Saw this earlier as posted on Linkedin by Pat Yongpradit of code.org. According to the article, nine out of ten educators think that students should be taught how AI works prior to graduating from high school. How it works, not just how to use it. This is a good thing. Sure, opinions vary as to when to teach it - elementary, high school, or across the board but still, a good thing.

It did make me think though about a few things.

First, in a way this is really just saying "kids should learn computer science." This too is a good thing but the bad thing is that a lot of people talking about learning about AI don't get this.

AI isn't some new magic mystically appearing. It's algorithms applied on data on computers with a user interface. Sounds like CS to me, more specifically a subset of CS. Sure the data sets are HUGE and the algorithms, more complex than the bubble sort but at a technical level, it's a next step.

AI applications can do some really impressive things but then so could earlier computer solutions.

AI can be filled with bias but computer systems have always been infused with our societal biases (and we have to do better).

AI can either take away jobs or enhance productivity but the same can be said with earlier computer innovations.

So, the call to teach how AI works is a good one but there's a level of concern that people don't see that in a lot of ways this isn't a revolution but a next step and as my readers know, I fell we've gotten some serious things wrong in the roll out of teaching CS, without acknowledging that this comes from CS begs the question, what will we do differently, or more specifically better.

This brings me to my next thought, and this is the bigger one - if teachers are going to teach all our students how AI works, how are we going to teach all those teachers?

It's clear, at least to me, that the professional development, short form training model favored by so many for CSforAll efforts is far from ideal. It sets up content providers and politicians to be able to say "we've trained all our teachers in just n years" with n being some small number but the truth is, those teachers don't really know what they're teaching and are doing a disservice to their students in the long run ¹. We also see Computational Thinking efforts where elementary school teachers relabel things they already do with CT labels - debugging for error fixing, for example. This can be a stepping stone to true CT and CS concepts but I've seen implementations where just the labeling is considered good enough. Worse, at times the teachers delivering these CT enhanced lessons aren't using the CT definitions correctly.

CSforAll in New York City has been going on for nine years. Some states are further along in bringing CS to their schools and some started later. Still, after a decade, we have an extremely long way to go. The number of high school teachers that have a deep knowledge of CS and how to teach it still pales in comparison to other subject areas and while elementary school teachers don't require the same depth of knowledge, they, in my opinion, as a group are also far behind where they should be when CS is a subject equal to all the others.

I'm not blaming anyone for this (other than what I already said about the acceptance and in fact enthusiasm of the short term PD model) but rather noting that creating a new subject area from whole cloth where those you intend to teach it never studied the subject themselves is a multi decade process.

What's worth thinking about now though, is what are we going to do with AI? Are we going to double down on short form PD and pay lip service to this emerging technology? Are we going to make some serious decisions and decide that some meaty material has to be included in per service programs?

I'm a skeptic. In a country where public school teaching is regularly derided and even in New York there's talk about removing the Masters degree requirements I'm not hopeful. Will we, as a society, decide to do what's right for all of our students or will we pay lip service while those who are well resources continue to get further ahead.

Time will tell.