“So Yeah, No, It’s Not Ethical”: How Young People Contemplate the Ethics of GenAI

• In Event: Can Education Stop Killer Robots? Exploring Values, Ethics, and Impacts in K12 Computer Science Instruction

Abstract

Objectives
As teachers, school administrators, and policymakers debate how, if at all, to use generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in education, there is wide agreement that young people should learn about GenAI. One starting point for learning about GenAI is answering a fundamental question: is the technology ethical? In our study, we examined how youth as technoskeptical philosophers of technology analyzed an ecology of GenAI and the kinds of relationships the young people found salient during their ethical sensemaking. We pose two research questions:

What kinds of critical analysis of generative AI’s ecologies did a technoskeptical inquiry open for students?

What types of relationships informed students’ sensemaking about generative AI while completing a technoskeptical inquiry?

Theoretical Framework
Our study applies and modifies the philosophers of technology theoretical framework, which views young people’s “contemplation as a privileged mode of sensemaking with and about technology” (Author 2). We also turn to technoskepticism (Pleasants et al., 2023) to guide our analysis. Like youth as philosophers of technology, technoskepticism is concerned with how young people learn to develop justice-oriented relationships with, through, and against technology.

Data and Methods
Our data come from the Young People’s Race, Power, and Technology Project (YPRPT), a community-based social design experiment (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016) in a large Midwestern city. We focus on the fifth and most recent iteration of YPRPT. The six-week program occurred during Summer 2024 in partnership with Digital Youth Network and explored the ethics of AI in education, surveillance, and social media. The research participants were six high school students, three of whom identified as Black males and three of whom identified as Black females. Our study analyzes a 67-minute discussion of the ethics of GenAI.

We produced a transcript of the 67-minute conversation and completed two rounds of deductive and inductive coding (Miles et al., 2020). Our coding process led to five themes we use for structuring findings: 1) Big Tech’s mechanisms of extraction and exploitation; 2) Corporate “washing” efforts; 3) Singularity and solidarity; 4) Corporate motivation and technology’s impacts; and 5) Accountability. Finally, our analysis centers two focal students, Kiara and Stephanie, who illuminate cases of how youth determined GenAI is unethical.

Results and Significance
Our findings suggest designing an expansive ethical terrain for youth to traverse when considering GenAI. Kiara constructed a holistic critical analysis of AI’s complex ecosystem guided by a sense of injustice at Big Tech’s abuses. Stephanie maintained multiple, at times contradictory, relationships with GenAI to determine whether the technology is ethical is contingent upon if a company can develop GenAI in ways that minimize harm.Observing the youths’ ethical sensemaking offers several implications. First, our study illuminates the importance of engaging young people in AI’s political economy. Second, our study points to the need for civic education focused on AI governance. And third, our study suggests that young people can benefit from analyzing dominant forms of AI technologies while also learning about alternatives.

Authors

• Charles Logan, Northwestern University

• Sepehr Vakil, Northwestern University