EP 24 - I Cancelled My Midjourney Account - The Great Big Fat AI Ethics Episode

In this episode, John and Jason talk about the ethics of AI, including how ethics are formed and a few scenarios like if it’s ethical to use Midjourney. Listen in to find out who says no! See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com

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Links and Resources:

• Article: Harvard Business Review Ethics in the Age of AI Series: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3
• Article: It's Not Like a Calculator, so What Is the Relationship between Learners and Generative Artificial Intelligence?
• Jason’s FAFSA Assistant GPT
• ”Right Choices: Ethics of AI in Education” - John hosts Jason in an episode of the School Leadership + Generative AI series
• John’s School Leader AI Bootcamp

Transcript

We use a combination of computer-generated transcriptions and human editing. Please check with the recorded file before quoting anything. Please check with us if you have any questions!

Podcast Episode on AI Ethics - January 29, 2024

False Start

[00:00:00] John Nash: Should we do the intro?

[00:00:01] Jason Johnston: Yeah, let's do the intro.

[00:00:03] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston.

[00:00:06] Jason Johnston: Hey, John. Hey, everyone. And this is Online Learning Podcast. The Online Learning Podcast. Let's try it again.

[00:00:12] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston.

[00:00:14] Jason Johnston: That reminded me of do you ever watch The Office? My name is Kevin, because that's my name. My name is Kevin, because that's my name. So this is the Online Learning Podcast, the Online Learning Podcast.

Episode

[00:00:30] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston.

[00:00:32] Jason Johnston: Hey, John. Hey, everyone. And this is Online Learning in the Second Half, the Online Learning Podcast.

[00:00:38] John Nash: Yeah, we're doing this podcast to let you in on a conversation we've been having for the last couple of years about online education. Look, online learning's had its chance to be great, and some of it is, but still a lot of it isn't. How are we going to get to the next stage, Jason?

[00:00:52] Jason Johnston: That is a great question. Why don't we do a podcast and talk about it?

[00:00:56] John Nash: That's perfect. What do you want to talk about today?

[00:00:59] Jason Johnston: John, I've got some ethical questions for you.

[00:01:02] John Nash: You do?

[00:01:03] Jason Johnston: I've been wondering about the ethics of using AI for certain tasks. And maybe we'll get back to some specifics later on.

But how do we form our ethics to begin with when it comes to AI and using AI these days when we think about education?

[00:01:19] John Nash: I'm stealing your line from the intro. That is a great question. How do we form our ethics? I think they're formed by the values and the beliefs we bring to anything we do. You've had a longer background and thinking and considering about ethics, both in your professional life and your education life.

What do you think about in terms of what sensibilities people bring to any task?

[00:01:45] Jason Johnston: Yeah, I think so. I like where you started there because sometimes people start externally. They think ethics are clear, right? We're not supposed to steal people's cars and we're not supposed to, kill people when we walk in front of them or whatever. And, but it's not that clear when it comes to certain things.

Certainly we can follow the ethics of a country or a city or institution, AI is something new. We haven't dealt with some of these questions before. And because of that, it does take some ethical reasoning. I happened to talk to a number of PhD students taking an instructional systems design course.

I was asked to come in by one of our previous guests, Dr. Anilda Romero Hall, and to talk about ethics in instructional design. And where I started with that was this question of what do we bring to the table? If we c