Why It's Important:  Generative AI has sparked controversy in educational contexts, raising ethical concerns. There is a need to responsibly, ethically unlock generative AI's transformative potential for education. Meanwhile, marginalized communities are both disproportionately impacted by harmful biases in AI systems, and have less access to STEM education whereby they could innovatively address these harms. There is a need to empower the next generation of diverse AI innovators who can reimagine and rebuild AI to support diverse, local communities. This is the goal of our project.

Decatur Makerspace Meet-UpOur Approach: This proposal will develop educational approaches with generative AI to support marginalized youth in learning AI literacy and AI ethics, with our community partner Decatur Makers. We will host workshops for children aged 10-12, a key development stage for identity formation and career aspirations. Our approach combines generative AI in education, AI literacy, AI ethics, and design futuring. Design futuring helps center children’s agency and authorship. Design futuring imagines future speculative technologies as a means of critically considering ethics of technology.

We will develop educational tools and conduct a series of workshops. Children will learn fundamentals of how generative AI works, discuss ethics of real-world generative AI systems, and imagine alternative futures for how generative AI can support their communities. To express their imagined futures, children will create characters, scenes, and stories using generative AI. We will integrate established performance and storytelling techniques known to increase cultural relevance and empowerment of educational content. Through this, students leverage generative AI while amplifying their individual creative agency. We will also engage K12 teachers for feedback and sharing lesson plans for broader educational impact.

 

Image Credit: Decatur Makerspace