Parents, teach your kids to use AI responsibly — and sparingly

Stephanie Fairyington

Parents, teach your kids to use AI responsibly — and sparingly
Teachers have long incorporated digital tools such as interactive displays into their lessons, but the role AI should play in the classroom is still taking shape.

“What?! It’s Dav Pilkey, not David Pickle!” a superfan of the author of the Dog Man series shouts in a media literacy class I teach to fifth graders in Sunset Park. “And he’s not Canadian. He’s American!” the incredulous kid continues. I had just put up an Instagram post intentionally riddled with errors about Pilkey’s popular graphic novels. The objective of the lesson was to teach my students not to rely on memory or hearsay to confirm facts, but to track down primary sources (people or documents reflecting firsthand knowledge or experience of a certain event) and secondary sources (sources such as widely read newspapers, magazines, books and academic journals) to vet content.

Before I could proceed with my lesson, another kid swiftly chimed in: “Check with ChatGPT!” It’s a directive from students I frequently hear, along with “Google it!” It provides the perfect opportunity to show them the limits of artificial intelligence. But the reasons to limit it aren’t just about false or faulty information.

Limiting our use of chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude is good for our environment and well-being, too. The data centers they require utilize colossal amounts of electricity — enough to power large cities — and expand our carbon footprint, damage local air quality and public health, and zap millions of gallons from freshwater supplies every day.

ChatGPT now has more than 900 million weekly active users worldwide. As reliance on AI grows, however, not everyone knows how to use it responsibly, especially kids — but parents, too.

Despite my many misgivings and concerns about the dark side of AI, it’s critical that students learn how to use it prudently, effectively and, of course, sparingly.

In the social media program I run in Sunset Park, I have a handy acronym, B.A.M., to help my students remember how to use conversational AI tools responsibly.

Before your children start turning to chatbots for knowledge, here are three tips you can teach them to keep their minds free of too many falsities:

Be very specific in your prompt: Instead of “What is Pop Art?” which will pull up a whole host of unsourced information, ask: “Can you find a short article from a university or museum that explains what Pop Art is?” Doing so will likely yield more accurate information with quality citations.

Assess the quality of your sources: Once AI returns a response, pay close attention to the sources accompanying each piece of information it pulls up. Ensure the references are credible, such as established newspapers, magazines, peer-reviewed academic journals or books. Articles on museum or university websites can also serve as good secondary sources if the author is writing within their area of scholarly expertise. If you don’t recognize a link and lack the time to investigate its legitimacy, don’t use the details derived from it. Write a new prompt asking for better citations to verify the facts you’d like to use.

Must check accompanying links: Chatbots will often generate erroneous facts and quotes, then tether them to a respected citation to make them appear valid. It’s important to check the details they generate against the links they supply because you often won’t find the information there. If you can’t find the quote or facts referenced in the cited source, don’t use them.

But it’s better to avoid all these potential mishaps — which take a terrible toll on our planet (and brains!) — and crack a book.