Experts say AI may widen the digital divide in education. Here's why.
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — As kids across the Pittsburgh area get ready to return to school, artificial intelligence may be in the classroom.
Educators and experts said AI may widen the digital divide between students who understand how to use technology and students who do not.
A.I. in the classroom
Generative AI exploded into the tech culture in November 2022, and now it's everywhere, including your kid's classroom.
Local school districts, educational non-profit organizations and AI experts said the technology has major benefits.
"When you talk about time that's cut grading papers, or reading homework or delving through answers to multiple choice questions, right? These are things that can be done with artificial intelligence," Casey Mindlin, executive director of the STEM Coding Lab.
But there are also concerns that it's going to facilitate cheating or bullying or widen the digital divide between students.
The National Skills Coalition said in 2023, 92 percent of jobs required digital literacy, but just 66 percent of workers had those skills.
"AI represents the new, the next frontier in the digital divide," Brianna Dusseault, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University.
The digital divide
Dusseault researches how AI is used in school districts across the country. She said the divide is widening.
"We're already seeing it was a small gap, but the start of gaps where urban districts serving students of color or students in low-income settings are less likely to be providing training or policies on AI," Dusseault said.
Eloise Milligan, the coordinator of academic services for Shaler Area School District, said the district is actively working with teachers on using AI because the kids are already there.
"It's in their environment," Milligan said. "It's everywhere we go, and they're hearing the news stories. Kids aren't oblivious. On TikTok is primarily where they're getting most of their information."
Mindlin runs the STEM Coding Lab in Pittsburgh. It is a non-profit organization that will teach computer science to 4,000 students in and around Pittsburgh this year.
He said what's playing out with AI in the classroom risks repeating the inequities of the first digital revolution.
"Those same schools that sped toward the digitization of their classrooms in the '90s are adopting artificial intelligence inside their own classrooms with creativity, innovation, all the things that you would want a classroom to have. And yet again, our under-resourced schools and school districts are being left in the dust," Mindlin said.
Embracing AI in the classroom
Dusseault said district administrators can't just ban AI in the classroom or call it cheating because it's already changing the jobs kids will one day be doing.
"Even if AI stopped evolving today, we've already got a lot of technological adjustments," Dusseault said.
Mindlin says every parent and teacher needs to be prepared to learn, and districts need to support them.
"If we care about our kids staying in Pittsburgh, and our kids being able to compete for opportunities that allow them to stay and raise families in Pittsburgh, then we better be focused on teaching them these 21st-century skills that are evolving every day," Mindlin said.
KDKA-TV has reached out to school districts for their policies on AI in the classroom for the upcoming school year.
Investigations Producer Tory Wegerski contributed to this story.