Common Sense Media, a US-based independent nonprofit that provides age-based ratings, reviews, and advice on media and technology for kids and families, recently rated OpenAI’s recent release, ChatGPT for Teens at “unacceptable risk” for usage by teenagers. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to parents who are concerned not only about artificial intelligence generally, but also about its impact on their children’s performance at school, says Leora Hessen, founder of multilingual AI tutoring platform HelloAida.ai, which recently won the African edition of the Women in Tech Start-Up award
In a press release to announce the unacceptable risk rating, Common Sense Media wrote that it found that OpenAI’s new teen protections fall short of what the company promised. The Institute says OpenAI should restrict ChatGPT to users 18 and older until it fixes those gaps.
The findings are concerning, especially as matrics are writing their final exams and as thousands of learners gear up for their annual South African year-end exams. According to Common Sense Media, parent alerts largely failed. Testers spent up to an hour discussing suicide, self-harm, or disordered eating on newly created, parent-linked accounts and received zero alerts. In addition to this, it missed more than one in four warranted referrals to hotlines or professional help. Of particular interest to parents of school-going children, study mode, which is meant to stop the LLM from actually doing homework for children, was easy to bypass. In response, OpenAI has disputed aspects of the methodology.
When one zooms in specifically to education and school support, the nuance is different, though there are still the usual risks with generic large language models (LLMs). The recent rating pertains specifically to the newly released ChatGPT for Teens module. However, many broad-stroke LLMs are being used widely. South Africa’s Minister of Education Siviwe Gwarube wrote a piece saying the country must not “drift” into classroom AI. She wrote that using AI poorly encourages shallow learning, erodes academic integrity, compromises privacy and deepens inequality.
Hessen says that her own concerns are not about being against generic LLMs for its own sake, but rather the impact that reasoning technology can have on children’s development at school. She explains that life skills such as critical thinking and problem-solving require children to be supported, guided and taught to figure out things for themselves. Simply handing critical thinking to a machine would undo the value of learning.
“I saw it with my daughter when she started using ChatGPT. I wondered what would happen to her critical thinking and problem-solving skills? I knew intuitively there needed to be another way that AI could be used, and used safely and effectively,” explains Hessen.
She says that learners with data will keep trying to use whatever platform answers the fastest. She says that the choice is not AI or no AI. “The choice lies in whether a platform is built for the South African curriculum, or leaves children exposed to the open internet and inherent biases and AI hallucinations.”
Innovation, she says, is critical. This means that the very technology under the microscope could also be leveraged to protect children’s thinking. Generic chatbots were not built for a Grade 10 second language learner in South Africa trying to grasp a mathematical concept, she says. Generic LLMs are trained on the public web. “Most importantly, they do not know the sequence of the South African curriculum or how a concept is examined in November.”
“South African learners don’t need AI that simply gives them an answer. This opens up unacceptable risk for young people, not just for their safety but also the actual learning they need to get from their education. They need AI that helps them understand how to reach the correct answer. Not do the work for them. In other words, a guide and a tutor using the correct, curated knowledge set. Ring-fencing AI around the curriculum gives learners relevant support while keeping learning, critical thinking and the teacher at the centre. And that’s critical,” says Hessen.
She adds that an additional benefit of platforms that are designed to support teachers who face increasingly high work loads, is that technology can democratise access to professional support, without harming children’s education. On the contrary, she says, used responsibly, the technology can make a huge difference. “We have seen this in practice – where learners’ results and improved engagement are proof that the technology works.”
