From Ditch That Textbook
Some of us saw the warning signs. For others, it had to hit the news before they realized. Unhealthy relationships between kids and artificial intelligence? It’s a threat.
In essence: the relationships we build and maintain with artificial intelligences can …
influence us into bad decisions
impact our human relationships
take us down a dark and twisty road that we might not be able to return from
Anthropomorphism — the attribution of human characteristics to something that’s not human — can create a dangerous psychological connection to AI for kids.
Our students need us to teach them. To protect them. And to intervene.
What can we do?
- Don’t model AI anthropomorphism. Don’t give it a name. Don’t assign it a gender. Don’t express concern for its feelings. Do this even if it contradicts our tendencies in human interaction. (Example: I always want to thank AI for its responses. It doesn’t need that. It’s a machine.) Students will follow our lead.
- Talk about the nature of AI. Here are a few talking points you can use:
- Natural language processing (NLP) is AI’s way of talking like us based on studying billions and billions of words in human communication. That’s why it sounds like us.
- Large language models (LLMs) make their best statistical guess on what we request. They run like a great big autocomplete machine, much like autocomplete in our text message and email apps.
- AI models emulate human speech. But they aren’t human and can’t feel and aren’t alive. They can’t love, but they reproduce the kind of text that humans use to express love. It’s all a creative writing exercise for AI.
- Protect, advise, and intervene. Keep your eyes open for places where AI feels human — and be ready to protect children and teens (and even our adult friends and family) from them. Warn children and teens — and put adults on the lookout. And when kids enter dangerous territory, act. Step in.
