📸 : Nate Green meets with St. Markers after final Gray Colloquium of the year.

Nate Green, academic technology coordinator and middle school teacher at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., presented the fifth and final Gray Colloquium address of the academic year on Thursday, April 18. Throughout 2023-2024, Gray Colloquium speakers have focused on the theme of “AI and Its Implications: Shaping Our Future.” Green's talk, entitled "Responsible AI: Embracing Our Role in Advancing Equity, Ethics, and Justice," explored the ways in which AI can be problematic, including issues of plagiarism, copyright, consent, misinformation, bias, bigotry, and stereotype amplification. 

“What happens if the bias and bigotry in these systems is permanent?” Green asked St. Markers in the Putnam Family Arts Center. "Should we be using them at all?” 

Green is interested in how artificial intelligence can enhance versus detract from teaching and learning, and he wants to prepare students to use AI responsibly. In order to do so, students need to understand AI literacy and ethics. They need to understand that, as Green explained, “generative AI involves entering a dataset into a learning algorithm that outputs a prediction.” 

Unfortunately, one problem with generative AI is that “garbage in equals garbage out.” In other words, a defective dataset is going to give you a faulty and unreliable output. 

According to Green, the use of AI has led to several problematic issues involving plagiarism, copyright, consent, misinformation, disinformation, bias, bigotry, and stereotype amplification. 

“I wonder what that does to our democracy, to our trust in our institutions,” said Green. “What happens if the bias and bigotry in these systems is permanent? Should we be using them at all?”

With companies now utilizing facial recognition and voice recognition, Green worries about people abusing the new technologies, about stealing faces and voices. He worries, as he put it, about our humanity.

“I hope your takeaway today was: This stuff is messed up. I need to learn more,” Green said to St. Markers.

“[AI] can be both helpful and great and also deeply problematic," he added. “It’s up to us to evaluate.”

“As educated people, we have to think critically,” Green said in conclusion. “Thank this great school for giving you those skills.” 

 

Learn more about Nate Green and his keynote address at St. Mark’s AI Symposium.

Read Green’s article for Slate: "Schools Really Messed Up With Social Media. Now, We Have a Second Chance"