Ethics Institute Convenes Ethics and AI Advisory Board

The Ethics Institute, in its effort to be a center of excellence in ethics and AI, recently convened an Ethics and AI Advisory board. The Institute gathered experts from industry, startups, health care, finance, and education, which led to a fascinating conversation about how the Ethics Institute should be thinking about AI and orienting students to live, work, and learn alongside it. 

On the board: 

• Alex Benke, vice president of AI at Ridgeline
• Jonathan Dambrot, CEO of Cranium AI
• Aji Joseph, managing director at Two Sigma Investments
• Gene Cautillo, assistant professor of marketing and management at New Jersey City University
• Lisa Goldman, ethicist in residence at Overlook Hospital
• Hetal Maheshwari, senior major account executive at Akamai Technologies
• Sophie Huttner, Kent Place alumna ’18 and Rhodes Scholar
• Mayank Agrawal, CEO of Roundtable
• Karen Rezach, Director of the Ethics Institute
• Kim Pearson, Director of Technology at Kent Place School
• Anna Conti, the Associate Director of the Ethics Institute  

The Advisory Board meeting kicked off with one important question in mind: Should there be a new paradigm for teaching and learning in our virtual world? To address that, the group talked about trends in the corporate realm, higher education, and medicine, and which skills and competencies are most relevant in an AI world. 

The group also discussed some challenges with AI in an educational context, such as the (perceived) threat to curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking; why K–12 communities may be fearful of AI; a definition of “cheating”; and how AI should be used in a school environment. Of significance, too, is that there are disparities — both generational and socioeconomic — within and among schools. 

The group then considered what skills and competencies students — those for whom AI will be a reality — need to be successful and happy. First, students must learn about issues of bias and privacy and how to test whether a source is trustworthy. Second, they should explore the value of friendships and relationships with actual human beings, not bots. 

“Over the past 12 months, The Ethics Institute has answered numerous requests from educators across the country to assist them in creating AI policies for their schools,” said Dr. Rezach. “In addition to the fact that any policy would be obsolete from the moment it was published, the main issue is that the use of AI in schools has to address both the benefits and the harms. Gone are the days when the discussion focuses solely on plagiarism issues. Instead, educators must be proactively thinking about the ways we need to prepare students to be successful, contributing members of society. Assembling this group of thought leaders from various industries will serve to inform us about what’s happening beyond school walls so we can be the thought leaders in creating meaningful AI policies for schools.”

The Ethics and AI Advisory Board will reconvene in the new year.