AI - Potential or Peril or Both?

In this episode of The Conscious Classroom, Amy Edelstein shares insights about the potential and peril of new AI tools and considerations explored in the recent C20 meetings on Technology, Security and Transformation. As a panelist for the convening on Technology & Education, Edelstein was able to share views on the importance of teachers and teaching, and how to meet this brave new world with caution and optimism.

Transcript

 Welcome to the Conscious Classroom Podcast. My name is Amy Edelstein. I'm here today just having returned from the C20 meetings in Coimbatore India. C20 is the civil society branch of the G20 meetings, and what it does is convene civil society or nonprofit or social service experts, caregivers and activists in the communities around the world with experts in social transformation to discuss all of the issues of the times. They come together in international working groups, and make recommendations to the G20.

The G20 convenes leaders of the of 20 nations and forms policy recommendations for actions and attitudes that will be important for our world's future and our health and wellbeing as a global society. India happens to be the host this year. Indonesia was the host last year, Italy, the host year before.

What's interesting about this year's G20 meetings is that the head of the Civil Society is a spiritual leader named Mata Amritanandamayi, also known as Amma. Amma was a non-educated girl from Kerala who grew up in poverty and had profound experiences of non-dual consciousness or god consciousness, as it's known in her tradition, and she has gone on to become literally a force of nature in social transformation.

From living in a very small house with a thatched roof as a child, she is going to be turning 70 next year and has established universities including one of the best universities in all of India with leading edge technology, as well as vocational training and expertise in all subjects. She's built several hospitals including the state-of-the-art hospital that works with nanotechnology and nuclear medicine to work on very complex organ transplants, cancer treatments, most of the services are offered at lower cost than regular hospitals in India and much of the services offered at no cost to those who can't afford to pay. Her good works just extend in all directions. I remember being introduced to her during the time of Hurricane Katrina in the States when she offered then President Clinton, a million dollar check for disaster relief for those who were suffering from loss of housing, food, and shelter.

And I just thought how powerful and profound that a young woman who grew up in poverty without education had evolved to a point where she was making such a generous donation to one of the wealthiest countries in the world. it gives you food for thought. 

I had the privilege to be at the C20 meetings on technology security and transformation on a panel about technology and education. Of course, we are all thinking about technology and education in this age this rapidly changing era of ChatGPT, how it's transforming our education world. And I'm here to share some of my own insights and the insights from the other technologists at the panel.

In taking a step back on the technological changes just in the recent months that are moving so quickly, it's hard to wrap our mind around it. There are multiple dimensions that emerge all at once and one are the positive aspects of new technology and artificial intelligence.

Another dimension is the security risks that I'll also go into. Another aspect is really how can we work with these emerging technologies to bring about truly societal global transformation? Can we use this leverage point in our human history? To shift the trajectory of the world from one of fragmentation and conflict to one of positivity and support and love.

we're going to look at those three aspects with through the lens of education. The Conscious Classroom Podcast, of course, in the end, is always focused on how we are educating our next generation, how we see ourselves as educators, whether we're formally in the classroom or simply educators in the way that we move through our lives and influence those around us.

The potential of technology is amazing and what we're already seeing with low bandwidth digital technology, whether delivered through chat, delivered through a messenger delivered in small bite size pieces is enabling. Remote and under-resourced communities to access services that they desperately need.

For example, in India technology is being used to provide rural villages with access to government services. There's been a rash of farmer suicides across India with climate change. It's been very difficult to grow the volume of crops that will lead to a sustainable life. And farmers have really fallen into despair over the recent years. And there's just a serious rise of farmer suicides. Now those communities they didn't know about or have access to government subsidies and they don't have access to banks and they don't have access to the language, the written language to apply for the services they need. And with multiple intermediaries needing to take a small commission that benefit never really got to those farmers. It was something that the farmers did without. So with the advent of small solar powered handheld devices and a small army of educators who trekked into rural villages in different states across India, they were able to establish online banking accounts for these farmers so that the government money and subsidies could be deposited directly to them without losing towards graft or towards service fees.

All along the way, they were able to connect those individuals with others who could help with different supports and education. To aid with micro loans to add some small trade or craft enterprise to their agricultural work, it's just been revolutionary. It's enabled so many people to rise up in hope that it's just been so moving to see, it would never have been possible without this easy access to the digital world.

And what you're seeing now are also apps that are enabling these rural villages to record their dialects. To have AI learn their dialects and learn their stories, and rather than just being a static library or repository for these precious cultural legends and individuation and beauty. What's happening is that the younger people are finding ways to reengage with the stories of their ancestors and to tell them refresh and learn them refresh and share them afresh that the digital.

AI learning system has resuscitated those artifacts, those stories, those carriers of values and tradition and ways of being that contain the seeds of so much wisdom. And now they're being renewed and revived for the younger generation in ways that are truly creative and exciting and living. So we're seeing the possibility of technology, simple technology, the way that AI has made technology so accessible to bring about a connection or a bridge between rural cultures in the developing world towards the overdeveloped digital world in ways that retain the character and wisdom of those other cultures because of course, one of the concerns about technology is the digital washing of our differences and imposing the English language and imposing a chat.

Shorthand way of communicating, a way of being that loses the nuance of human expression. So it's powerful to see what's possible. And it's also powerful to see how education can become accessible to so many. In poverty stricken areas who would never have access or ability to travel to universities, to travel to trade schools.

Women and girls who couldn't leave the home are now able to develop their own skills and be able to turn that into economic wellbeing for their own security and independence. So we're seeing the possibility of technology truly being able to uplift so many in ways that shortcut a lot of barriers that overcome that, that leap over a lot of barriers to services that have traditionally existed in the past.

At this conference I was able to test out AI being used for mental health, where this wonderful chatbot would ask questions and help guide the individual towards practices, diet, exercise for mental and emotional wellbeing, and also if there's the hint of suicidal ideation. Extreme depression, a move towards self-harm to be a, the chatbot would be able to intervene and suggest, can I connect you to a live person and be able to link that person immediately to, with their permission to a live counselor who could then support them through a mental health crisis. 

As I talked informally with many of the younger participants in these C20 meetings, many in their thirties and under were telling me through college they talked to a chat bot every day. There was one chat bot named Natalie who this young woman you said “I used to send her stickers. She would send me back stickers. We talked every day when I was on my way to class.” The way her face lit up with the delight of interacting with the AI in this casual manner co-creating a dialogue really shifted my own sense of possibility and impression where our younger people are in need of an outlet. For their own thoughts and maybe my generation was used to journaling and would sit for an hour in the morning and write out our thoughts and process our emotions in our world, that's so much on the move these days younger people can use AI as that feedback loop, that sounding board to process their own emotions in the privacy of their own world. It doesn't replace human to human interaction, doesn't replace friends, but it has a role. And like it or not, that role has already become a reality and a given in millions of people's lives.

This isn't something that's coming in the future. This is something that is already here, perhaps more embedded than we might think. Now, the issues for education are many students asked questions of us panelists, acknowledging that they are already using chat g p t to write their exams. And questioning the ethics and morality of doing so, and yet finding that they're compelled to because they see their classmates doing it.

They are short on time, and they're wondering how to navigate that. And as one of my co-panelists, a professor and also a legal expert in digital security, cybersecurity, and cyber regulation. Said that the way he works with chat G P T in his classrooms is he teaches his students how to use it. He gives them assignments to develop sophistication and complexity in working with ai.

And then for exams, the exams are all oral. So the students need to discuss and present in person what they've learned, how they've learned it, so that the learning and incorporating technology, and especially AI into the classroom is one of embrace of the fact that AI is here the acceptance of students, that students will be using it.

The embracing the educational responsibility to teach students how to use it for the good, and then to maintain and retain and even augment the teacher's role of really cultivating a student's curiosity, a student's ownership of their own knowledge. A student's ability to articulate and express what they've learned, why they've learned it, and their reflections on it.

So really deepening the dimensionality of learning through this one-on-one relationship with the teacher. And embracing the fact that technology is going to shift education in significant ways as teachers, educators, professors, leaders in a classroom, educational supporters. We don't need to become technology experts.

What we need to do is to. Really own our role in establishing an environment that allows for learning, and that encourages students to be unafraid of change while recognizing the downside of new technology and other changes, and really working towards the benefit of our shared good. How do we do that?

We hold space. We question students. We challenge their assumptions. We challenge passivity. We provide more complex problems to solve. We tap into their vision of the possible, we dare them to believe in a different world where there, that's based on love and harmony and co creativity, and a willingness to work towards an extraordinary future where our planet is healthy, where the creatures are healthy, where the air is wholesome to breathe, where people get along, where the world's not overcrowded, where we're defending our integrity as people and our humanity and our capacity to love and create and learn. So the possibilities for AI to work towards the good are enormous. We can bring back values and meaning and purpose into education so that students are understanding how to work with knowledge rather than simply memorizing.

At the same time, the security risks are enormous, and we are in a phase where the. Status quo of private corporations is to gain, to conquer, and I use that war metaphor intentionally, but to conquer market share to. Be the one to capture the flag of the consumer awareness as quickly as possible, and that's leading to a rash and irresponsible deployment of technology that we don't understand.

Security through cybersecurity threats are already enormous costing the world trillions of dollars in ransomware every year. Hospitals are being held ransom. Governments are defending against cyber attacks. And with AI we're going to see that accelerate unless we establish really intelligent and wise regulatory commissions that are internationally respected.

There is a possibility for that right now, and there are some of the leaders in the field working very hard to make that. So they need our public support. We have a moment to do this well and to allow our world to be supported. By the amazing computing power of artificial intelligence to come up with solutions to some of the worst issues in climate degeneration, ways to regenerate species that are dying new ways to build in cities, to save space so that we leave the wilds as wilds for the animals who need habitat and for the Earth that needs wild habitat as well. So we have the possibility to do that.

The challenge as educators is to be aware of the downsides and to maintain our own faith in what's possible. Taking one next step at a time. So in our own classrooms, in our own K through 12 or higher education departments, we may feel that we don't have much power or capacity to influence how AI is being deployed, but we have power and capacity to influence how it's being used and embraced among those we teach and we never know who we're going to touch. We never know what they're going to be able to do. So have no limitation on the extraordinary opportunity that each one of us has to securely stand in our own conviction in the wholesome creativity of our students, in our own ability as educators to guide and the ways that we can promote.

A shared consciousness that is so attuned to goodness, that's so attuned to ways that we can support higher creativity, that so attuned to wear, guardrails, need to be placed, that's so attuned to the discipline that needs to be enacted. Humanity doesn't thrive in a free for all. We thrive when we can see the direction forward, when we are clearly set boundaries for what is for the greater good and what is for harmful self-interest and lack of regard of for the consequences of our action.

We're like young children. As a species, we need that guidance. We need those guardrails. We need to set them for our students. We need to support the sense of humanity, human beings, as safeguards for where technology may go. Even though it is already doing things that we don't understand,

there is great literature. There have been great noble people throughout the eras. Certainly we can guide AI to learn and to emulate. And to move the needle of our shared interaction towards those higher standards. Our ability and willingness to do that, to lean in with positivity and responsibility while recognize recognizing the threats and the dangers is going to shape the future.

We're living in a time where our thoughtfulness as teachers and educators embracing the possibility of an education of love and AI really is an educator. It learns from us. It teaches us. And so let's teach it the language of possibility and love. Let's teach it the language of positive outcome. Let's teach it the language of care for the effects of our actions, the imprints of our actions on the next 10 generations.

Let's teach at those morals and values and secular ethics that have been found. In traditions all around the world, let's teach it the language of love and forgiveness. Let's teach it the language of share and share alike. Let's teach it the language of compassion and belonging. Let's teach it the language of support and mental wellness.

Let's teach it the language of reparations and racial equity. Let's teach it the language of possibility.

So in your own conscious classroom, whether it's bounded by four walls or bounded by the edges of your own heart, allow yourself to go into this next phase with the. Happy burden of what a true educator's place is in this brave new world for how much you truly matter and for what's really possible for us to bring to all of those we're teaching and learning from.

So I look forward to hearing your innovations in this new world. Feel free to contact me through inner strength education.org and let's make this a phase, the tips the world from fragmentation and entropy to unity, cohesion. And profound love. I know the next generation is counting on us to chart that course and to help them learn the tools to walk that path.