When Marshwood High seniors Luci Cox and Zora Lee Nobel head back to school later this month, they will bring an in-depth understanding of how the use of artificial intelligence can be managed effectively to be helpful rather than harmful to students.
The pair, representing all Maine public school students, joined counterparts from all 50 states at America’s Youth AI Festival held in July in Boston to explore, debate and shape the future of artificial intelligence in education, the teens ultimately producing a piece of legislation hammered out in a mock senate.
The student “senators” met at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in a full-scale replica of the Senate chamber in the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C.
Working in committees, the students debated safety, privacy, equity, AI literacy, teacher training and the appropriate role of technology in learning, according to the School Superintendents Association that hosted the event.
Cox and Nobel, in an interview and emails with the South Berwick Reporter last week, described how impressive, enthusiastic and respectful their colleagues were during the weekend of debating issues in committee and addressing the entire body from the floor before the senate finally reached consensus on an AI bill approved by 84% of the senators.
The policy bill, titled Students First Act and approved by a final vote of 84-14, is available to the public on NPR. It also is being distributed to AASA’s network of school system leaders around the country.
Nobel, the student representative to the MSAD 35 school board, said her favorite activity at the festival was the final debate on the senate floor.
“It was then that I think it settled on us all how large an impact the policy could have on districts across the U.S., especially those without a current policy. It represented such a huge student voice which isn’t often heard in legislative sessions,” she said.
The Marshwood district does not currently have a policy governing the use of AI.
Nobel learned at the conference how to quickly organize her thoughts into an oral form that could be followed by a large group of individuals. Many of the senators wrote their speeches by hand with only an hour to edit, revise and rehearse, she noted.
“I’ve never shied from public speaking, but it was interesting to stretch that muscle in front of 100 students and the public,” Nobel said.
Cox said the amendment she wrote prohibiting teachers from putting sensitive student data into AI chat bots gave voice to her concern about student privacy.
Nobel agreed that privacy was a major concern, and her group added a provision requiring school board approval for specific tools to be used in schools.
Cox, who has been involved in student government at Marshwood, said she learned just how crucial collaboration is in making important policy decisions.
“When one person overlooked a redundancy or mistake in the original draft of the bill, others would notice and provide helpful edits,” Cox said, and when she had a specific idea for an amendment but couldn’t quite find the words, other senators would help.
“Not a single part of the legislative process could have been accomplished without the teamwork that was necessary,” she said.
Cox wrote in an email that she was impressed by “how engaged, passionate, and ambitious my fellow senators were,” approaching debate with respect and enthusiasm. “Every time someone took the podium I knew I would learn something,” she added.
She is a better speaker and listener after participating in the student senate, Cox said, and hopes “to apply the same collaborative attitude, working alongside my peers to make a change within Marshwood.”
Nobel also was impressed by “how easily kids with different perspectives could come together to discuss the policy.”
There were disagreements about what should be included or excluded, she said in an email, but “it never came between the senators and their shared goal to outline safe and ethical guidelines for AI use in schools.”
“You could debate one person in your committee or on the floor, disagree completely, and then go back and play cards with them in the common room,” Nobel said.
The conference debates helped her understand the complexity of the relationship AI has with the students, the teachers and the administration, and furthered her hopes for student inclusion in policy development “in a way that will involve the student perspectives that haven’t really been explored at Marshwood before.”
The performance of the student senate at the AI conference also left a strong impression on Heidi Early-Hersey, MSAD 35’s assistant superintendent who represented Maine educators at the conference.
She was “continually impressed by the way that students from across the country grappled with the complex issues surrounding AI,” Early-Hersey said in an email.
“The students were able to discuss ways that AI can help us, ways it may be hurting us, privacy concerns and many other related issues,” she said. “They engaged and often disagreed with their peers in such a thoughtful, respectful and professional way. We could all learn something from the level of civil discourse they demonstrated.”
“The whole event left me feeling hopeful for the future of our country and world,” Early-Hersey added.
A visit to the MIT Media Lab was Cox’s favorite activity.
“We learned how non-generative AI technology powers various creative pursuits. We saw three artistic performances by MIT students, PhD candidates and professors using the technology,” Cox said.
She was captivated by the automatar, a bass guitar that could process how it was being played, reproduce the sounds, and vibrate its own strings.
“This was interesting to me,” said Cox, “because it showed AI working in tandem with the human mind as opposed to replacing it.”
