AI in Schools
A Media Literacy perspective to AI learning in schools

What exciting uses can artificial intelligence have for next generation students?

By Tamal Kanti Mukherjee

I was recently invited by a reputed school in Kolkata as a guest lecturer on the topic, The Future of Artificial Intelligence. The most interesting part of the session was the Q&A segment. The students asked some powerful questions with a sense of simplicity only a set of bright school go-ers can exhibit. Some of them were –

• “I was searching for some information about the second World War on the internet for a school project. Now, whenever I log into the internet, I get a lot of pop-ups about the history of that era. Is this done by some AI algorithm?”
• “Last September for my mom’s birthday, I ordered a red velvet cake using a popular food delivery app. This year, starting August, I’m seeing multiple online advertisements of restaurants selling ‘red velvet cakes’. Is this AI driven?”
• “Can AI help me to complete my physics assignments on time?”     

The one-word answer to all of the above questions is ‘Yes’. The very fact that these questions are being asked by young school students compels us to think about the relevance of media literacy while learning about artificial intelligence in schools.

We have two key terms here – ‘media literacy’ and ‘artificial intelligence’. To begin with, let us define these two terms. Media literacy is the ability of a person to access, analyze, and produce information for specific outcomes. In essence, this works in three sequential parts – the first is extracting information from the ocean of data available in different offline and online formats, the next is about transforming the extracted information to carry out analysis and make better sense from it, while the last bit is about producing information based on that analysis. Generally, one is supposed to produce this information keeping a specific objective in mind.  

Britannica defines artificial intelligence as the ability of machine controlled systems to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings.

Now, with the basic understanding of these two terms, let’s delve deeper into the challenges of present school curriculums. 

Artificial intelligence vs. media literacy

The below schematic represents the existing scenario –
If one looks at the two rectangles on the left hand side, there are clearly two communities – (a) there are Producers of products, services & data and (b) there are Students who consume these products, services & data. The interesting point to be noted is the producers use different AI techniques like Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing etc. to reach a higher number of students while the students are, in silos, learning different AI concepts.

However, this learning is not helping them to decide which products, services & data content are useful for them and which are not. Their access to information is extremely high while the quality of analysis of that information and the subsequent quality of producing further information from that analysis are, unfortunately, quite low. This is happening as there is a clear lacuna in terms of media literacy amongst students. So, let’s see what can be done as a countermeasure.

The proposed model

Keeping the above challenge in mind, let us look at the below schematic diagram which proposes a learning model factoring the key element of media literacy.
As depicted in the above diagram, in order to make the most of an AI-backed future and improve the present scenario, a media literacy lens needs to be introduced as a part of the AI-learning curriculum. With this lens in place, the students will be effectively able to segregate the contents created by the producers of products, services & data. This, arguably, is the most effective way of learning AI as a part of the curriculum because learning ‘AI concepts’ in silos will simply not work, moving ahead.

With the proposed approach the amount of information accessed by students for analysis and production of information will come down but the quality and authenticity of the consumed information will go up. This will result in a much higher quality analysis and eventual production of information.

Let us explore the exact elements which can form this ‘media literacy lens’.

Key elements of the media literacy lens

If the below elements are made a part of the AI curriculum or if students consider these a part of their AI learning journey, a media literacy lens will intrinsically get built into the system:

1. Smarter extraction of information using AI: Just like AI can be used to create fake news and information, some powerful AI tools can also be used for smarter extraction of authentic news and facts. One such AI tool is ‘The Factual’. It tells the credibility score of a particular piece of writing present in the digital world based on three major inputs – (i) the history of the writer, (ii) the history of the portal where the write-up is being hosted and (iii) diversity of the references used to build the write-up. Similar to ‘The Factual’, there are multiple other AI tools which help in smarter extraction of information from the digital world depending on the type of content. Including the techniques of the usage of these tools in the curriculum can be a real game changer in building a media literate society.
2. Disinformation and Misinformation identification using AI: As nowadays we are not dealing with databases or data warehouses but dealing with a data ocean formally termed ‘Big Data’, students need to build a critical eye to identify potential ‘Disinformation’ and ‘Misinformation’. Learning the usage and algorithm of AI tools like ‘Fabula’ (now acquired by X aka Twitter) can help a student to build this critical eye.  
3. AI enabled ‘Instant Fact Checking’: Probably one of the most underused applications of AI till date is ‘Instant Fact Checking’. The methods and applications of instant fact checking deserves the same importance as other popular areas of AI. The amount of research in the last one decade around building tools like ‘ClaimBuster’ can create a solid foundation for useful case studies on this topic for students.
4. Sensitizing students about the ethical side of AI: This is the most important element of the media literacy lens. As newbies in the world of artificial intelligence, students tend to apply their learning in building fake content themselves. In many cases this is driven by pure curiosity. This tends to have a continuous negative impact on media literacy. Students need to be sensitized to AI techniques which are used to generate fake content, and can also be used to verify authenticity of content. They need to experience how thrilling it can be to detect fake news. The working principle of a tool like ‘Grover’ should be included in the curriculum.

The bottom line
 
We now have a society full of smart consumers but need a society with smart citizens for a better world. The only way to make that happen is by using artificial intelligence to build a media literacy lens, and I’m confident in the four key elements described above being used to achieve it.