Kelly Clancy testifies on IRB concerns with AI pilot ethics and consent

Now we have Kelly Clancy.

You may begin.

Thanks for having me today and staying so late.

My name is Kelly Clancy.

I have three kids in New York City public schools.

I'm on CEC for District 20, part of the AIM Coalition.

And I've been thinking about what I could say that's different from what all of my friends and colleagues have said tonight.

One thing I'll just tell you is my son can access ChatGPT on his school-issued account right now, so all of the blocking's not going great.

The other thing I just wanted to talk about is I have a PhD in political science.

I've sat on institutional review boards that have reviewed research for ethics.

And I wanted to tell you that I don't think that there is an IRB in the United States that would approve the pilots as they're being designed right now.

And I have a huge concern about that.

So when IRBs consider research designs, one of the things that they consider is whether a vulnerable population is affected.

So whether or not you can meaningfully say no, whether or not you can meaningfully give your consent.

Minors are part of that group, right?

And all of these kids are being opted into something without their consent.

And so they're not given the right to meaningfully withdraw consent in a way that would be consistent with what an IRB would approve.

And I have a huge concern about the fact that all of these 50,000 kids, and what we've seen across New York City already, is that AI is deployed in places where there are vulnerable populations, will not be able to meaningfully give informed consent.

The other thing that has to be true before research is approved is that there has to be a meaningful benefit.

And when I was listening very carefully to Lara Lai talk about how we chose these programs, one thing that no one said was they were chosen because they might have a benefit to kids.

Our kids are going to help them improve their product and improve the fact that they make money.

But no one said that these programs have ever been shown to be better for kids than a human teacher.

And so at that point, no IRB in the country would ever approve something that had clear, demonstrable harm to kids and their learning effects and also had no benefit that was being articulated.

And so until there's a world where kids can meaningfully opt into these programs, not to be soon enrolled, this should not be something that is allowed in New York City public schools.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Kelly.