But AI is nothing to afraid of. Used correctly, it can streamline your processes, save your school time and money, and ultimately make your job easier. In today’s blog, I’m going to explore some of the most common myths about AI and explain why you shouldn’t believe them.
“AI is just a fad”
Technological development has accelerated dramatically over the past few decades. Some releases have changed the world, like the iPhone – others haven’t kept up with the hype, like Google Glass. With some many new technologies cropping up and dying out, it’s easy to see AI as something that will simply pass. But AI isn’t just a new solution; it’s a new way of working with computers.
AI is having a dramatic impact across industries, whether it’s recommending TV shows on your streaming platforms based on what you like to watch, offering you customer service as a chatbot, or automating your admin tasks. AI is here to stay, with some even claiming it’s helping usher in the fourth industrial revolution.
“AI systems are biased and unfair”
There have been plenty of headlines about AI making biased decisions, like Google’s online advertising system showing high-paying job vacancies to men more than women, or Amazon’s old hiring algorithm favouring words like “executed” and “captured” which were more likely to be found on men’s CVs. But the issue here isn’t the AI itself being biased – it actually lies with the people who designed, tested, trained, and deployed the systems.
If AI is designed to mimic the decisions of biased humans, it will reflect these biases in the decisions it makes. Choosing systems that are designed and vetted carefully, feeding in high quality data, and incorporating human intervention can minimise unfair bias. Not only that, the right AI system can actually help tackle bias: by letting it make some decisions for you, it can reduce the number of bias decisions made overall.
“AI can put people’s data at risk”
Most of us are already unsure about companies’ data collection practices and are increasingly protective of our personal data. As AI depends on our data to deliver responses and learn, many are understandably sceptical about how secure their data really is with AI. Thankfully, there are plenty of regulations in place that protect consumers’ data, such as GDPR, which requires companies to use data is a responsible manner.
At Bromcom, we take protecting your school’s data very seriously and have made sure that your data stays secure when you use Bromcom AI. For example, when you use the Data Bot to run queries on your school data, the data is kept confidential and secure in the Bromcom cloud network and is never shared or processed by third parties.
“Only big companies with lots of money can use AI”
AI is no longer an expensive, niche technology reserved for companies that have the funds to invest in the technology. There’s a huge range of AI tools available at a range of prices – including free ones, like ChatGPT! As AI models become more commoditised and optimised, they’re becoming both cheaper and more effective, too.
Plenty of educators even use AI every day, like Bromcom AI, to save time and dedicate more of it to their students. If you want to learn more about the basics of using AI in schools, check out our brief introduction to AI for educators.
“AI is going to put us out of work”
Lots of people assume that AI is mainly used by companies as a cheap replacement for their human workers. While it’s true that AI can carry out some tasks more quickly and cheaply than humans, like data entry and sorting tasks, most jobs require cognitive tasks that humans are better at. So, even though AI can automate many of the manual tasks we do, it will simply save us time and enable us to do more work instead of taking our jobs altogether.
It’s also important to remember that technological breakthroughs have always been met with concerns about mass unemployment, from the combine harvester to the personal computer, so this response to the advent of AI is to be expected. During these breakthroughs, some jobs were unfortunately made redundant, but they also enabled industries to flourish and unlocked new employment opportunities. In AI’s case, there will be new roles opened up associated with managing AI and its output.
You can learn more about some of the tasks educators can hand over to AI in this blog.
Join our AI in Education webinars to learn more about using AI in your school
On April 3rd we’re hosting the first of our AI in Education webinar series which will give you the opportunity to learn the basics about using AI in schools. In AI in Education: From Curiosity to Confidence you’ll find out more about what AI is, how to use it in schools, and the benefits of AI for teachers, and you’ll even get the chance to ask our AI experts any questions you may have about using the technology and Bromcom AI. Click here to sign up.
We’ll be hosting these webinars throughout the spring so don’t miss out on the chance to learn more about AI!
