U.K.-based WPP is working with Microsoft to develop advanced audio description tools built on GPT4. This technology generates enhanced audio descriptions of user-uploaded videos and images. The company is also working collaboratively with the Rijksmuseum, the national museum of the Netherlands, to provide enhanced audio descriptions for its collection of nearly one million works of art, opening the door to libraries with extensive special collections.Footnote6 This tool is expected to be available soon.

A 2023 survey of assistive technology users found that fewer than 7 percent of respondents with disabilities believe there is adequate representation of their community in the development of AI products—although 87 percent would be willing to provide end-user feedback to developers.Footnote2

These are just a few of the exciting developments emerging from the intersection of AI and accessibility. Many people in the higher education community are rightfully cautious about the use of AI. However, numerous products and services that promise more equity and inclusion for people with disabilities are currently available or in development.

The University of Illinois is working with Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and several nonprofit organizations on the Speech Accessibility Project, an interdisciplinary initiative "to make voice recognition technology useful for people with a range of speech patterns and disabilities." University researchers are recording individuals who have Parkinson's disease, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, stroke, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Those recordings are used to train an AI automatic speech recognition tool. According to the Speech Accessibility Project website, "Before using recordings from the Speech Accessibility Project, the tool misunderstood speech 20 percent of the time. With data from the speech accessibility project, this decreased to 12 percent."Footnote19

In 2023, Microsoft partnered with OpenAI to develop Be My AI, a digital visual assistant within the Be My Eyes app. Be My AI is powered by OpenAI's Vision API, which contains a dynamic new image-to-text generator. Be My AI users can send images and ask questions via the Be My AI app. An AI-powered virtual volunteer answers any questions about the images and provides instantaneous visual assistance for a variety of tasks.Footnote7 This technology provides enhanced opportunities for learners who are blind or have low vision.

These advancements afford people with disabilities more equitable access to the same educational services and resources offered to students without disabilities. Ironically, students with disabilities—who stand to gain the most from emerging AI tools and resources—are often the most disadvantaged or least able to use them.Footnote

Despite these concerns, U.S. educators seem optimistic about the potential of AI in the classroom. Acknowledging that artificial intelligence will likely play an expanding role in education, most teachers have already begun to integrate AI tools into their daily work routines.

Ninety-eight percent of our survey respondents identified a need for at least some education on ethical AI usage. More than 60% recommended comprehensive education.

Academic dishonesty tops the list of educators' concerns about AI in education. Teachers also worry that increased use of AI may mean learners receive less human contact.

More than half of the teachers who responded to Forbes Advisor’s survey said they believe AI has had a positive effect on the teaching and learning process. Less than 1 in 5 cited a negative effect.

Teachers have long recognized the value of play-based learning, and schools have used educational computer games—such as The Oregon Trail, first released in 1974—since the early days of computer gaming. Today’s AI-powered games can deliver targeted learning thanks to user-responsive programming.

In October 2023, Forbes Advisor surveyed 500 practicing educators from around the U.S. about their experiences with AI in the classroom.

a human, animal, or AI system deserves moral consideration to exactly the extent it is capable of pleasure or pain.

If technology continues on its current trajectory, we will increasingly face morally confusing cases like this. We will be sharing the world with systems of our own creation, which we won’t know how to treat. We won’t know what ethics demands of us.

it might be useful to create oversight committees analogous to institutional review boards (IRBs) or institutional animal care and use committees (IACUCs) for evaluation of the most advanced AI research.25

The Emotional Alignment Design Policy: Design AI systems that invite emotional responses, in ordinary users, that are appropriate to the systems’ moral standing.

Do we actually grant rights to our most advanced AI systems? How much should we take their interests, or seeming interests, into account?

David Chalmers, for example, reviews theories of consciousness as applied to the likely near-term capacities of large language models.12 He argues that it is “entirely possible” that within the next decade AI systems that combine transformer-type language model architecture with other AI architectural features will have senses, embodiment, world- and self-models, recurrent processing, global workspace, and unified goal hierarchies—a combination of capacities sufficient for sentience according to several leading theories of consciousness.

OpenAI's GPT-3.5, which was released in March 2022, only managed to score in the 10th percentile on the bar exam, but GPT-4.0, introduced a year later, made a significant leap, scoring in the 90th percentile.

Decreased social connection. There is a risk that more time spent using Al systems will come at the cost of less student interaction with both educators and classmates.

Student cheating. Students might use Al to solve homework problems or take quizzes. Algenerated essays threaten to undermine learning as well as the college-entrance process. Aside from the ethical issues involved in such cheating, students who use Al to do their work for them may not be learning the content and skills they need.

Parents can use Al to generate letters requesting individualized education plan (I EP) services orto ask that a child be evaluated forgifted and talented programs.

The department had conducted listening sessions in 2022 with more than 700 people, including educators and parents, to gauge their views on Al. The report noted that "constituents believe that action is required now in order to get ahead of the expected increase of Al in education technology-and they want to roll up their sleeves and start working together." People expressed anxiety about "future potential risks" with Al but also felt that "Al may enable achieving educational priorities in better ways, at scale, and with lower costs."

Using generative Al systems such as ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude 2 is relatively simple