Trust, Privacy, and Context Dependence of Large Language Models in Educational Contexts: Technical Challenges and Opportunities

Large language models (LLMs) are quickly being adopted in educational contexts. In this editorial, we draw attention to three technically-oriented challenges educators may face using LLMs in educational settings when considering student-facing deployment: trust, privacy, and context dependence. Although these challenges are not as well-known as others, such as hallucination and interpretability, they pose significant concerns in educational settings if they are not understood and mitigated before implementation. We discuss practical challenges, risks, and research opportunities associated with each of these technical challenges.