"I didn’t come here to make you feel comfortable about AI; I came here to challenge you," Kimberly Bryant said to an audience of more than 1,000 educators during the opening keynote presentation of the Pearson ED.Tech Symposium 2024.

As an electrical engineer, social activist, and educator, Bryant sees promise and the potential for peril in this rapidly evolving technology — especially when it comes to education.

The Silicon Valley veteran now pours her passion into expanding equity and opportunity in AI and other technologies. Among her other endeavors, she’s the founder and CEO of Black Innovation Lab by Ascend Ventures and the founder of Black Girls CODE, a nonprofit organization focused on providing technology and computer programming education to African American girls.

“Technology is not equally accessible to all, and as we advance into the age of AI, this divide becomes more pronounced,” she said during the virtual event, Pearson’s first symposium focused exclusively on AI technology in education.

Bryant pointed to another technological revolution, the arrival of the printing press in the 15th century, as an example of an invention that democratized access to information while also having the power to deepen social divides.

“I think we’re living in this moment of rapid disruption, and what we do next with AI and education will either accelerate us toward a future of equity and empowerment, or it could possibly leave an entire community behind,” she said.

The dangers of the digital divide

Bryant cited the COVID-19 pandemic as evidence of the chasm in the country’s digital disparities. Students with broadband internet access and tech devices continued their learning, while those without access were left behind.

Federal data from the 2020-2021 school year found that in Florida, only 66% of schools reported having high-speed internet connections, compared to 99% in Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Bryant is also troubled by a recent UNESCO report that found that fewer than 10% of 450 schools and universities surveyed have developed institutional policies or formal guidance concerning the use of generative AI applications in the classroom.

Another UNESCO report found that 90% of online higher education materials come from just two regions — North America and the European Union (EU) — limiting the global diversity of knowledge. Bryant cautioned that without intentional efforts, AI could further narrow students’ perspectives and misrepresent marginalized communities.

Leaning into AI done right

Bryant remains cautiously optimistic about the future of AI in driving social equity. She provided examples of institutions and organizations that she believes are leveraging the technology with social responsibility at the heart of their efforts.

While UNESCO found most institutions of higher education have yet to adopt meaningful AI policies, Bryant praised the University of California (UC) for taking the initiative to create a broad working group that oversees how the system responsibly integrates AI into its academics.

And AI is flexing its muscle to positively influence education, she said, via personalized learning platforms that tailor education to meet students’ needs in real-time and help to close achievement gaps.

Entrepreneurs like Kate Kallot are high on Bryant’s list, too. The MIT-trained computer scientist heads up Amini, an organization that deploys AI to predict climate change in African communities. Kallot earned a spot on TIME’s 2023 list of the 100 most influential people in AI.

Then there’s Arkangel Ai CEO José Zea. He and his team have deployed a no-code health platform with which healthcare professionals can use plug-and-play AI algorithms to improve patient retention, therapy success rates, and patient engagement. One of Arkangel Ai’s initiatives addresses high maternal mortality rates in the U.S., particularly among African American and other minority women.

AI: Not a neutral technology

While AI promises greater efficiency and access, it’s not neutral, said Bryant. It’s trained on biased data that can perpetuate and amplify societal inequalities.

“If we don’t put some safeguards in place in our academic institutions, I think the risk of what can happen with an AI-powered learning tool that consistently underrepresents or misrepresents marginalized communities is real.”

With AI, it’s not about the technology itself. It’s about who controls it and who has access to it, she said. If large learning models that drive AI systems embed ingrained biases into the algorithms that guide students and their learning journeys, the consequences can be devastating.

Bryant highlighted AI-powered textbooks and curricula that show racially biased outcomes or underrepresent marginalized communities in illustrations and examples.

She also called for greater racial diversity in the developers, educators, and policymakers who design and implement AI systems. Without them, AI will reflect the biases of its creators and reinforce inequality, she said, stressing too the importance of teaching students not just to use AI to answer questions, but to critically engage with AI, question its role, and ensure it serves as a tool for progress rather than harm.

A call to action for “Generation AI”

Bryant provided the educators in attendance at the Pearson Ed.Tech Symposium with a mission and referred to them as the foundation of everything that matters as “Generation AI” students are shaped into global citizens.

“Unlike in previous (technology) revolutions, we have an opportunity to act with a little bit of foresight and guide this technology in ways that empower and don’t exclude,” she said.

That’s something, Bryant said, that won’t happen organically or by chance.

“It’s going to happen because educators like yourselves guide our students, not just to use AI, but to wield it responsibly. We need to train students to question the biases of the tool and to demand fairness in the answers it provides,” she said. “Teach them to ask the right questions — in life, in AI, in the classroom, in their paths as young adults. Let’s get it right."