{"id":445,"date":"2023-12-15T15:58:18","date_gmt":"2023-12-15T15:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/?p=445"},"modified":"2023-12-15T15:58:18","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T15:58:18","slug":"ethics-and-ai-some-takeaways-from-the-alt-winter-summit-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/2023\/12\/15\/ethics-and-ai-some-takeaways-from-the-alt-winter-summit-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethics and AI: Some \u2018takeaways\u2019 from the ALT Winter Summit 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Tuesday 12<sup>th<\/sup> December, I attended the ALT (Association for Learning Technologists) Winter Summit. The theme of the Conference was Ethics and Artificial Intelligence (AI). We heard from the following speakers:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Helen Beetham, Researcher and Consultant<\/li>\n<li>Mary Jacob, Aberystwyth University<\/li>\n<li>Olatunde Durowoju, Liverpool Business School<\/li>\n<li>Dr Tarsem Singh Cooner, The University of Birmingham<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There was also a student panel at the end which looked at the student experience of AI and their ideas for moving forward with using AI in a higher education context.<\/p>\n<p>The speakers covered topics such as ethical problems and concerns with the use of AI, accessibility and AI and there was a case study showing how AI was used in a session with social work students at the University of Birmingham. It was a really enjoyable day and I learned a lot!<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d like to share three \u2018takeaways\u2019 that I had from the ALT Summit.<\/p>\n<p>Firstly, many of us are aware of some of the issues surrounding the use of AI. For example, the use AI tools takes a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/bernardmarr\/2023\/03\/22\/green-intelligence-why-data-and-ai-must-become-more-sustainable\/\">huge amount of energy<\/a>; there are issues around equity and student access to paid for services and tools; there is an impact on student learning; we have also heard in the news that a number of larger companies have sacked ethical advisors and much more! However, one thing I have had experience of in my own work and that was raised at the Summit, was the sheer amount of secrecy behind the training of artificial intelligence models. How are these models trained exactly? Who is training them? What impact does this have? We know about the issues around encoded bias the models and we know that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.co.uk\/article\/low-paid-workers-are-training-ai-models-for-tech-giants\">some of the people involved in this training process are underpaid<\/a> but I definitely want to find out more!<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Olatunde Durowoju spoke on \u2018Achieving Inclusive Education in AI\u2019 and has written an article on this in 2023. His talk was really interesting and spoke about some of the positive aspects of using AI and how this can benefit students such as those with neurodiversity, who are learning English as a second language or who have a disability. Examples were given of the use of AI in higher education and how this can help students improve their English language proficiency, how it can help address a cultural gap, how it can help reduce student anxiety around the quality of the work they produce and it can assist those students who may have diminished capacity due to other responsibilities (e.g. caregivers). Some of the examples given included using AI to summarise text to help gain a better understanding of it, improving the quality of writing through prompt engineering, using Chatbots to help with out-of-hours engagement and using AI to pluralise perspectives on a specific topic.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the student panel gave a real insight into how students are using AI currently, how they perceive its future use and what they would like to see moving forward from their institutions. Students on the panel were from universities such as Sheffield Hallam University, Edinburgh Napier University and the University of Kent. The students were also at different places in their University studies so there was a good range of perspectives across the students. Two of the things that students said they wanted were:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>More consistent guidance on the acceptable use of AI in their studies across the departments in their institutions but also across UK institutions in general. They believed this would help students be less confused about when and how they can use it.<\/li>\n<li>More education on the use of AI from their institutions on the problems of using AI such as perpetuating bias and academic integrity concerns.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Thank you to ALT for another wonderful conference and to the speakers for sharing their knowledge and expertise. I will definitely be exploring some of the issues and opportunities that have been mentioned in more detail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Tuesday 12th December, I attended the ALT (Association for Learning Technologists) Winter Summit. The theme of the Conference was Ethics and Artificial Intelligence (AI). We heard from the following speakers: Helen Beetham, Researcher and Consultant Mary Jacob, Aberystwyth University Olatunde Durowoju, Liverpool Business School Dr Tarsem Singh Cooner, The University of Birmingham There was &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/2023\/12\/15\/ethics-and-ai-some-takeaways-from-the-alt-winter-summit-2023\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Ethics and AI: Some \u2018takeaways\u2019 from the ALT Winter Summit 2023<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[22,35,8,9],"class_list":["post-445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pedagogy","tag-accessibility","tag-ai","tag-event","tag-sharing-practice"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":743,"url":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/2025\/08\/12\/enhancing-digital-accessibility-upcoming-training\/","url_meta":{"origin":445,"position":0},"title":"Enhancing Digital Accessibility: Upcoming Training","author":"Elizabeth Walkden","date":"August 12, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"The Digital Accessibility Team are offering a series of engaging training sessions to kick off the 2025\/26 academic year designed to boost digital accessibility skills across the University. Whether you're a staff member or student, these workshops and webinars provide practical guidance on creating inclusive digital content. The hands-on Accessible\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Events&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/category\/event\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":306,"url":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/2023\/08\/18\/10-top-tips-on-improving-accessibility\/","url_meta":{"origin":445,"position":1},"title":"10 &#8216;Top Tips&#8217; On Improving Accessibility","author":"Elizabeth Walkden","date":"August 18, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday, the Inclusive Learning Network at Lancaster University met via Teams, led by Dr Ann-Marie Houghton, Dean for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). The Inclusive Learning network is an open network that meets regularly to hear from colleagues across the University. The network includes representatives from a range of areas\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Pedagogy&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Pedagogy","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/category\/pedagogy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The banner and tabs at the top of Microsoft Word. 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WordPress (WP) is a popular open-source website builder and Lancaster University\u00a0hosts 772 active WP sites. One of the advantages of WP is you don\u2019t need any experience using computer programming languages; a great website can be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Pedagogy&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Pedagogy","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/category\/pedagogy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/files\/2023\/08\/LancasterUniLibrary20160113_2593-002-300x199.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":329,"url":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/2023\/09\/08\/what-do-students-want-an-insight-from-the-alt-conference-2023\/","url_meta":{"origin":445,"position":3},"title":"What do students want? An insight from the ALT Conference 2023","author":"Elizabeth Walkden","date":"September 8, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"From 5th September to 7th September, Tim Ellis and I (Liz Walkden) attended the Association of Learning Technologists (ALT) Conference. \u2018Student Voices: Shaping the Post-Pandemic Campus\u2019 was day two\u2019s keynote session. 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This in-person event will bring together academic and professional services staff from across the Faculty and from ISS. It is an opportunity for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Events&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/category\/event\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":447,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions\/447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/lu-digitaldigest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}