“How Can I Code A.I. Responsibly?”: The Effect of Computational Action on K-12 Students Learning and Creating Socially Responsible A.I.

Abstract

Teaching young people about artificial intelligence (A.I.) is recognized globally as an important education effort by organizations and programs such as UNICEF, OECD, Elements of A.I., and AI4K12. A common theme among K-12 A.I. education programs is teaching how A.I. can impact society in both positive and negative ways. We present an effective tool that teaches young people about the societal impact of A.I. that goes one step further: empowering K-12 students to use tools and frameworks to create socially responsible A.I. The computational action process is a curriculum and toolkit that gives students the lessons and tools to evaluate positive and negative impacts of A.I. and consider how they can create beneficial solutions that involve A.I. and computing technology. In a human-subject research study, 101 U.S. and international students between ages 9 and 18 participated in a one-day workshop to learn and practice the computational action process. Pre-post questionnaires measured on the Likert scale students’ perception of A.I. in society and students' desire to use A.I. in their projects. Analysis of the results shows that students who identified as female agreed more strongly with having a concern about the impacts of A.I. than those who identified as male. Students also wrote open-ended responses to questions about what socially responsible technology means to them pre- and post-study. Analysis shows that post-intervention, students were more aware of ethical considerations and what tools they can use to code A.I. responsibly. In addition, students engaged actively with tools in the computational action toolkit, specifically the novel impact matrix, to describe the positive and negative impacts of A.I. technologies like facial recognition. Students demonstrated breadth and depth of discussion of various A.I. technologies' far-reaching positive and negative impacts. These promising results indicate that the computational action process can be a helpful addition to A.I. education programs in furnishing tools for students to analyze the effects of A.I. on society and plan how they can create and use socially responsible A.I.