What Students Are Concerned About AI
00:00:00 Jon Bergmann: Welcome to another episode of the Reach Every Student podcast with me, your host, John Bergmann. Today, I want to talk about conversation that I had with my students. So some of you know that I have been I wrote an article, a letter, an open letter to my students about AI. And this past week, two weeks really, I've been having conversations with my students about AI. And so what I had them do is I had my students who happened to be high school, mostly juniors and seniors. I had them read the article, which I'll link in the show notes if you haven't already read the article. And then we just had a conversation and I recorded their conversation, and I'm just going to summarize some of the thoughts and concerns that they had. As a matter of background, in the article, I talk about the four industrial revolutions, where the fourth is AI and biotech, and I presented it as a opportunity and an amazing time of change in the world, how each industrial revolution was a major time of change.
00:01:04 Jon Bergmann: And there was excitement in the air, and there was lots of things that were going to change rapidly. And they are in the cusp of this amazing revolution that's happening right now. And that's an opportunity. But also there are threats because with every revolution or yeah, there has been those who have suffered in those industrial revolutions. And so they read the article. And then I gave them seven suggestions about how to operate. And then they read each of the suggestions. The suggestions, by the way, were overreliance on AI could harm you. I cite some studies that show that if they over rely on AI at the wrong time, it creates harm. Then I then point two was I said you should still use AI. Point three I said, don't believe everything you see. That is, as an AI sometimes gets it wrong. And then I was very strong about the conversation about AI companion apps or AI friends. I think that that is a poison on the world. I then said they should choose their college, their college majors, carefully as they move on into the world. They should be very thoughtful because many jobs will be replaced by AI. I then encourage them to lean into learning. And I then lastly encourage them to surround themselves with outstanding people. So that's the that's the gist of that article. That would I think it resonated with them. It was written from my heart to them. So yeah. What was their response? Well, interestingly enough, what I thought was fascinating is one of the things they really jumped on was college majors. Now, remember, I'm teaching college juniors and seniors and they are just they are applying to colleges right now. Uh, some are seniors and they are they've already applied for their colleges and they're picking majors. And so this is at a very important time in their life. And I'm sure you've probably seen these, but there's lots of news articles that are now talking about how different companies are not hiring as many people, especially young, twenty something, you know, college graduates, there's a decreasing market because they are realizing the companies are realizing that they can have AI do some, especially of the entry level jobs. There was a study and I looked for it. I saw it a few days ago, uh, that showed that the people most impacted by AI happened to be those who are, uh, young, twenty something. There's actually been interesting things just out in the last few days on this. Um, Dario Amodei. I think that's how you pronounce it, the anthropic CEO. He says that AI could eliminate fifty percent of all entry level white collar jobs in the next five years, and US unemployment could go up to ten or twenty percent because of AI. And Kai-fu Lee, who's a venture capitalist, is basically saying the same thing. He says AI could displace fifty percent of jobs by twenty twenty seven. So there's a lot of people talking about this and it's actually really happening. If you look, it's happening at Microsoft and Amazon and places like that, and sometimes they're seeing those layoffs. And some people say that's just downsizing because of the over hiring during Covid. And certainly that's probably part of it. all that to say, my students are very concerned about this, and I think they're rightly concerned. And a lot of their questions were like, hey, Mr. Bergman, what what, uh, this is the major I want to study. Is that something I should still study? and I said, I don't know the answers to these questions, but this is something I would really encourage them, as I did in the article, for them to do some deep research. I think that is such a a threat to them because again, they are that going to soon be that young worker looking for that entry level job, typically white collar. I teach at a school that's a college preparatory high school, and if they're preparing for college, then you hope that they will have a job when they leave college that they could enter into. And some of those jobs are at risk. Other other things that they brought up besides that was they really saw the benefits of the flipped classroom in this age of AI. And we kind of had a deep talk. It's actually similar to the last week's podcast. We had a deeper talk about how they could positively use AI when they're stuck. And so it wasn't just about how AI is something that can hurt them, but something that can help them. This was kind of the big, sort of razor's edge we kept talking about. We talked about how AI is something they need to learn how to use, but also something they need to learn how to use ethically and in such a way that they will thrive. And I really think they got the message. You know, again, who knows? I'm talking to, you know, teenagers. And some of them certainly received the message and some didn't. But I really sense that most of them were very contemplative afterwards thinking, I want to use AI. and the big takeaway is in the big ways at this level. Right? Developing brains. These students are, on the cusp of adulthood. And they want to thrive. They want to become, somebody who is a person that matters. And the thing that they they kind of, I don't know, I think they got this message. It was the message of my article. But but they articulated it that number one, that if they let AI do all the first work and they don't do the thinking, then it will make them stupefied. That was one of my big points. It will make them dumber and they will lose critical thinking skills and it will be bad. And they all kind of passively admitted that they have done that sometimes, because it's a great temptation to let AI do the work for you. I think that's not just them, and I think it's could be a problem across the world. But then there are cases where AI is a very positive thing. So if they are in a class and they are stuck on something and they have AI explain it to them because the maybe the teacher wasn't one hundred percent clear or they just, you know, weren't at the right moment to learn that. And they just it's just in time learning. And so asking the AI to help them learn a particular thing, uh, would be very powerful. And I said, oh, absolutely. That was just one of our just every class, every group talked about that. Is that. Well, I want to use it when I'm stuck on this math thing that I don't understand or whatever. And I said one hundred percent, that's a great, great idea. And even in the flipped classroom. I said this last week, one of the big problems of flipped learning is that you can't raise your hand and ask a question. If you're watching a video, you know, at ten o'clock at night before the next day or whatever. And I said, what I'm trying to do, honestly, here's something I'm struggling with. I think I may have solved it. I haven't done it yet, though, is I'm going to incentivize them asking AI questions while they're watching the video. And if they were to have some system to prove that they've had a conversation, probably just a chat link that they can, uh, get some extra points or something, I want to incentivize them interacting with my pre content, whether that's reading text or, um, watching a video. And so that's, that's I'm gonna play around with that. And I'll have to tell you how that goes as the year goes by. And so that was their the kind of the big takeaways, positive ways to use AI versus the ways they knew would help them. And I think that was just the biggest thing I saw as a takeaway. And then we kind of closed with the conversation about AI companion apps, and most of them snickered. Let's just say it right. It's kind of weird to say, well, I have an AI boyfriend or girlfriend or friend, whatever. And they were very they snickered and some of them like pointed to some others. Oh yeah, you've got one. And. They laughed, but it was an uncomfortable, weird laugh because statistics say seventy two percent of them have created an account. And I think these are common sense media, figures out on the internet. And you could read them yourself. And if I'm not mistaken, I may have the numbers wrong, but it's ballpark thirty some odd percent, like low thirties, like thirty two or something like that are really regular users and kind of almost daily are having a conversation with their AI friend. And we had a conversation about how that will hurt them. I can't be strong enough to say that I believe these things are a poison on the world. And those who create these apps are going to poison the world. What's going to do? And this is our conversation. It's going to take them away from real relationships with real people. We were designed to have real relationships with real people. We are social people. And if you spend time with your AI friend, then you will not be spending time with your real friend. And these are just these will be a blight on human society and will cause great suffering. Sorry, not that I don't believe this strongly enough, but, uh, and I felt like in that case, I had to sort of take over because they were just snickering like, no one really has any AI boyfriend or girlfriend. But I know statistics and, you know, maybe there's a lower percentage at my school than across other schools, but there's some who are more doing it right. And so I just said, hey, guys, I just implore you, if you're doing this to stop because these things will only hurt you. And here's why. And we just had a really frank conversation. And and again, I hope, I hope they got the message because I think this is such an important issue. You. And overall, I really believe my students got the message. And I would really encourage you, if you're a teacher or you're a leadership person, is to have some of these frank and honest conversations with your kids about AI. AI is both an exciting thing that they need to learn how to use. You know, go back to the whole job market thing I talked about at the top of the hour. Here is the job market. Those I mean, there's a saying you've probably heard this, uh, AI will not replace your job, but somebody's using AI will. And so it's important that you learn how to use AI, but not obviously as a crux, because if it's just a crux and you're just using it to do your work for you, then AI will literally replace your job. You're not needed. And so it's super important that you are the person who becomes an expert, who learns the deep learning principles, and then can use AI as a springboard to do, great creative work in the world. And and that's the message we want to send to our students, that there is a knife's edge between using AI well and letting AI do your work for you. And that, to me is just a good conversation that we had together. Anyways. So I was overly very pleased with what happened in this conversation, and I hope to see what that looks like as the days progress and as the year goes on, as I see my students engaging with their learning and in really using AI in a way that helps them to thrive and not become stupefied.
00:12:16 Jon Bergmann: I hope you've enjoyed this episode of the podcast. I encourage you to reach out to your friends and share this podcast with them. And, uh, yeah, uh, reach every student, Go out and reach every student. This is John Bergmann. Out.
