At Humber Polytechnic Institute’s #AI Institute for Public Safety in Education, we’ve been on an incredibly rich and thought-provoking journey, exploring AI’s role in public safety, education, and beyond. The pace has been intense, but incredibly fulfilling as we push boundaries and expand our understanding of AI’s transformative potential.
“Don’t use AI to reduce thinking about what matters—use it to make focusing on what matters easier. This is the crux of the essential agreement that must define GenAI usage in education today.”
Eric Moore, Kennedy Krieger Institute
I had the privilege of leading a brilliant team in building a perfect cube from seemingly imperfect Lego blocks, completely devoid of AI assistance. The triumph was sweeter, when we later prompted AI to recreate our human-made structure—unsuccessfully! The machine wasn’t there yet, apparently. It was a humbling reminder of the beauty and ingenuity that human creativity brings to the table. This exercise laid the foundation for what followed: an exploration of AI-powered mini smart cities, where various cohorts of talented students and graduates left behind their legacies of good and better code to model the future of Lego-block urban spaces and monitor traffic and create various AI-generated brands including the Liveli Radio station and Watts Wrong, an evil energy house, and a Visual Studio Code plugin to live stream code in a plain text format.
We also delved into some of the most complex and pressing issues in the world of AI safety in education. We worked through case studies on barriers and access to learning technology adoption across institutions, AI-driven revenge porn deepfakes, unfairness and power abuses in the classroom context pertaining to the misuse of such technologies and the impact on absenteeism and worse, billion-dollar heists, healthcare breaches resulting from compromised patient care and the ethical implications of training AI systems and LLMs to be more inclusive and representative while also being privacy protecting. Data privacy is the top concern when working with AI and GenAI in the classroom, but everyone’s understanding of these technologies is not equal. A professional’s approach to technology can be different from a student’s, especially where there is experience and digital fluency involved.
I had the pleasure of discussing, hearing from and exchanging ideas and plans with colleagues in our vision as champions of technology and at the forefront of cutting-edge applied research and innovation. Kudos to the OECD for launching their AI Incidents Monitor, a tool that tracks real-time AI incidents and hazards. This initiative provides a crucial evidence base to inform the AI incident reporting framework and supports ongoing AI policy discussions. The discussions were raw and real, tackling privacy, data ethics, and the many humbling responsibilities we bear in an AI-transformed world.
These intense workshops continue to affirm a powerful truth: the irreplaceable value of human talent in an era of rapid technological evolution. Our work—whether in coursework, teachings, or real-world applications—is built on a strong analytical and moral foundation that remains steadfast. As AI advances at a staggering pace, it is the human touch—the creativity, the voices of plurality and concern, and ethical considerations—that gives purpose and depth to these innovations. This is something we must always remember, as the roots of systemic failures often lie with the humans in power, and yes, those in the loop.
As we expand our knowledge and deepen our collaborative partnerships, we witness the convergence of human insight and machine intelligence—a dynamic that holds immense potential for shaping a future that is both impactful and meaningful. This evolving partnership is crucial for transforming our learners and constituents, offering new approaches to complex challenges. It’s essential to examine the different gradations of Human-AI collaboration and understand what those in each context are capable of. The future of innovation hinges on it. With greater power comes an equally great potential to use AI for both good and evil.
