Artificial Intelligence and Teachers’ New Ethical Obligations

Abstract

Largely thought to be immune from automation, the teaching profession is now being challenged on multiple fronts by new digital infrastructures and smart software that automate pedagogical decision-making and supporting teaching practises. To better understand this emerging and ethically fraught intensification of technologies in today’s classrooms, we asked, “what new ethical obligations are teachers facing as a result of AI technology adoption in schools?” We began by defining AI, then turned to posthumanism to grapple with how networked, AI-enhanced digital technologies extend and intermesh with human beings cognitively, affectively, morally, corporeally, spatially, temporally, socially and politically. We catalogued Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies that have been deployed in some of today’s K-12 classrooms (AIEDK-12)s and developed a topology of AIEDK-12 technologies based on (1) teachers’ professional activities being supported by AI, (2) AI being used by and for learners to facilitate their learning and development; (3) additions to K-12 curricula about AI; and (4) AI-based technologies being used by schools, districts and ministries of education to inform decisions that affect teachers. We then consider how a posthumanist investigative approach to disclosive ethics —”interviewing objects”— can shed new light on the implications of widespread deployment of AIEdK12 on teachers’ work. We interviewed three AI-based educational applications, recasting teachers and students as involved and evolving human-AI hybrids. In the process, we uncovered some of the new complications and ethical conundrums being introduced to teachers’ professional practises.