America’s First A.I. High School Is Great. But Not Because of A.I.

It was 9 a.m. on a Thursday at Harmony Elementary School in Buford, Ga., about 45 minutes outside Atlanta. A gaggle of first graders sat on a rug festooned with ladybugs in the school’s bright, airy library. The children were surrounded by walls of books and tables that had been set up with Magna-Tiles and blocks.

“Here is a little toy,” a teacher named Shanaz Lakhani told the children, holding a plastic figurine. “We are going to think about our user, our little toy, and how we can build a sturdy home for her.” She asked the 20 or so students, who were starting to wiggle with restlessness, what sturdy means. A few of them shot their tiny hands in the air. Ms. Lakhani called on one kid, who said, “It means that everything is fine and secure.”

Ms. Lakhani affirmed the answer, and described how a sturdy home could potentially stand up to an earthquake or a very windy day; part of the activity involved students shaking the table to see just how hardy their structure was. She told them to focus on the feelings of the figurine. “She’s our user, right? We’re using our ‘user experience’ where we’re going to think, how can you build a strong home for her?” Ms. Lakhani put the children into small groups, and they scampered off to build their structures.

Behind Ms. Lakhani was a digital whiteboard that explained the challenge, next to an analog whiteboard with six colorful triangles affixed to it. The triangles explained how this activity was part of Harmony’s artificial intelligence learning framework. “User experience” is one side of the light-blue “applied experiences” triangle, along with “A.I. applications” and “robotics.” The other triangles stand for “programming,” “data science,” “mathematical reasoning,” “creative problem solving” and “ethics.”

The children did not seem to be paying much attention to either whiteboard once they began their activity. I saw two girls approach Ms. Lakhani to ask her for a specific doll for their building. I couldn’t discern whether they received the message about “user experience,” or its connection to artificial intelligence, because they are 7.

Harmony Elementary is part of Gwinnett County’s Seckinger cluster of schools, along with Ivy Creek Elementary, Patrick Elementary, Jones Middle School and Seckinger High School. The high school markets itself as “the nation’s first artificial intelligence (A.I.)-themed educational institution.” The other four schools, which are older and more established, feed into Seckinger High. They all follow the same A.I. framework, though it is calibrated for different grade levels.

Gwinnett County, in contrast to many other public school districts, has gained thousands of students over the past decade (though it has lost some from its peak enrollment). The suburban county has grown by roughly 400,000 people since the year 2000. The district decided to make an A.I.-themed cluster after its leaders read reports in the late 2010s from the World Economic Forum and McKinsey Global Institute predicting that artificial intelligence would soon disrupt the work force. They wanted to make their students “future ready.”

The first class of students who have been at Seckinger High School since they were freshmen graduated this month. By now, districts from Boston to Miami have caught the same A.I. fever, vowing to integrate the new technology into their curriculum.

This sounds sensible in theory. Proponents of A.I. in education believe that if the technology is harnessed correctly, it can give children a more precise, dynamic and individualized learning experience, even in big public school classes. Conventional education too often operates on a one-size-fits-all model, they argue, and A.I. can change that. Schools are also trying to respond to the unpredictability of the labor market, and the fear that with A.I., entry-level white collar jobs will become scarcer, and some may disappear entirely.

But in practice, placing A.I. at the center of a school is far more complicated and uncertain. There isn’t a standard definition of A.I. literacy, or a single widely accepted way to measure it. The adapt-or-perish rhetoric is the same kind of argument that tech boosters made about giving every child a laptop, and many years into that enterprise, it’s tough to argue that it’s been a success.

- Author: Jessica Grose, The New York Times

The post will continue...