Desperate for clearer AI guidance? You're not alone

Do you remember the phrase "there are unknown unknowns"?  This famous quote is from Donald Rumsfeld, United States Secretary of Defence, in response to a question at a news briefing on February 12, 2002.

It about the lack of evidence linking the government of Iraq with the supply of weapons of mass destruction to certain terrorist groups.  The full quote is, still, almost funny:

“..as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.” 

There is no better adage for government.  

We might say the exact same thing about the use of AI.  A couple of days ago, as part of its inquiry hearing oral evidence, the Commons Education Select Committee was pondering the use of Artificial Intelligence and EdTech in Education.  It was told that teachers are “desperate” for clearer guidance on how AI should be used in schools.  

Especially, meanwhile, as PISA 2025 has recently concluded that pupils who do not use AI for their schoolwork massively outperformed those who do use AI, and the cost of humanoid robots is dropping rapidly at the AI frontier. PISA is the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment and measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use reading, mathematics and science knowledge to meet real-life challenges.

As AI Expert, Andreas Lindenthal ,explains: 

“our entire physical world - stairs, ladders, doors, vehicles, tools and workstations—was designed for the human body. A humanoid robot can enter those environments and perform many different firefighting, maintenance, construction or agricultural tasks without requiring specialized machinery or redesigned infrastructure.” 

Even though AI use can very obviously be potentially detrimental to its human users, not least the most vulnerable, we (who, exactly, is that we?) are relentlessly pursuing its commercial application, not just in schools, but in potentially all fields of human endeavour.   

Professor Rebecca Eynon, Professor of Education, the Internet and Society at the University of Oxford, told the Select committee that the current evidence is that adaptive personalised systems tools that are being deployed in schools are worst placed to support the most disadvantaged, and yet this is more often precisely where they are being deployed. On teacher work-load, she added: “I’m not sure it’s ever going to save anybody any time.”

Last night, I had a hypothetical conversation about how (even if) you could prevent a humanoid robot coming up your stairs. I think we’ll keep the toddler barrier, just in case.