On and Off The Spectrum
How do families react, respond and reorganize after receiving a potentially life altering physical or mental health diagnosis, either for themselves or for someone they love? Dr. Esther Hess and Dr. Ann Kirsch, two experienced and well-known psychotherapists offer strategies, guidance and realistic hope through some of the toughest times that families can face.
On and Off The Spectrum
Al in the Classroom: The Benefits and the Challenges
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Drs. Hess and Kirsch have a very passionate discussion about the realities of AI in the classroom and its effect on the capacity for our Nation's children to learn and be creative.
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Composer / Writer / Author: ROSSANO GENTILI - SIAE IPI: 161539866
Good evening, everyone. I'm Dr. ST Hess. And I'm Dr. Anne Kirsch. And we are back with a wonderful new episode of On and Off the Spectrum Podcast. And tonight we're going to have an old-fashioned conversation. Yes. Between the two of us. Right. Because I think the theme of learning the old-fashioned way really sets the cornerstone for the kind of discussion that we're going to have tonight. Yes. It is about AI, the value, the pluses and the minuses associated with AI in the classroom. Now school's about to start around the nation I would guess in the next three to four weeks.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. And uh a lot of kids are going to be given technology by their schools.
SPEAKER_01And it depends on the school system. Like in Los Angeles, the school system has decided that children have to take their phones and put them in packets or in cubbies or whatever it is and not take them them out all day long. Right. And the kids have gotten used to it because they started this last year. But at first it raised a huge uh chaos. Right. But now it's the most remarkable thing happened. One a teacher, I remember reading this, and a teacher said her classroom, she she noticed she was hearing something in her classroom, and she couldn't quite figure out what it was, and she realized there was noise, joyful laughter and talking in her classroom. And she remembered she used to hear that sound all the time. And it had stopped because kids were on their phones or on laptops, and when the kids didn't have that, they were communicating with one another, they were playful, they were reading, they were playing games, they were acting. Interacting. Interacting.
SPEAKER_02So Angie, if you remember probably four or five months ago, we had another candid conversation between the two of us about the danger of AI when it came to the neurodiverse community. This was an issue where uh there's a recognition that computer relationships with individuals uh who are neurodiverse can be very misleading and can encourage individuals who don't necessarily have the executive functioning, uh the street smarts, if you will, to be able to differentiate between what is safe and what is not safe, and if they happen to come in and express a feeling of depression, um uh in one individual's case, uh he was feeling so depressed and he wanted to know the most uh creative way to die and what were the instructions to do that. And of course, AI said, sure, let me help you, and created it, and unfortunately, this child successfully ended his life. Uh and that is an extension of what we're going to talk about. Not that AI is going to be used as a destructive tool in the context of God forbid encouraging a child now to you know end their life, but it's a different kind of potential destruction. Yes, the destruction of the creativity of the mind. Exactly. Now, AI is not going anywhere. No, it's not. It is a fantastic tool if used correctly. Yes. But we're gonna talk about a lot of the pros and and and cons. And you know, I was showing Anne earlier this evening that I have, you know, pages and pages and pages of all different kinds of articles, everything from the American Psychological Association to the Wall Street Journal to uh different Institute of Digital Media and Child Development, AI and education. What does research say?
SPEAKER_01And you've all seen this. Every time you pick up a newspaper or you look online, you're reading about AI and children and also adults, but we're focused on children here because those are the young minds that we're looking at and saying, how do we keep those young minds healthy and strong? And how do we keep them capable of learning on their own instead of learning only through a computer program that has not been programmed in their best interests?
SPEAKER_02Well, first off, it may not be accurate. It that's right. Okay, and if you're very dependent and and children uh look for trusted mechanisms, adults. That's right. In this case, if the computer is constantly giving what they think is the right answer, they're gonna start trusting in that how to develop their own creativity. Because I think that's in my mind the biggest risk. That it's not that this can't we can't use Chat GPT or now Claude or a variety of different uh ways to go ahead and and revamp uh in an approved fashion the way we think about everything from uh billing online to creating uh papers in the c for classroom assignments. But it's but it's one thing like the there was a really interesting uh quote in the Wall Street in the excuse me in the American Psychological Association. Let's say that you said to AI, all right, you know I have a candle, build me a better candle. So you might find uh the AI answer, okay, well I'll I'll teach you how to make it larger or how it can glow longer or maybe be more cost-effective. But AI does not have the capacity to go ahead and say, let's make the out-of-the-box leap to going from candle to electric light bulb, right? Right. And and if we're teaching a generation of children to depend on the limits of what AI can can can prove, then my concern is that we're teaching them to basically dumb down. Yes, we are to not be right, not be creative, and not to think, you know, w the the the fine minds.
SPEAKER_01And we're not saying, and we would never say, that there's no usefulness to AI. There is a lot of usefulness, and a lot of adults use AI um under a variety of names. We use it to help us, but as adults, we know what the parameters are. We know when to stop, we know when to when its usefulness has reached the end. But a child. I'm gonna challenge you though, for adults who know how to stop.
SPEAKER_02Well, okay, because we have a that's gonna be another topic, but we have a lot of addiction in in the world here, and a lot of it having to do with the internet. But I'm sorry, I'm gonna I digress, so go ahead.
SPEAKER_01No, that's right. I would like to think that adults would know, but but it's true. However, I again I say that I think that there is a usefulness for um chat GBT, for AI. I believe that as we move forward, we're not gonna put the genie back in the in the in the box, we're not gonna be able to stop this. So then the question becomes how do we use it the best way possible? And because our children are being sent, as we've been reading, to schools especially using, now these are very wealthy parents, and these are schools that cost a fortune, but there are plenty of children who are being sent to schools that specialize in using AI throughout the school day to teach them, right?
SPEAKER_02To personalize the education of the child.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And so your child will come home with a personalized education that as a parent you may not understand one bit of. You hope your child understands what they're doing. They probably understand more than you, but do they understand how to use it in the world, out in the world? Can they make go from making a candle to a light bulb? Right, right. That's the question. Do they know how to use their brains to be creative, or can they just keep following along one after another after another? And as parents, and we're both parents, as parents, you must be aware of what your children are doing when they are in their bedrooms and they are working on their homework and they are using AI because they all are, and their teachers are telling them to do that. Right. But what is the upshot of what they're doing?
SPEAKER_02First off, I am not sure that teachers actually can differentiate between what a child has come up with and what AI has come up with. Now I have we both have friends who are in education. Absolutely. And what a lot of my colleagues are doing right now is that they are no longer giving digital testing because they can't guarantee who has completed the test. That's right. So what they're doing now, which is really interesting, they go ahead and they are doing the old-fashioned paper and pencil tests in front of the teacher so that the teacher can assess does the child have brain power? Is there a creative element? If not, where's the deficit so I can teach? That's right.
SPEAKER_01But it also means you have to have teachers who are invested rather than just like parents who are invested and aren't throwing children in front of a TV set or game console, you have to have teachers who aren't throwing children in front of those items also. They have to be willing to teach the children.
SPEAKER_02And the problem going back to educators, people are supposed to be trained. Now, this is um we're speaking in uh we mentioned school is gonna start now in about a month for for most of the uh nation's children. So this is the time of the year, the summer, that a lot of teachers are going back to school for training, right? Likely in AI, but who is sponsoring the training? That's right. All right. We are talking about an extensive use of of of technology which is actually um being um uh informed by the technological companies themselves. So, you know, it's it's a it's a little bit like Peter that's feeding Peter, you know? That's right. And and it's it's concerning because again, where is the efficacy?
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02And and there's there's no checks and balances.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Do you remember I'm I'm talking to everyone now. Yes, yeah. Do you remember when your children, if if you had children of school age, when children were bringing home computers from school because and everyone was so excited, because now you didn't have to buy a computer, it a laptop computer, because they were so expensive, and your child wasn't gonna fall behind another child whose parents could afford it. So kids came home with mostly Chromebooks at that point, and they were so proud, and they walked with these clutch to their chests. Not many people were saying, who's providing this and why? Why am I being given? Why can't my family, why can't my child use the computer that I provide? Because the computer that the school was providing was hooked up to a variety of things, including early AI, that nobody, not very many people knew about.
SPEAKER_02And and by the way, the attraction, the way they got the brains hooked on it, was because they started to encourage lights and bells and whistles and gaming. That's right. Fun educational games, okay, initially, but but kids were drawn to the games.
SPEAKER_01That's right.
SPEAKER_02And so they got hooked. And we know that children's brains change by the constant exposure. There is the research is showing that children are using a minimum, a minimum of six hours a day on a computer, on a device. Now remember, again, you talked about the old days. Again, this is dating us, but when we were parenting young kids, the idea was, again, technology was relatively new. And if you wanted to be a good parent and monitor, have one computer, say in your family room or living room or your kitchen, wherever, a collective, and then you monitor that. Well, that doesn't work anymore.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_02Children have the their their technology on their wrist, right? They have it on the you mentioned, Chromebooks and email. I mean, I just actually the other day um mentioned to a parent who has a little little toddler, and the they just they've discovered the most wonderful thing that if the child's having trouble falling asleep, put the the little baby computer in front of the child and they'll go to sleep. I know, but the brain's being changed. It's it's it's it's it's it's extraordinary. Yet it's so upsetting to hear you say that.
SPEAKER_01This is not going away. When did parents stop singing? I mean, think about it. Singing lullaby, reading stories to the children. It's bad enough you remember when you go to a restaurant and you see every child at a table with a little computer in front of them, and the parents in with their iPhones in front of them, and no one's talking.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01This is a personal peeve, you might be able to tell of mine. Right. But where do the families talk? When do they find time to talk with their children? That's where their children learn.
SPEAKER_02That's where our my children learn, for better or worse, is where they're the opportunity for parents to challenge AI information or to encourage an expansion. No one is saying AI is necessarily a bad thing, but it is a brand new bell and whistle that needs to be regulated and supervised. And it and I my concern is it's not going to be. One of the things that I think needs to happen is some form of regulation where children are continuously evaluated. And what are they being evaluated for? Are they learning? Are they offloading important skills to AI? Okay. So this is is their brain power being developed. And what we're seeing is a decline in cognitive capacity. Yes. Critical thinking is on the download. And that is uh that's a dangerous, that's the dangerous piece that's going on.
SPEAKER_01And what that really means to translate it is that your children's grades are going down by 60%. 60% the studies are showing. Yeah. These are not studies that are political, these are educational studies, and young children are not learning the way they need to learn. Brains need to be exercised. Right. They need to run a mile every few hours to get that stress out, to learn what they need to learn. And if they don't get that learning, what fills in the space?
SPEAKER_02It could be nothing, it could be repetition. Repetition, but it'll be repetition in in in regards to uh watching YouTube videos on over and over again. And and here's the thing: children are aware that they are not gaining that that that that it's an empty use of time, but they're getting too comfortable. We are raising a generation of children who are struggling with coming out of their comfort zones to use their brains again. All right. So we have to start talking as parents to educators, to our children, how to use how to use AI appropriately. And by the way, I don't think there's anything wrong with sitting down with your child and using AI together. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Right. Teach your children. Look, we teach we are supposed to teach our children just about everything. We want to teach them what's right and wrong. We want to teach them about religion if we if that's something we choose. We want to teach them about food choices, we want to teach them about everything that we as parents think is the best thing for them. We don't want the schools or the government involved in everything in our life. Right. But we want to sit, we need to sit down with our children and say, you know, I've been reading a lot about this thing called AI. And, you know, I'm older than you. So what do you know about AI? Teach me about AI. Right. Now, teenagers might roll their eyes at you. That's okay. They'll still hear you and they will still talk to you about it. Right. It may be later in the day, but they'll still do it. Little kids will be thrilled to teach you something.
SPEAKER_02Also, parents can demand from their children's schools transparency. Yeah. Where did the AI come from? Who is providing technology to your children? Yeah. Is it other tech companies? How are they proving that the children's ability to be creative thinkers is being enhanced versus robbed?
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's heavy. That's right. You as parents have the right to know. This is a great potential skill set, but it is the newest, shiniest nickel on the block. And what we're encouraging you to do is to be vigilant, to be as active with your children with all these new tools as you have been throughout all of your child's growing. And we need you hands on deck even more as life becomes even more complex.
SPEAKER_01And we don't want you to think, for everyone who's watching, that we know any more than you do. Because we don't. We're learning at the same time. Our children grew up without AI, pretty much. And they came along at our children, learned at the beginning of it. And so when I ask my grown kids about AI, I get thoughtful answers about it because they're adults. When you ask your kids about AI, you're going to get in on the beginning of what they're being taught. Do you realize the gold involved in getting in on the beginning of what your kids are being taught? It's a remarkable thing that you have the opportunity to do. So take advantage of that. Learn along with your children.
SPEAKER_02We are wishing you all the beginning of a wonderful, wonderful school year. Yes. Wishing you lots of luck on every level. And use the tools that are being provided thoughtfully. I'm Dr. Estee Hess.
SPEAKER_01And I'm Dr. Ann Kirsch, and I know that you've seen our passion about this subject. Very much. And we want you to be passionate about it too.
SPEAKER_02This is on and off the spectrum podcast. Yes. If you enjoyed today's episode, please don't hesitate to tell your friends, to subscribe. And if you feel that you would be adding to the conversation and would be interested in being a guest, please reach out to us because we have a lot of very, very interesting people that uh have graced us. And every once in a while, Ann and I have a chance to just chat amongst ourselves. Yes. And uh this was a thoughtful conversation that we both felt compelled to address. So we just thank you for watching.
SPEAKER_00We wanted to bring it to you so that we can and we want to hear back from you, please. Have a good night. Stay safe. Yes. And we'll see you next time, please.
