On Oct. 23rd, CERC was honored to host Prof. Yoko Mochizuki’s lecture titled “The ethics of AI or techno-solutionism? UNESCO’s policy guidance on AI in education”. The talk attracted a total of 67 participants (including both in-person and online).
In this lecture, Prof. Mochizuki discussed the way UNESCO presented the issue of AI in education in guidance documents for researchers, practitioners and policy makers. Based on her analysis of the documents, she argued that although UNESCO took critical stance towards unethical use of AI and exercised caution over unregulated applications, it still depicted the technological innovation as favorable and inevitable for education and thus foreclosed possibilities of imagining alternative futures in education and society. Moreover, the UNESCO documents relied heavily on works produced by Anglo-American affiliated scholars and researchers in private sectors, which invited decolonial critiques. Towards the end of the lecture, Prof. Mochizuki introduced the works of Vanessa Andreotti and Shoko Suzuki to illustrate the possible alternative approaches of co-existing with AI from posthumanistic perspectives.
Prof. Mochizuki’s talk sparked vibrant discussions in the
lecture room and online. Prof. Ka Ya Lee articulated the cases where the dominance of advanced technology can be ethically good. Prof. Mark Bray urged us to pay more attention to the role China plays in the rapidly evolving discourse of AI in education. This comment was seconded by Prof. Edward Victors, who criticized the decolonial discourse, as the financial and geopolitical situation behind the AI discussion is more complicated. Other participants also exchanged ideas with each other and with the speaker.
This talk is the first CERC seminar on AI-related topics and the wide attention it attracted shows both the importance of this issue and the need to cope with it, no matter favorably or critically. On related topic, CERC will be honored to co-host a joint symposium of Hong Kong University and Tsinghua University on November 7th, titled “Educational Traditions in the Age of AI: What and How?”, where scholars from the two institutions will discuss AI and education from various different angles.
