STEM+C: Integrating AI Ethics into Robotics Learning Experiences

人工智能（AI）系统、工具和技术正在被迅速采用，并用于青少年在家中和学校每天与之互动的设备和产品中。教育工作者开始认识到有必要向K-12学生教授人工智能，并正在开发新的项目，如机器人技术，以满足这一需求。 然而，人工智能道德，尽管它在青年未来的个人，公民和工作生活中至关重要，但在很大程度上被忽视了。该项目开发并将人工智能伦理教学模块整合到现有的机器人青年项目中。随着学生学习机器人技术，他们也将了解人工智能在机器人设计中出现的道德问题，包括公平，透明，自主，尊重，问责制，隐私和安全。该项目旨在通过两种创新干预措施，促进学生对人工智能伦理和技能的责任感，让学习者参与（1）基于可能对青少年有意义的人工智能伦理问题的故事，例如监视他们的身体活动，以及（2）移情驱动的实践活动，其中嵌入了道德困境，学生将体验犯道德错误的过程，发现错误，并纠正错误，可能会培养对道德问题和解决这些问题的机构的更强的主人翁意识。这项研究将有助于理解将人工智能伦理融入STEM项目（如学生机器人）的影响，特别是关于他们对一系列新兴伦理问题的参与、认识、知识和责任感，这些问题是人工智能在STEM和CS领域使用的基础。它将提供一种新的模式，通过将道德提升为主要关注点，而不是作为一个次要问题，以情境化和相关的方式向学生教授人工智能。本项目由STEM + Computing（STEM+C）项目资助，该项目旨在帮助研究和开发如何在STEM学习中整合计算和计算思维。本项目的研究问题是：（1）如何将人工智能伦理融入机器人项目，帮助培养学生的伦理思维，同时加深他们在STEM和CS方面的学习？ (2)同理心驱动的实践活动与嵌入的伦理困境如何帮助培养学生的人工智能伦理责任感？（3）不同背景下的教师如何将人工智能伦理模块整合到自己的机器人课程中？ 在三年的时间里，人工智能伦理模块将进行形成性设计和研究，以评估它们对学生的人工智能伦理推理沿着STEM和CS技能的影响。研究人员还将研究不同正式和非正式背景下的教育工作者如何将这些人工智能道德模块整合到他们的机器人项目中。 72名中学生将参加一项学科间研究，同时参加为期5天的机器人夏令营项目，分为三个夏令营项目条件：没有人工智能伦理的夏令营项目，人工智能伦理模块与机器人项目分开的夏令营项目，以及机器人与人工智能伦理相结合的夏令营项目。研究人员还将对50名同意参加在线社区的机器人教育工作者进行混合方法研究，研究教师如何将人工智能伦理模块整合到自己的机器人程序中。由此产生的人工智能道德模块将通过与组织和学校的伙伴关系以及通过项目网站广泛传播。鉴于人工智能对我们社会的深远影响，该项目旨在帮助学生培养对人工智能的责任感，以补充他们对人工智能的技能和知识，以便更多人能够在未来的专业实践中做好准备并能够处理道德问题，以引导人工智能在更安全，更公平，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems, tools, and techniques are being rapidly adopted and used in devices and products that youth interact with on a daily basis at home and in schools. Educators are starting to recognize the need to teach K-12 students about AI and are developing novel programs, such as robotics, to address this need. However, AI ethics, despite its critical importance in youth's future personal, civic, and work lives, has been largely neglected. This project develops and integrates AI ethics teaching modules into existing robotics youth programs. As students learn about robotics, they will also learn about emerging ethical issues in AI in the design of robots at the same time, including fairness, transparency, autonomy, respect, accountability, privacy, and security. The project aims to promote responsibility for AI ethics and skills among students through two types of innovative interventions by engaging learners in (1) stories based on AI ethics issues that are likely to be meaningful to young adolescents, such as surveillance of their physical activities, and (2) empathy driven hands-on activities with an embedded ethical dilemma in which students will experience the process of committing an ethical error, identifying the error, and fixing the error, potentially developing a stronger sense of ownership of ethical issues and agency to address them. The research will contribute to the understanding of the effects of integrating AI ethics into STEM programs such as robotics for students, particularly regarding their engagement in, awareness of, knowledge about, and sense of responsibility for a range of emerging ethical issues underlying the use of AI in STEM and CS fields. It will provide a new model for teaching AI to students integrated with STEM concepts in a contextualized and relevant manner, by elevating ethics as a primary concern, as opposed to as a side issue. This project is funded by the STEM + Computing (STEM+C) program that supports research and development to understand the integration of computing and computational thinking in STEM learning.The research questions driving this project are: (1) How does integrating AI ethics into a robotics program help develop students' ethical thinking, while deepening their learning in STEM and CS? (2) How do empathy-driven hands-on activities with embedded ethical dilemma help cultivate students' sense of AI ethics responsibility; and (3) How do teachers in various contexts integrate AI ethics modules into their own robotics programs? Over the course of three years, AI ethics modules will be formatively designed and studied to assess their effects on students' AI ethics reasoning along with STEM and CS skills. Researchers will also study how educators in different formal and informal contexts integrate these AI ethics modules into their robotics programs. 72 middle school students will participate in a between-subject research study while attending a 5-day robotics camp program in three camp program conditions: camp program without AI ethics, camp program with an AI ethics module separated from robotics program, and camp program with robotics integrated with AI ethics. Researchers will also conduct a mixed methods study of 50 robotics educators who have agreed to participate in an online community, studying how teachers integrate AI ethics modules into their own robotic programs. The resulting AI ethics modules will be disseminated widely through partnerships with organizations and schools, as well as through the project website. Given AI's far-reaching implications for our society, this project aims to help students develop responsibility for AI to complement their skill and knowledge about AI, so that more will be prepared and able to handle ethical issues in their future professional practices in order to guide the inevitable societal transformation driven by AI in a safer, fairer, and freer direction.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.