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Responsible Innovation in AI: Fostering Ethical and Sustainable Progress

For a bit more than a year–effectively since the launch of Open AI’s chatbot ChatGPT at the end of November 2022–Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been the talk of the town. It has incredible potential to revolutionize industries, improve our daily lives, and address complex societal challenges. However, as AI becomes increasingly pervasive, the need for responsible innovation is more critical than ever. AI partners, specifically in education, offer the potential to transform the way students learn, how teachers instruct, and how educational institutions operate. But the adoption of AI partners in education must be guided by ethical considerations, equity concerns, and a commitment to ensuring that students’ concerns are addressed and interests upheld. 

When developing educational AI tools, we must prioritize privacy and data security, taking the utmost care that student information is protected from misuse or breaches. Transparent data practices and clear consent processes for data collection are essential components of responsible AI. From the inception of iSAT, we adopted the framework of responsible innovation, as described by Stilgoe, J., R. Owen, and P. Macnaghten in , which means “taking care of the future through collective stewardship of science and innovation in the present.” This framework was specifically developed to guide scientific and technical research in sensitive areas, such as genetics and geoengineering. It reflects the kinds of questions the public asks of scientists and expects scientists to ask of their own work; for example: Is this safe? Can I trust this information (is it reliable and credible)? How does this affect me/my community? It is particularly appropriate in the area of AI, where there are significant ethical concerns about anticipated and actual harms of AI technology, as well as the unequal distribution of harms in society such as in the criminal justice system, education inequalities, and the digital divide - just to name a few. This framework is reflected in our methods, our commitment to inclusive processes involving diverse stakeholders, and our ethics frameworks and training for Institute members. 

By focusing on responsible innovation when it comes to AI in education, we hope to achieve a broader impact of our Institute - leading the nation towards a future where all students— especially those whose identities are underrepresented in STEM—routinely engage in rich and rewarding collaborative learning by working in teams composed of diverse students and AI partners. In this envisioned future, STEM classrooms become strong knowledge-building communities where student-AI teams engage in critical thinking and collaborative problem-solving as they investigate (local) scientific phenomena, solve real-world problems, or develop solutions for all kinds of design challenges.