Today’s debate was on whether or not AI will revolutionize education for the better. I was excited to jump into the resources our debaters shared on this one because I am quite far out of my comfort zone when it comes to this topic. I learned a lot today, here is my summary of takeaways.

For those like me who are just opening the door to AI, the UNESCO report provided by our debaters defines the important term as “Generative AI (GenAI) is an artificial intelligence (AI) technology that automatically generates content in response to prompts written in natural-language conversational interfaces.” (p. 8). This report is a great comprehensive look at Generative AI with both the positives and negatives mentioned. As for the two opposing sides the debate began with the pro side who presented well researched data.

Pro Side
One of the big selling points from this group was that AI is revolutionary as it creates individualized learning experiences for students. AI Uncovered makes great points as to how AI is made to fit your style, your pace, and your interests (0:52-2:12). It also discusses how AI changes as you change and gets to know how you learn best in order to cater to your style.

Another key point that was discussed was that AI can be used to enhance human-led pedagogy. It was the confirmation I needed to contest the idea that AI will take jobs away from educators. Instead, the human-led aspect, if used appropriately, could allow teachers more time to work directly with students and help teachers professionally develop and even guide students in the use of AI in the classroom. Finally, Sarah Levy mentions that AI is the future of our schools and instead of looking back at how school used to be done 200 years ago, we should be looking ahead to how AI can change student’s futures 200 years from now. I have to give credit where credit is due, the against side of this debate put up a great fight presenting their debate as well.

Against Side
This side of the debate started with the argument that AI creates a dehumanized learning experience. The article mentions that AI can be biased andmay create less inclusive and diverse environments for learning. The biggest discussion we had on this side was that AI can perpetuate biases based on where it is pulling its information from. This point was brought up in Impact of Infrastructure article when it was stated “The data that issued for AI training is often obtained through convenience and, combined with the demographic makeup of the programmers that design these systems (white and male), the outputs of AI tend to encode this bias (Broussard 2019, 2023).” (p. 5).

Finally, a position of safety and security was mentioned, and I am very glad it was as for some odd reason, it is not something I immediately jumped to when thinking about this topic! AI software is only as good as the data on which it is trained. In order for AI to be successful in keeping students and families on track, it would require serious amounts of personal information to be shared and tracked. This is a little concerning to think about because then I will start deep-diving into just how much of my personal information my technology already has! I took from our debate discussion that AI is going nowhere (similar trend to a lot of our debate conversations) so we need to start working on security regulations and, as teachers, develop strategies to use it positively and constructively in the classroom.

I was not swayed on this debate this time. I voted in favour of AI revolutionizing education for the better even though I am still just dipping my toes into the world of AI. I am confident I will learn a lot from my peers’ posts after this debate as so many of them were knowledgeable and familiar with AI in their classrooms or professional development already! If you are one of those people and comment on my post, please paste the link of your blog in my comment so I can direct people to your page in the future! Until tomorrow y’all, where we tackle our last two debates of this course!