ON MISSION Theresa Smith, Ph.D. HEAD OF SCHOOL January 2024
THE AI PROJECT @WEBB HOW MIGHT EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES, PARTICULARLY AI, RESHAPE THE EXPERIENCE AND PURPOSE OF EDUCATION FOR OUR STUDENTS? Who should have access to gene editing technology? Laura McBain, K12 Lab Director of Community and Implementation at Stanford University’s d.school, asked me this question on a recent call.
ON MISSION Theresa Smith, Ph.D. Head of School
AS SOON AS McBAIN POSED HER QUESTION,
my head was filled with a thousand imagined ramifications (good and bad) of this life-changing technology and its widespread use (even home use). As we discussed whether such a question was far-fetched, McBain reminded me that civilization has faced similar grand quandaries. For example, in the medieval era, the question was, who should have access to the ability to read and write? At that time, the ruling classes feared the spread of literacy to peasants would be disastrous. Few would deny that the printing press and common literacy transformed education and pushed civilization forward. In many ways, the conversations around AI right now remind me of my earliest days as a teacher, with the explosion of access to and growth of the internet. Widespread access to information has certainly transformed good teaching and learning. In my freshman year at UC Berkeley, I took Introduction to Art History. It felt like such a college course, and I was thrilled to sit in a huge lecture hall and listen to my professor explain the images projected on the big screen in the front. The slide projector would make that iconic ticking noise as she would progress from one image to the next. Access to high-quality images was an important part of the class, as was access to information about the images themselves—facts about the artists, their training and influences, the reception of their work and its impact on subsequent artists, their relationship to their era and other cultural and literary events and moments. All this knowledge was contained in my professor’s lectures, and in the accumulated wisdom of the impressive college library we would frequent to answer additional questions.
Stanford University’s d.school
A primary goal of this class was for us to learn how to look at art, to be able to make an argument about what we thought an artist’s work said about their views on a given topic or how it reflected or challenged their time and place. Making arguments about art and thinking about how scholars make meaning of an artist’s work was a new and exciting discovery for me. I spent hours in the library basement studying the high-quality images posted there. Works from Titian, Fragonard and Monet. And I also went to the university gallery to see a controversial exhibit on Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography and to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. There, I studied Matisse’s Femme au chapeau. It was the first time I understood why seeing a painting in person mattered. The thick, layered brush strokes were flat when I looked at the reproduction in my textbook. With the explosion of PowerPoint and digital images, I remember my excitement as a teacher when I assembled my first art history course for high school. I had access to ArtStor, a subscription database mainly used by institutions of higher education that provided access to high-quality digital images of masterpiece works. Fast forward a couple of years, and the internet made available images on every museum website. Two art historians created Smarthistory, which captured short videos of various masterpieces with succinct guides to understanding them. This platform exploded and was later acquired by Khan Academy. In my college days, memorizing the artists, the images, and the dates of creation felt important. Unless we had our hefty textbook with us, it was impossible to look those up. Today, not only can we easily do an internet search to help jog our memory,
We need to teach our students new skills, namely, how to critically assess information in a world of proliferating sources. but we can pull up the image in real-time and even interact with the image. We can zoom in, for example, something you cannot do in real life. And VR technology, from simple Google Art apps to more sophisticated resources like the Red Monastery Project at Case Western Reserve’s Interactive Commons, enables us to be virtually transported to see art and architecture in person. This access to art images has done more than make it easier to see art from the comfort of our homes and classrooms. It has democratized learning. The teacher at the front of the room and the books in the library are no longer the only way to access knowledge. Instead, the faculty’s role is to act as more of a guide in exploring what is available. In my classroom, this has led to a broader look at art history, as students have brought in art that doesn’t appear in my course curriculum. Every year that I’ve taught the course, I’ve been challenged to think about how I define art, what history we teach, and what is included. That process is dynamic and exciting and still grounded in an understanding of close reading, visual literacy and analytical thinking. And it has meant the teaching of new skills, namely, how to critically assess information in a world of proliferating sources.
And even as technology transforms how we study the material and some of the skills required, the why of it remains the same. Humanities courses like art history engage students in thinking deeply about the human experience. Students consider the ways people and societies make meaning of their lives and how self-expression, societal norms, and more have changed over time. In this process, students develop empathy, they think about the enduring questions of human civilizations, and they contemplate their own value and values. High school is a defining age for this exploration, and Webb’s mission centers this exploration in ways that are timeless.
Image created using DALL-E. Prompt = generate an image showing the use of artificial intelligence in education.
Image created using DALL-E. Prompt = female
“ AI ISN’T JUST A BAG OF CLEVER PRODUCTS. IT HAS THE TREMENDOUS POTENTIAL TO EXTEND OUR LIVES, IMPROVE OUR SOCIETIES AND SAVE OUR PLANET.” Image created using DALL-E.
Prompt = Van Gogh style image of high school student using ipad with technology images.
—DR. FEI-FEI LI, STANFORD UNIVERSITY
WE ARE AT AN EXCITING MOMENT for
technology and education. New AI tools promise to revolutionize human society. With the release of ChatGPT in 2023, most of us became aware of how much generative AI is already part of our everyday lives, from Siri and Alexa to autofill in Google searches. And many have played with ChatGPT, Dall-E, Microsoft Copilot or other generative AI tools.
“ Frame Diff,” created by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
AI enthusiasts are positivists. They believe that progress continues, that it is possible, and that technology enables it. I put myself in this camp. While news headlines often focus on what should be feared with AI, my broader reading suggests the power of this new technology to improve human society if we develop it in the right ways.
At Webb, we are excited to imagine how we can harness the power of these tools to enrich our classrooms and how our curriculum can be responsive to prepare students to be leaders in shaping this AI world. Take, for example, the way AI is speeding up the process of engineering synthetic proteins at MIT. “Frame Diff,” created by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, uses machine learning to develop new protein structures. This process, which can take millions of years in nature, has exciting medical and industrial applications, including the potential to accelerate the creation of vaccines and other drugs.
student wearing Webb sweatshirt working at laptop in Impressionist style in pastel colors.
Or a recent study that quantified the benefits teams can have from utilizing large language models in their work. Scholars from Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania worked in collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), presenting BCG’s teams with real work tasks. Some had access to ChatGPT4 and others did not. The study found that teams allowed to use the tool had a whopping 40% increase in quality. Forty percent, according to Professor Ethan Mollick of the Wharton School of Business, makes AI a “red alert,” something to stop and notice. Part of the power of this study, as explained by Mollick, comes from placing this achievement in comparative context. The industrial revolution in the 19th century also led to efficiencies, with the steam engine driving mechanization and the creation of the modern factory. That process increased production by roughly 18–20%, half the increase of BCG’s teams using AI. And yet, that development had a huge impact on human society, causing a major shift from rural to urban communities, transforming human work, impacting the way humans perceive and manage time, creating leisure as an organized social idea and laying the groundwork for all kinds of modern scientific discoveries. And while people may sometimes yearn for the simplicity of earlier times, this yearning rarely takes into account the major technological advances in
fields like medicine that have extended average life expectancies more than twofold since 1900. AI scholars predict when humans look back on today’s medical treatments in 500 years, it will be similar to how we think of medicine in the 1500s, a world before x-rays, penicillin and robotic surgery. Still, it is critical that our students think through the ethical issues embedded in the creation and implementation of AI. For example, MIT scientist Joy Buolamwini’s research raises compelling questions about racial bias in algorithms. Her own experience with facial recognition software suggests the importance of thoughtful development and clear parameters around AI use. In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, scholars Simon Friis and James Riley outline the complex social mechanisms that affect how AI interacts with existing social and economic disparities. These are complicated questions that demand rigorous thinking if AI is going to improve upon rather than replicate—or even exacerbate—today’s social ills. What can humanity accomplish with this augmented creative power? How can these efficiencies enable us to channel our energies in new ways? And how should our students be prepared to lead this work creatively, ethically and inclusively? These are some of the questions Phase 1 of The AI Project@Webb aims to address.
ON MISSION “ AT WEBB, WE ARE EXCITED TO IMAGINE HOW WE CAN HARNESS THE POWER OF THESE TOOLS TO ENRICH OUR CLASSROOMS AND HOW OUR CURRICULUM CAN BE RESPONSIVE TO PREPARE STUDENTS TO BE LEADERS IN SHAPING THIS AI WORLD.”
Harvard Business Review, “Eliminating Algorithmic Bias Is Just the Beginning of Equitable AI”
INQUIRY AND DISCOVERY SPRING 2024 PHASE 1 OF THE AI PROJECT WILL ADVANCE DOWN THREE PATHWAYS: PATHWAY 1 mage created using DALL-E. I
Image prompt = Monet style image of high school student using laptop with images of musical notes and math equations.
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AI Bookshelf Running with Robots: The American High School’s Third Century (2021), Greg Toppo and Jim Tracy The Age of AI: And Our Human Future (2022), Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher Futureproof: 9 Rules for Surviving in the Age of AI (2022), Kevin Roose Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines (2023), Joy Buolamwini The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI (2023), Fei-Fei Li
STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
PATHWAY 3
The speed of innovation today poses a real challenge for educators to keep up with developments and consider the ways this technology should and will transform the art of teaching and learning. Our faculty and staff are curious, engaged, and thoughtful—they are the best in the world. Their ideas and insights will help lead the conversation.
Webb’s academic program engages students in the design of their own education. As we dive into conversations about how AI will transform education, our students must be involved in the conversation. Faculty and students will collaborate to develop a series of initiatives focused on emerging technologies. Thanks to the support of the Charles Huang Foundation, Webb is already in the process of designing the Huang Innovation Lab, a physical space in the Fawcett Library that will be a hub for academic innovation on campus. The AI Project will create programs for this new space, including:
Webb’s location in California makes it the perfect launching pad to engage with AI and the future. Drawing on Webb’s impressive alumni network, we will continue to build our connections to the institutions that are at the forefront of this work. Those include academic centers like USC’s Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society and Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI, as well as industry hubs centered in Silicon Valley and Silicon Beach.
After all, it is critical that academics, from higher education researchers to high school faculty, play a role in developing and implementing AI tools. As Computer Science Professor and Co-Director of the Institute for Human-Centered AI at Stanford, Fei-Fei Li cautions in a recent Wall Street Journal article, we cannot leave the development and implementation of AI tools solely to tech firms focused on profit.
OUR MISSION
In this first phase of our project, we will provide resources and time for faculty to explore and create, to think about the educational power of these tools and how to enable our students to lead the development and implementation of AI in the future. We will consider the power and potential of AI in interdisciplinary pursuits and across all academic programs, including math and computer science, humanities, science, fine arts, and world languages.
The mission of The Webb Schools is to provide an exemplary learning community that nurtures and inspires boys and girls to become men and women who: Think boldly, mindfully, and creatively Act with honor and moral courage Lead with distinction Serve with a generous spirit
PATHWAY 2
FACULTY AND STAFF EXPLORATION
mage on right created using Adobe I
Photoshop generative fill AI to the photo on the left. Prompt = make surrealistic in style of Salvador Dali.
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• Design and build a WebbGPT • Develop and launch a new Technology and Innovation course • Develop AI and Ethics Guidelines for Webb educators and students • Develop a multi-disciplinary elective on Ethics and Technology.
Our network enables us to invite academic and industry leaders to share their expertise with Webb students, providing Webb educators and students with access to cutting-edge tech spaces and resources, and connecting Webb as a K–12 leader in AI conversations.
BUILDING WEBB’S AI NETWORK
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We are already excited to have connected with Abhishek Mantha ’14. Interested in computer science and machine learning at Webb, Mantha went on to major in Computer Science at USC and spent the last five years working for Mercedes on their automated driving technologies. Mantha is helping us get this work underway, in close collaboration with our Assistant Head of School Michael Hoe. In the meantime, we are busy exploring, discovering and considering what new resources are necessary to achieve our vision and goals.
We look forward to hearing from members of the Webb community who might provide insights to further our important project. Please reach out to me with your thoughts and ideas at tsmith@webb.org.
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