The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Education. A critical studies approach.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is frequently hailed as a ‘solution’ to many of education’s core problems (e.g., OECD, 2021) – problems such as student underachievement, assessment at scale, and better preparing learners for 21st century career paths. However, such claims tend to be aspirational rather than evidence-based (Miao & Holmes, 2021), and overly simplistic, forgetting issues such as agency, pedagogy, surveillance, efficacy, and ethics (Holmes et al., 2021; Holmes et al., 2022; Holmes & Porayska-Pomsta, 2022; Porayska-Pomsta, Holmes and Nemorin, 2023). In fact, teaching and learning with AI all too often undermines student agency and disempowers educators, while teaching and learning about AI almost always focuses on the technological dimension of AI to the exclusion of the human dimension (its ethical, human, and social justice implications). Accordingly, this presentation will introduce Artificial Intelligence and education (AI&ED) from a critical studies and human rights perspective. It will identify and address many of the myths, it will propose an ethics by design approach, and it will pose more questions about AI and education than it answers.