts that they create, such as motivation issues, equity concerns, and misinformation. I think these three points are the most important to me because motivation is so hard to teach and is mostly up to the individual, the equity concerns are a major issue because there are many kids who do not have access to electronics outside of school, and misinformation is a problem because students may be given the wrong information and don’t know how to decipher what is true and what isn’t, as well as AI having racial biases, etc.