To the BU School of Ed on their upcoming "AI and the Future of Education"

 I sent the following email to the (now) Boston University Wheelock College of Education and Human Development, formerly the Boston University School of Education, where I earned my Master's of Arts in Teaching. I did so after receiving at least the fifth invitation over the past month to an event entitled "AI and the Future of Education."

Dear Dean Bishop,

As the College has, by my count, now invited me five times to the "AI and the Future of Education" event coming later this month, I feel I must respond: not only will I not attend, I will not be party to any event that purports to  explore how "AI can be developed and used in ways that improve learning outcomes, support educators, and benefit students." 

I know better because the Boston University School of Education taught me better. SED taught me always to see the humanity of the students before and alongside me. It taught me to beware of thinking that my teaching was in a vacuum, rather than in a larger ethical context of society, culture, the environment, and history. It taught me to be aware of myself as a worker who had both rights and responsibilities. It taught me always to be abundantly aware of anything--any work, any reading, any technology--I put before my students and of what it might and well could do to them. 

And above all, it taught me to do the reading.

It's clear in hosting such an event (and advertising it with such vigor) that those in leadership indeed have not done the reading. Just across campus, you have Woodrow Hartzog and Jessica M. Silbey at the School of Law, who in December released the essay "How AI Destroys Institutions." If in fact you wished to engage your future and current educators in the discourse around AI, you could have invited them, with similar fanfare, to discuss their work and findings. 

As an educational institution educating educators in a state in which the constitution demands we educate children "for the preservation of their rights and liberties," BU's Wheelock College owes not only alums and current students but more importantly the future students we educate that examination.

With great dismay,

Tracy O'Connell Novick (SED '95)