A Generation of AI Guinea Pigs (The Atlantic)

This spring, the Los Angeles Unified School District—the second-largest public school district in the United States—introduced students and parents to a new “educational friend” named Ed. A learning platform that includes a chatbot represented by a small illustration of a smiling sun, Ed is being tested in 100 schools within the district and is accessible at all hours through a website. It can answer questions about a child’s courses, grades, and attendance, and point users to optional activities.

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Whatever AI is actually good for, kids will probably be the ones to figure it out. They will also be the ones to experience some of its worst effects. “It is kind of a social fact of nature that kids will be more experimental and drive a lot of the innovation” in how new tech is used culturally, Mizuko Ito, a longtime researcher of kids and technology at UC Irvine, told me. “It’s also a social fact of nature that grown-ups will kind of panic and judge and try to limit.”

The full article appears in The Atlantic.