Macon summer education program wants to show students ethical ways to use AI. Here’s how

As artificial intelligence’s presence grows larger in the workforce, one Macon summer camp has an idea on how to make sure it’s used well: Start students out on the right foot with AI.

Camp teacher Joe Finkelstein is spending the summer teaching various youth age groups how to use AI, including a group of elementary schoolers. On Wednesday, he showed them how he could make an upbeat song through AI in minutes.

All it required was a short prompt typed into Suno, a generative AI music creation program, and a minute to load.

“This is freakin’ blowing my mind,” said Finkelstein.

Suno was just one of more than 15 AI programs elementary school students would get to use in his four-day class, AI Explorers, a part of the Mercer Creative Computer Camp. Other programs included Claude 3, CoPilot, Play HT and Finkelstein’s favorite, Perplexity. In his class, Finkelstein emphasized the use of AI as a tool. He said that while a lot of adults are scared of AI because students can cheat with it or it can take human jobs, that is all the more reason to embrace it.

“Those are legit concerns, but if we don’t teach our kids how to use AI properly and ethically, that’s when the real problems start,” said Finkelstein.

One of the class’ first activities highlighted the importance of specificity in AI prompts. To show this, Finkelstein had students explain to an instructor how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But, saying “put peanut butter on the bread” didn’t get them the outcome they expected.

“He put the whole peanut butter jar on the bread,” said student Zoey Bryant.

Students had to give more detailed directions. Open the jar, scoop up some peanut butter with the knife, and gently spread the peanut butter on the bread. They were told to do the same with AI when they type in their prompts. Throughout the rest of the week, students were planning to use AI to generate photos, mimic voices, help them draw and play games.

One of Finkelstein’s students even worked with a student supervisor to create a children’s book using ChatGPT. The book, titled “Never Judge a Dog by its Fur,” is a nine-page illustrated story about Scruffy, an ugly and disliked dog who came to be loved after a magical pond tamed his fur and straightened his teeth.

Though many of their activities can be silly, like writing a country song, Finkelstein said the base of his class is on learning how to use large language models.

“You can turn away from AI but it’s still going to be here, and it’s going to continue to shape our society in a really big way,” said Finkelstein.

This story was originally published June 7, 2024 at 5:00 AM.