No. 136: EdTech Ethics

Greg Rancourt -

Education technology is exploding with applications of artificial intelligence. In the early days, the advent of generative AI meant you might have a student who submits an essay written by software. That still exists, but now you have AI that can grade papers, personalize instruction, transform curriculum, and more. Search for "AI tutor" online, and you'll find a plethora of generic AI applications solving the same fundamental problem.

Given the proliferation of AI in education, how should it be applied for measurable impact? I'd offer that we're still in the experimentation phase. In order to experiment effectively, however, we need two things: AI literacy and ethical application of AI technology. We need a strong understanding of the technology and even stronger values to ensure students get the education they deserve.

In addition to our education focus this week, I'm showing off a sustainable materials company with a luxe look and reintroducing ImpactAlpha as a source for jobs and impact investing news alike. It's a beefy newsletter this week – let's get to it.

~ Greg

What we're reading

Teachers are increasingly using AI tools in their work and navigating the ethics of students' usage of the same technology. (NYT)

  • As you're well aware, artificial intelligence has worked its way into the working world in dramatic fashion: it's analyzing health insurance claims, predicting wildfires, writing software, answering customer service calls, and more. AI has turned into a commodity/utility, and education is leveraging it just as much as any other industry.
  • For education, the core tension is whether it is fair for teachers to use AI when students are prohibited from using it. For example, should teachers use AI to grade papers that students write themselves?
    • I love the way one teacher summed up his perspective: "I am more pro-A.I.-literacy than I am pro-A.I.-use." We shouldn't let AI replace students' critical thinking, but they ought to understand what it is and how it works.
    • It reminds me of when I was in high school and college: computer science was encouraged not because we were all going to write software but because we were going to live in a world where software was dominant, and we needed to understand how it worked.
  • Investors have dumped $1.5 billion into AI education startups over the past two years with the promise of personalizing learning and making it easier for teachers to do their jobs.
    • As the Times notes, however, many tools focus on replacing human relationships rather than reducing administrative burdens that take teachers away from students. Google's Robert Wong, Director of Product Management for Education and Learning, framed it as a tutor for every student and a teaching assistant for every teacher.
    • The latter is more palatable to me because it frees up time the teacher can use to improve instruction, but the former gives me mixed feelings. We can't scale a teacher's one-on-one time today: is a student better served by personalized instruction from software compared to no personalization at all?
  • I'd offer that we're still in the experimentation phase and learning what works well and what doesn't. Teachers are discovering genuinely useful applications, from personalizing assignments to refactoring curriculum from one format into another.
    • At this stage, transparency is important. You and I would likely pay closer attention to the class materials if we knew AI had been used to generate them, and it's important for students and parents to assess whether AI is being applied in an ethical fashion.
    • I would also like to see our AI literacy grow in general. It holds a lot of potential not just for education but for social impact overall, but only if we use it ethically and improve our understanding of how to use it effectively.

Job of the week

Well sure, if you want to get your "mushroom people" fix this week, you could watch the Season 2 premiere of The Last of Us – but you could also check out the job opportunities at MycoWorks where they're turning fungi root systems into leather alternatives. Their website plays out like a luxury brand, and for good reason: they've partnered with companies like Hermès and Ligne Roset, giving sustainable materials a desirability usually reserved for their animal-based counterparts.

MycoWorks is looking for a Senior Director, Product and Process Development to join their Union, SC location where they do a lot their manufacturing. You can also find a few R&D roles in Emeryville, CA if you have a research background. Pretty cool stuff!

Community roundup

  • Microsoft is trying to become carbon negative by 2030, and to help reach that goal, they've made a carbon removal deal with CO280. (TechCrunch)
    • CO280 partners with paper mills to retrofit them with CO2 capture technology, effectively minting carbon removal credits. They're also hiring for a few roles.
    • I have a more positive take on this because it's clear that action is being taken to generate credits. I raise an eyebrow when carbon credits are tied to conservation efforts because those often take credit for protecting trees that were never going to be cut down in the first place.
  • Over the past 20 years, Paris has taken steps to limit vehicle traffic and adding green spaces to make the city more supportive of bikers and pedestrians. It has also greatly improved air quality: since 2005, fine particulate matter has dropped 55% and nitrogen dioxide has dropped 50%. (WaPo)
  • Water concerns in the Southwestern United States are putting pressure on states to recycle more of what they use. (Grist)
    • Nevada is leading the way, recycling 85% of their water. Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah are in single digits. Utah's progress is concerning given the precipitous drop in water levels at the Great Salt Lake.
    • I'm reminded of the Colorado River water negotiations. I would love to see the federal government tie water recycling to those negotiations in the future, e.g., some percentage of water usage from the river and some percentage that comes from recycling. That's the "stick" approach, and the "carrot" was part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act – funding was allocated for drought resistance, including water recycling.
  • I'll end with a really cool one, no pun intended. A nonprofit in the UK called Real Ice has developed a technique to strengthen Arctic ice. They drill holes that allow new water to freeze on the surface and encourage ice growth from below. (Grist)
    • Could we grow our ice sheets this way? I'm not sure. But it seems like it has potential to reduce the melting already underway, and that may be more important in the near term.

Civic corner

  • The Education Department threatened to cut federal funding for schools in Maine over transgender policies then formalized that threat this week. (NYT)
    • Maine cites its human rights law and says it must be overturned by the Legislature, not through executive order. The federal government says that Maine is violating Title IX rules.
    • In addition to applying funding pressure, the federal government referred the issue to the Justice Department for enforcement. They just sued Maine today.
  • Elsewhere in education news, Harvard has pushed back against demands from the federal government to submit admissions and hiring data for federal review, shut down diversity, equity, and inclusion programming, eliminate Palestinian-aligned student groups, and reform the international admissions process among other requirements. (NYT)
    • It's safe to say this is a complicated situation for Harvard and other universities targeted by the Trump administration. The government has used federal grants – or the lack thereof – to influence university policy with reasonable success. If you push back, you're setting yourself up for a prolonged legal fight and may not be guaranteed success.
    • The crazy thing is that universities conduct research because that's where a lot of the best researchers are. It's not that the government is subsidizing universities: the government is trying to solve problems and backing it up with funding for which universities compete.
    • I used to peruse these "requests for proposal" myself many years ago. Here are a bunch of funding opportunities from the National Science Foundation. Here are some from the Department of Defense.
  • I'm citing these two examples this week – Maine's funding and university funding – because it speaks to the modus operandi of this administration: adopt our social policies or we'll squeeze your wallets.
    • I think enough people are getting squeezed that we're starting to see coalitions form out of shared circumstances.
    • Soon after Harvard announced they were refusing the Trump administration's demands, a group of universities announced that they were suing over cuts from the Department of Energy.
    • It won't be without hardship, but I think the universities were backed into a corner and have found the most logical way out: take it to the courts.

Hot job opportunities

Resource of the week

Last week's market drama makes it a good time to reintroduce you to ImpactAlpha, a publication focused on impact investing topics. It is great for staying on top of the impact investing space if that interests you, but it's also a good way to find job opportunities.

I wrote about a bunch of ways to find a social impact job a while back, and one of those ways centers on the news. If you read social impact news, chances are you'll discover companies that interest you and may be hiring. That helps you get a third-party opinion on the company and what they're up to, and if you do make it to the interview round, demonstrating that you follow the company's activity is a great way to stand out from other candidates.

ImpactAlpha also maintains its own job board, although those jobs tend to focus on finance experience. You will find the occasional corporate role, however, so check it out if just to see what kind of companies are hiring – impact investing is a unique way to make a difference at scale provided the investments pay off.

Test your knowledge

Last week I asked you which country was the first to ban plastic bags, and the answer was Bangladesh. If you're thinking this is an unlikely leader in the space, that's due in part to different motivations. In the United States, banning plastic bags has been part of a push to reduce single-use plastics in favor of reusable options, but Bangladesh banned plastic bags because they were blocking drainage systems during flooding – to which I say, how many plastic bags were ending up on the streets to cause that kind of problem? Sounds like a worthy cleanup effort to me.

This week I'm going back to the origins of the Endangered Species Act:

Which species was the first to be removed from the Endangered Species List due to recovery?

Email me your guess, and I'll send one lucky winner a couple of One Work stickers!

I am perusing local nurseries for backyard plants and trying not to back myself into a never ending project. I'm such a fan of the way ginkgo trees look in fall though that I may commit myself to a lifetime of raking up golden leaves. If you haven't seen a forest of ginkgo trees before, you're missing out.