S4 E1: AI MythBusters

Lisa Dieker and Maggie Mosher kick off season four by addressing common fears and misconceptions about artificial intelligence in education, beginning with the concern that AI will replace teachers. They emphasize that while AI can support tasks such as answering questions and organizing information, it can never replace the relationships, empathy, and human connection that make the classroom special for students. The episode also explores concerns about AI’s environmental impact, with insights on energy use and the role educators play in demonstrating responsible AI use through prompting practices. Throughout the conversation, Lisa and Maggie encourage educators to move beyond fear and view AI as a supportive tool that enhances teaching while keeping teachers at the center of learning. 

Resources:
NotebookLM - https://notebooklm.google

Social Media:
X - https://x.com/KUFLITECenter
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/Center-for-Flexible-Learning-through-Innovations-in-Technology-Education/61563791019174/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/aai-flite-center

Transcript

Music: 0:00

Reclaim your time. Time.

Maggie Mosher: 0:09

Welcome to AI Advocates. I'm Maggie Mosher.

Lisa Dieker: 0:12

Hi, and I'm Lisa Dieker. So excited to be back, Maggie.

Maggie Mosher: 0:15

I know, and today's episode's a good one. It's AI Myth Busting debunk the common fears.

Lisa Dieker: 0:22

Well, I'm going to give you the first fear I hear is that AI is going to I often hear AI is going to replace humans, but since this is about teachers, what are your thoughts? Is AI going to replace teachers?

Maggie Mosher: 0:34

Oh, no, never, never. We need the relationship. AI does great at answering questions. It does great at certain things, like, I can ask it specific questions about specific things. If I have good sources, it does great at that, regurgitating information, telling me what I missed, but it is never going to be the heart and soul of a classroom that is always going to be a teacher.

Lisa Dieker: 0:53

Yeah, and so I always ask, like, what who was your favorite teacher, Maggie?

Maggie Mosher: 0:55

Oh, I actually have three, but I'll give you one right now. Mine, Ms. Melody Wick.

Lisa Dieker: 1:01

What grade?

Maggie Mosher: 1:01

Listening. She was amazing um middle school English.

Lisa Dieker: 1:04

Oh got it. Mine was Mary Queener, second grade. And unfortunately, Mary Queener, is no longer on the earth, but she was an amazing teacher and taught she played the piano until but, you know, it's funny, because I often use that when I'm talking, and I'm always like, people name their teacher, and then I asked them to name their favorite tech. And, you know, mine's probably my phone, but it's only because it allows me to connect with humans, and it doesn't make me feel good when I say that, like it did when we said our favorite teacher. So, you know, I agree with you. I It's definitely not going to replace teachers. But what? What are some myths you've heard?

Maggie Mosher: 1:41

Yeah, well, I would say the biggest myth that I hear all the time is that AI is the reason that we are having so many carbon emission problems, and it's going to ruin our Earth. That is a big one that I hear a lot. And what's interesting is, I was on a panel with energy people from all over the US, and they have great jobs, and they're doing great things to assist that not happening, but we as educators have a really huge role to play in that, as far as how we keep that from happening. And one of the roles we have to play is, can we teach our students to be really good prompters? I don't know if you've been on yet. Have you been on Notebook LM's new infographic?

Lisa Dieker: 2:16

Yes. And all of their new pieces are just blowing me away. The videos they make are off the charts.

Maggie Mosher: 2:23

They are and the infographic makes an infographic on any website, any document, in seconds. Now, if I had tried to do that same infographic in Canva, it would have taken me eight times the energy it took to do it in Notebook LM. So in that way, I'm saving energy by using Notebook LM to create the infographic, but when my students are going on and saying, make me an image of this, and they're not giving really good prompts, they'll go through an image 20 times, and that's using up a lot of energy. So that's one way. And then the other way we use a lot of energy that we as teachers have control over is whether we're having our students go to the entire worldwide web, if they're asking questions to the entire world by web, that's a lot of energy use, whereas, if we're just having them ask questions from something on their local computer, like a PDF, that uses a lot less energy.

Lisa Dieker: 3:11

Yeah, and so, you know, I don't think people even realize Googling something you know, is is not only going out there, but I think you know, again, I said, when we decided to do this discussion on energy, I said, we have a disclaimer. We're by no means, you know the environmental experts here, but I do know that when you're feeding I call it the beast, but the large language models, that's what when, when you type something in Google, anybody ever had an ad pop up that says, do you want to buy shoes at blank because, gosh darn it, I looked at shoes yesterday, and that's really feeding the beast of commerce, but now we're feeding so that's similar to what a large language model does. Every time I feed it a prompt, it learns what I want to do, and those data centers are truly what is using so much of our environmental cost. So I actually like to stay within my network and really try to use things that sends out information or sends me information, but it doesn't feed the beast like trying to be if you're in a Google Ed suite. You're you're not burning up as much, or you're in a, you know, in your our university uses Copilot, so it doesn't matter what the tool is, but when you're in your own bubble, and you're not feeding it, and you're just bringing information to you in a closed environment as an educator, it's a good thing, and I'll give you the Lisa Dieker anology. I just bought a new car, and my other one got stuck on the hill, and I couldn't make it up the hill to my house. Long story, if you want to hear about it, ended up in tears. My husband, who's wonderful, rescued me, but my car is electric and gas, and so I am still contributing to the environment, bad carbon, but I'm also. Saving it when I go in electric mode. And I think that's how I see closed network use, like in Khanmigo, Magic School AI versus open network. One is gas and one is electric, but I'm still using energy either way. So you want to talk about processors, Maggie? I know that's something you're really stoked about.

Maggie Mosher: 5:17

Yeah, I was gonna say. We are. That's one of the key things. Is, yes, we are saving energy, but you've got to think too about your laptop use over time, because that also ends up our laptops when we're no longer using them and they're dead, they go into a big hole as well, unless they're being repurposed for some other purpose. So things like, we need to understand where the energy is coming that uses up our actual iPads, Chromebooks, whatever you using in the classroom, what's going to make them go faster? What's going to make them stay along longer? And that's things like, are you using? Like, you use AI tools. When you use an AI tool, and there's a lot of heavy processing, like, you're running AI models, you're running an AI video game, all of that, your battery life is drained quickly, and that's going to cause your computer to leave your yourself quickly. The cost of creating those videos, whether you use a cloud or a local AI. So when I use the cloud, like ChatGPT on my browser, I don't use near as much of my battery as when I use Copilot, even though it's more secure and I'm in Microsoft, it uses a lot more of my battery, and that hardware goes much faster. And things like remembering, like IOS, the update in Windows 11, it has a way to AI to learn your patterns, and when it learns your patterns, that system actually does a lot of like idle light work for you, and so it's not using as much CPU. So it saves you power, and you don't even notice that it's saving you power, but it does save you power and optimizing your battery life. Whereas if you don't use some of the new updates, you're actually ending up using a lot more power. You're going to ruin your battery very quickly. So knowing things like ChatGPT on the web, it's got a low impact in battery and processing, whereas AIs on your desktop are going to run a lot max power battery, and things that are like moderate use are like NPUs more efficient, and that's using just your local AI, like you had said, where I'm just taking a PDF that's going to use kind of moderate amounts of energy. And then AI system management, you can buy them to actually save your battery. But I use so much AI that I'm noticing it on my laptop already. It's about ready to die, and I need to figure out, am I going to get a laptop that's specifically for AI that that manages AI faster? I don't know, but that's something we're going to have to think about in education.

Lisa Dieker: 7:31

Yeah, and a quick, funny laugh for the group as you're listening, anyone who might be listening is one of our friends on campus, who's a computer scientist. Said he, you know, is good at Python, but he's not the best in the world, and he's been using it to help him write some code that he's smart enough to check it, because he's like a cyber security guru. But again, he just said, you know? And he said, I didn't even know my computer had a fan until I started using AI. And so again, keep that in mind. If you remember the days of fans, if your man's coming on all the time, you are contributing to this worldwide economic environmental impact. And again, we don't have the answers, but we know it's a myth that's out there.

Maggie Mosher: 8:12

And you teachers out there as well, because I found out from a few grandparents this last week, if you put something underneath so that your fan is not directly on a desk or table, you will save your battery as well. A lot of people don't know. Just put it up on something with holes, let it breathe. So we're also ruining them, because kids are just leaving them on desktops or tables and their batteries are dying. So things like that, little things like put it up with something with holes so it can get the air flow, little tips. But then I also wanted to say you as teachers have a huge impact in your education. And when you're teaching students on just asking things like, what do you think we could do in Eco-cooling? Like, how can we make hardware more efficient? How can we make sure that we are transparent in reporting how much energy is being used in this versus this? Or developing a sustainable sustainability plan? How can we kind of come up with that? We have a doctor at KU who's already looking at trying to make the the information be more compact as it's being set, because it'll save a lot of energy. So Dr. Samaya, awesome job. Thank you for doing that. But having people consider, what can they do to make the protocols better, to make the saving of the power more efficient and better. I have another myth for you.

Lisa Dieker: 9:23

Yeah, and then I have one for you too. But I'm also thinking it'll be like our cars. I know already how to drive my car better, because it tells me how many miles per gallon I'm getting, and it shows me from zero to 60, and it shows when I'm hitting 60 versus zero. So again, I think down the road, I hope there will be like you just used, you know, X amount of CPU processing for this much impact on the environment. That's what I hope. I think we'll get there, but it took a long time to get there for cars. So I'm still not making it as an excuse, but I do think it's something that the more we can educate ourselves, the more. Comfortable we can be when we use AI appropriately.

Maggie Mosher: 10:01

100%. So what's yours? Your myth.

Lisa Dieker: 10:05

So well, so here's one that I often hear is, oh, well, if people are using AI, they're cheating and or they're and I actually have a myth bust for that. I actually have now decided that AI is my second brain. So, you know, I guess we're in Kansas, so we'll use the Wizard of Oz. And you know, if I only had a brain, well, when I don't have a brain anymore, it is, you know, it's not, I'm not cheating. I'm supplementing my brain. And some people call it a prosthetic, but I don't really need a prosthetic because I don't have that disability part, but I do have this need to sometimes do things because I'm tired, I'm confused or I don't understand and I'll give you a real example. We're writing an article on situated judgment and AI in simulation. Sounds like a lot of words right there, but the word explainability kept coming up, and I was like, I like that word, but spell check doesn't know it, and it is the new term in AI. And so I then use the second brain to say, help me understand the context of this term in this and and again, I could have called you, I could have did a web search, but in three seconds, I had that information, and now I'm smarter from it. So my personal brain is growing, but my second brain is always available on the shelf, so I don't know about your thoughts there.

Maggie Mosher: 11:33

Yeah, no, I agree. And we only have time for one more, so I'm going to give the last one that I hear most frequently, and that myth is that AI is making us less creative, our students less creative and worse at writing, like we're becoming horrible writers and we're not creative. And I will bust that myth, and then let you bust it for a second, but I will say that we have had things like texting that do make us less creative and not as good at writing, and that is true, but things like AI actually have the potential to do the opposite, if we use them correctly, like I use currently some of the Goblin tools, for example, I'll write an email and then I'll put it in Goblin tools and ask it to make it more professional or something. It comes up with words that I don't consider very frequently using, but that are good words, that are words that have better meaning and display something more passionate than maybe what I put down. And so I learned from that. I think with our students, it also depends on the way in which you have them use AI. I think if they start AI as the typical student, if you have them start and it generate the very first idea for your typical student, that does cause creativity to go down. But if you have the student generate the first idea and AI kind of talk to them about it or or give them ideas on is that bad or is this good, or what? What am I missing? If you have AI be that other voice, it's almost like you've got another student or another teacher who's critiquing you and giving you ideas and kind of going back and forth. For people with typical brains as a whole, that's better. But I will say there's one caveat to that, if you've got a student with dysgraphia or certain learning disabilities having AI draft, that first draft is actually more effective for them, because that's the most difficult, and then their brains get rolling on ideas, but that very first idea is hard to get out and so I think being mindful of what are your students strengths and weaknesses, and how can you use AI to help them be more creative and to be better writers? What are your thoughts?

Lisa Dieker: 13:26

Yeah, and my last quick thought is, you know, I I'm glad I don't have to call you at 1am when I'm stuck and I feel like as a second brain it I'm allowed to be creative because I don't take the bandwidth to Google 50 sources and watch a YouTube video, and AI takes all that together. And as I get even better at knowing me and prompting, I can say, show me the best video, one blank, or give me the best idea, or give me you know who I should be talking to on this topic, so that I am able to create the thinking I have already originated and not get stuck. And to me, that's what the second brain does, is when I'm stuck, it's like all of a sudden somebody gives me some salt on the road, and I can skid right on and up the hill like I needed to.

Maggie Mosher: 14:15

I love. So if you're wondering if you are busting a myth or not busting a myth, you might want to go to notebook LM and put it in and have it debate you against whether you are true or not in your conversation. Just write in what your myth is, and it will do a great job debating that myth in its own podcast.

Lisa Dieker: 14:30

I love it. Well, we're glad AI is saving you time, and thanks for a great session on myth busting. Maggie. Thanks.