Abstract:
Artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-powered automation is a feature of our everyday interactions and is increasingly being integrated into both a commercial vision of education and systems and applications used in schools and in business intelligence for schooling systems. Many stakeholders from industry and education sectors present a vision of an AI promise that will ‘free up’ teachers from mundane work to create efficiencies, personalised adaptation in learning and predictive dashboards that can act as proof of learning guide pedagogical decision-making. This vision relies on a confluence of data extraction from learning systems and applications, the Internet of Things, and the Internet of Bodies. Often driven by ‘black box’ machine learning algorithms, the use of AI and AI-powered automation in schools raises serious questions about machine decision-making and the robustness of current conceptions of education governance in relation to awareness, transparency, explainability, fairness and accountability. The aim of this presentation is to explore AI and its subfield of machine learning within a specially developed ethical framework for artificial intelligence in schools. It has a focus on human rights and digital rights of the child and will elaborate on key tension points for immediate action.