Reading AI and Reading the World: Using an Interactive AI System to Promote Children's Understanding of AI Bias

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, despite having well-documented biases and shortcomings, are becoming increasingly pervasive across various aspects of society. AI biases often reflect and interact with broader societal biases, underscoring the need to support children in understanding these biases so that they can identify when they (or others) are being discriminated against by an AI-based system. To explore this learning through a new methodology, we built an interactive system called CLIP4KIDS. We conducted four classroom sessions with 28 fifth graders in the United States and examined our data using qualitative thematic analysis. Students frequently described AI biases in terms of “assumptions” and “stereotypes,” and drew connections between historical injustices and present biases in AI models. This work contributes a novel tool for learning about AI biases, an empirical account of children’s experiences, and a theoretical analysis incorporating Vossoughi and Gutiérrez’s framework of critical pedagogy and sociocultural theory [ 129 ].