De La Rosa questions panel on unplugged AI learning and vendor loopholes

Thank you so much.

I do want to highlight step three, Dr.

Trout, and your, I guess, your four recommendations.

And I think if you could talk a little more, just a little more about it.

Because I think there's an assumption that, oh, to learn about AI, you need to put a chatbot in front of a kid.

But you're highlighting that you don't need to use AI.

itself on a computer to learn about AI.

Is that correct?

One of the tenets of computer science education, which I'm intimately involved in, is what we call unplugged activities.

Just because you are learning about a computer does not mean you need to be sitting in front of the screen.

And I, again, stress that if we work with higher education partners, we can co-design these experiences that teach about AI without doing some of the damage of extra screen time.

We were trying to figure out your name, but I couldn't catch it.

What's your name?

Tania?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

Sorry to...

Yeah.

My question is, you mentioned that the, basically what you're describing to me sounds like a loophole.

In the vendor system where if they're registered in-house, can you explain that a little bit more?

Yeah, I mean, that's been going on since the 70s, like ever since FERPA was invented, they never really defined what a school official is.

So, you know, like the construction company who they hired to do the cafeteria stuff, those are all school officials through like No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds Act.

It became more formalized that like vendors,

are designated as school officials and most ed tech vendors and classroom application solutions, all that stuff, they function as school officials.

And you can see that on the DOE's website.

But yeah, that's what the data privacy officers didn't

mention and I think that's an important detail to how data is shared to third party

how schools can share data to companies without parental consent.

Okay.

I just wanted to clarify that because I thought I understood it correctly, but you explained it way clearer now.

Thank you.

I just, just at form, I just want to clarify, similar to the question for Dr.

Trout, which is a citywide training strategy.

Is your contention that we should be training kindergarten?

You said K-12 students, teachers, administrators.

Is your contention that we should be training kindergartners using a computer or on AI?

Or is there some other clarification point about what you mean by K-12 students, empower them as creative, critical thinkers?

For our university, the stance is this.

We are not trying to convince people to use AI.

We are trying to convince people how to do that critical thinking that the students were talking about, how to understand ethical versus unethical uses, whether that's on a computer, whether that's other technologies.

But that's really what begins for us.

And I think that's all age groups.

It's all sectors.

It's outside of education.

It's within the small business, medium-sized enterprise space as well.

But that's really our position.

We're not here to convince people to use AI.

We're here to convince people to understand ethical realities, discernment, and to understand when it's...

Being used on them and if they do use it, how to use it well.

Thank you.

Thank you to this panel.

Thank you so much to this panel.

I appreciate your testimony and look forward to continued work together.

Very clear that we need to do a lot of work in putting those guardrails in both academically and for safety purposes.

Our next panel, Ruth Lowenchron, Gracie Messier, Matt Henning, Larry Lieberman, and Lizbeth Lucero.

Ruth isn't here, just so you know.

She's from my organization.

You may begin when ready.

Please state your name for the record.