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Extractive summaries and key takeaways from the articles curated from TOP TEN BUSINESS MAGAZINES to promote informed business decision-making | Since September 2017 | Week 313 | September 8-14, 2023

You need to talk to your kid about AI. Here are 6 things you should say.

By Rhiannon Williams  and Melissa Heikkilä | MIT Technology Review | September 5, 2023

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It’s not just AI chatbots that kids are encountering in schools and in their daily lives. AI is increasingly everywhere—recommending shows to us on Netflix, helping Alexa answer our questions, powering your favorite interactive Snapchat filters and the way you unlock your smartphone.  While some students will invariably be more interested in AI than others, understanding the fundamentals of how these systems work is becoming a basic form of literacy—something everyone who finishes high school should know.  MIT Technology Review’s six essential tips for how to get started on giving your kid an AI education are:

1. Don’t forget: AI is not your friend.  Chatbots are built to do exactly that: chat.  We need to remind children not to give systems like ChatGPT sensitive personal information, because it’s all going into a large database. Once your data is in the database, it becomes almost impossible to remove. It could be used to make technology companies more money without your consent, or it could even be extracted by hackers.
2. AI models are not replacements for search engines.  Students should treat chatbots’ answers as they should any kind of information they encounter on the internet: critically.  While it may be tempting to rely on chatbots to answer queries, they’re not a replacement for Google or other search engines. 
3. Teachers might accuse you of using an AI when you haven’t.  If your child has been wrongly accused of using AI in an assignment, remember to stay calm. Don’t be afraid to challenge the decision and ask how it was made, and feel free to point to the record ChatGPT keeps of an individual user’s conversations if you need to prove your child didn’t lift material directly.
4. Recommender systems are designed to get you hooked and might show you bad stuff.  It’s important to understand and explain to kids how recommendation algorithms work.  These services have a tendency to guide users to harmful content like misinformation. This is because people tend to linger on content that is weird or shocking, such as misinformation about health, or extreme political ideologies. It’s very easy to get sent down a rabbit hole or stuck in a loop, so it’s a good idea not to believe everything you see online. You should double-check information from other reliable sources too.
5. Remember to use AI safely and responsibly.  Generative AI isn’t just limited to text: there are plenty of free deepfake apps and web programs that can impose someone’s face onto someone else’s body within seconds. While today’s students are likely to have been warned about the dangers of sharing intimate images online, they should be equally wary of uploading friends’ faces into risqué apps—particularly because this could have legal repercussions.
6. Don’t miss out on what AI’s actually good at,  It’s not all doom and gloom, though. While many early discussions around AI in the classroom revolved around its potential as a cheating aid, when it’s used intelligently, it can be an enormously helpful tool. 

3 key takeaways from the article

1. It’s not just AI chatbots that kids are encountering in schools and in their daily lives. AI is increasingly everywhere in our lives.
2. While some students will invariably be more interested in AI than others, understanding the fundamentals of how these systems work is becoming a basic form of literacy—something everyone who finishes high school should know
3. MIT Technology Review’s six essential tips for how to get started on giving your kid an AI education are: Don’t forget: AI is not your friend, AI models are not replacements for search engines, Teachers might accuse you of using an AI when you haven’t, Recommender systems are designed to get you hooked and might show you bad stuff, Remember to use AI safely and responsibly, and Don’t miss out on what AI’s actually good at,  It’s not all doom and gloom, though.

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Topics:  Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Education