AI Literacy Review: News and Highlights, October 8, 2024

This AI Literacy Review looks at AI's impact on children and MIT-developed storybooks for early AI literacy, an AI literacy framework for ocean professionals, an AI literacy mini-course for medical students, AI style homogenization, AI upskilling predictions, US Senate hearings on AI literacy, how to jumpstart AI adoption in school districts, and more!

General

In AI Suggestions Homogenize Writing Toward Western Styles and Diminish Cultural Nuances , Dhruv Agarwal, Mor Naaman, And Aditya Vashistha discuss their study of 118 people from India and the US that found that AI suggestions led Indian participants to adopt Western writing styles.??

Responding to this challenge around cultural homogenization and AI writing, Nick Potkalitsky, PhD in Does AI Homogenize Writing Toward Western Styles and Diminish Cultural Nuance? writes about a classroom experiment with his high school English class using a writing assignment on Frankenstein that attempted to encourage students’ voices and cultural perspectives.

In Leaders from BCG, Infosys, AARP, and more predict how AI will transform top companies in the next 12 months , Julia Hood and Tim Paradis ask Business Insider's Workforce Innovation board about how AI might be changing companies in the next year and a key topic was reskilling and upskilling employees. For example, Justina Nixon-Saintil from IBM said that they have made a commitment to upskill 2 million people in AI by 2026, and that last year they ran an AI challenge and encouraged staff to get trained and come up with innovative solutions. Marjorie L. Powell, JD from AARP said prompting will become a necessary skill for everyone.

In Don’t Repeat History: Now Is The Time To Invest In AI Literacy , Maria Flynn says it’s crucial that all employees are equipped with basic AI literacy, pointing to the gap among working adults in receiving technical training.

In Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Ocean Professionals is Needed for a Sustainable Future , Erin Satterthwaite and Matthew "Mateo" Robbins, PhD provide a multi-dimensional AI literacy framework specifically for ocean professionals.

Ethan Mollick writes about the study Inducing Anxiety in Large Language Models Increases Exploration and Bias and how coders often struggle with AI because it works more like a person than the software they’re used to. (see Ethan Mollick’s LinkedIn post )

Mike Kentz summarizes key points from Annette Vee ’s article The Moral Hazards of Technical Debt in Large Language Models: Why Moving Fast and Breaking Things Is Bad about the operations of Generative AI companies and their impact on consumers. (see Mike Kentz’s LinkedIn post )

Kentz also posts on The Illusion of AI Literacy and how the concept needs to be broken down to make it easier to understand and tackle within existing disciplines.

Libraries

The free webinar Librarian & Faculty Perceptions of AI in the Disciplines by the ACRL University Libraries Section Professional Development Committee will be on October 16, 2024, featuring an artist, writer, and scientist from the University of Louisville discussing the opportunities and challenges of using AI.

Children

MIT Media Lab is developing Interactive Storybooks for Early AI Literacy to help children learn about the uses and capabilities of AI and robotics via stories and minigames.?

In the podcast The Impact of AI on Children's Development , Jill Anderson interviews Associate Professor Ying Xu from the Harvard Graduate School of Education about how AI impacts children’s development and why AI literacy is important.?

Education

California has approved legislation to integrate AI literacy into the core K-12 curriculum.

In From Theory to Practice: Artificial Intelligence (AI) Literacy Course for First-Year Medical Students , Hunter Levingston et al. describe a mini-course for medical students at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, Peoria, on AI fundamentals, prompting, AI for learning assistance, and ethical usage.

In Artificial Intelligence Literacy Among University Students - A Comparative Transnational Survey , Hasan M. Mansoor et al. discuss a survey of the AI literacy of 1,800 university students from 4 Asian and African countries that showed significant disparities based on nationality, specialization, and degrees.?

In Beginning to Integrate a Framework for AI Literacy Into Existing Heuristics , Kevin Lyon writes about an integrated heuristic of an AI framework and its usage in working toward gaining AI literacy.

The University of North Carolina launches the Center for Humane AI Studies with a research framework covering trustworthy AI, equity and AI, and AI literacy and the goal of bringing together people from multiple disciplines to develop a research agenda.?

The education non-profit organization Central Square Foundation (CSF) in partnership with Google announces AI Samarth , an initiative toward developing AI literacy for 5 million students, teachers, and parents in India.

The AI Education Project ( aiEDU.org ) presents to a US Senate subcommittee about the importance of building AI literacy and AI readiness. Another Senate hearing covered skills needed to prepare workers for AI and whether education was prepared to deliver this.

Tim Gander and Brendon Shaw ’s article Navigating the AI Landscape: Educator Insights and Pedagogical Implications in New Zealand discusses the diverse views on AI among educators in New Zealand, with 72% of schools lacking AI policies and 55% of educators having had no professional development on AI.?

AI for Education offers a GenAI Adoption Challenge for schools or districts to complete three tasks toward jumpstarting responsible AI adoption in three months.

Cheryl Tice, EdD writes about how to help students develop a collaborative relationship with AI as a way to keep them engaged and not overly reliant on the tools, including using it as an aggregator, brainstormer, and coach. (see Cheryl Tice’s LinkedIn post )

Darren Coxon shows a use case for using multiple AI tools to create digital flashcards for a given topic and includes a walk-through video so others can follow along. (see Darren Coxon’s LinkedIn post )

In AI Literacy and what are the Essential AI skills for lifelong learning? Gavin O’Meara reflects on the Global Lifelong Learning Summit he attended in Singapore, mentioning essential AI skills, the importance of AI literacy, and various digital divides.

This post originally appeared on the AI Literacy Institute website .