Lecture on Artificial Intelligence
On the 22nd of January 2025, MYP 1, 2, and 3 students attended a lecture on Artificial Intelligence held by Ms. Anne Dates, an AI ethicist, working for the Croatian Artificial Intelligence Association. This lecture is an integral part of the ARTificial Intelligence project that our school is participating in.
The lecture started with our reflections on how much we had actually used AI tools this morning. We were very surprised to find out that many of us had used them without being aware of it since Artificial Intelligence is also used in apps we use every day such as Spotify, YouTube, and Google.
Then, we discussed the pros and cons of AI: how useful it is, how it can help us, and how it helps create new jobs, but also how it replaces people in areas such as law, translation, and customer service, how the misuse of AI tools affects concentration span, intelligence, and creativity, how AI gathers our data, and how students cheating using ChatGPT is a rising problem for teachers.
We also tried to answer the question “How will Artificial Intelligence look in 10 years, and how more advanced will it be?” We listened as Ms. Dates explained the importance of her work: as an AI ethicist, it is her job to ensure that companies creating Artificial Intelligence software make their tools user-friendly, ethical, and good for the targeted audience.
At the end, we were able to write questions on pieces of paper, and Ms. Dates read them all aloud and answered them. There were some very important questions, such as “Is it possible for ChatGPT to have feelings and emotions in the future?” and “How come AI knows everything?” as well as some personal questions for the speaker. There was also a question regarding cheating using ChatGPT, which is a rising problem in global society.
We think that AI can be a very powerful tool, but, in the wrong hands, it can be used for the wrong purposes. But that’s what schools are for: to ensure that the next generations will put the new technology to good use.
Zofia (MYP Journalist Group)