Welcome to the 'Wild West' of AI in schools: Research is scarce, but experiments abound
Dayton Public Schools implemented an AI chatbot named Jordan to help students express their emotions and behavioral challenges. The program, which involves monitoring chat logs, highlights the experimental and unregulated nature of AI integration in educational settings.
Why it matters
It raises critical questions about student privacy, data security, and the psychological impact of using AI as a surrogate for human counseling in schools.
Julianna Brion for NPR Catch up on what you missed with our Education newsletter, sent weekly.
For a few weeks last school year, a small group of students in Dayton, Ohio, regularly sat in front of laptops in conversation with a social-emotional learning chatbot named Jordan.
Unlike AI chatbots that are designed to be agreeable — and even sycophantic — Jordan presents as angsty: On the day NPR visited, the chatbot told students, "Lately, I've been feeling like what's the point of any of this? I'm not failing. I just don't care. You ever feel like that?"
"Jordan's a little whiner, but I always help him out," said K, a sophomore at the Alternative School at Jackson Center, which is part of Dayton Public Schools.
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