Learning Ethics in AI—Teaching Non-Engineering Undergraduates through Situated Learning

Abstract

Learning about artificial intelligence (AI) has become one of the most discussed topics in the field of education. However, it has become an equally important learning approach in contemporary education to propose a “general education” agenda that conveys instructional messages about AI basics and ethics, especially for those students without an engineering background. The current study proposes a situated learning design for education on this topic. Through a three-week lesson session and accompanying learning activities, the participants undertook hands-on tasks relating to AI. They were also afforded the opportunity to learn about the current attributes of AI and how these may apply to understanding AI-related ethical issues or problems in daily life. A pre- and post-test design was used to compare the learning effects with respect to different aspects of AI (e.g., AI understanding, cross-domain teamwork, AI attitudes, and AI ethics) among the participants. The study found a positive correlation among all the factors, as well as a strong link between AI understanding and attitudes on the one hand and AI ethics on the other. The implications of these findings are discussed, and suggestions are made for possible future revisions to current instructional design and for future research.

Ethical issues of the use of AI-driven mobile apps for education

“…However, we cannot see these fields as necessarily strictly separated, but rather as overlapping or intertwined. This is especially so because interdisciplinary collaboration is seen as highly beneficial in the field of AI ethics as it is repeatedly supported by various research findings [see e.g., (14,(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)]. Engineering primarily encompasses the field of AI system manufacturing and includes all those involved in the entire AI .…”

“…The following studies have been yielded as they contain a clear systematic approach to the topic and they fully focus on the ethical issues of AI in mobile apps (14,(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24). The other detected texts only included more or less superficial comments on ethics, touching only on isolated issues, such as privacy [e.g., (25)(26)(27)(28)].…”

“…The chosen studies can be further subdivided into those that address purely educational issues related to AI ( 19 , 21 , 22 , 24 ) and those that discuss the use of AI in medicine ( 20 , 23 ) and could also be included in this study, while Leimanis and Palkova ( 18 ) address ethical issues of AI in medical education. The remaining study ( 14 ) deals with the ethics of AI in various disciplines, with machine ethics, a subfield of the ethics of AI, as a focal point but it provides insightful comments related to education, therefore, it also had to be included in this review.…”

“…The texts studied bring some remarkable findings that seem to be very important to the understanding of the current situation. First, the most significant finding, included in six studies ( 14 , 18 – 20 , 23 , 24 ), is that interdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder collaboration that takes into account different perspectives across disciplines is essential for establishing globally acceptable standards of AI ethics. These stakeholders include end-users and developers of AI systems, as well as other organizational and societal stakeholders, including manufacturers and indeed anyone who comes into contact with AI systems ( 23 ).…”

“…Fortunately, many authors ( 14 , 18 – 20 , 23 , 24 ) are already aware of the need to respect and employ diverse perspectives on AI ethics when designing, programming and creating mobile apps for various purposes, including education. In the case of education, one must not forget that these tools will be widely used by children and the younger generation as they are in the process of formal and informal education and they will thus be massively impacted by these technologies.…”