Science Fiction May Be the Key to Helping Students Understand AI

科幻小说可能是帮助学生理解人工智能的关键

A machine is trained to write deceptively humanlike poetry. Children learn mostly passively, through mechanical devices. Genius is defined as identifying the right questions to ask an all-knowing entity—but strange things happen if you try to joke around with it.

一台机器经过训练，可以写出极具人类风格的诗歌。孩子们大多通过机械的教学设备，被动学习。天才的定义是向全知全能的实体提出正确的问题，但如果你想和它开玩笑，就会发生奇怪的事情。

No, these aren’t anecdotes about how artificial intelligence is changing K-12 education—or the world. They are the premises of science fiction stories written more than a half-century ago by Isaac Asimov or Stanislaw Lem that bear an eerie similarity to today’s headlines.

不，这些并不是关于人工智能如何改变K-12教育或世界的趣闻轶事。它们是艾萨克·阿西莫夫（Isaac Asimov）或斯坦尼斯劳·莱姆（Stanislaw Lem）半个多世纪前所写的科幻小说的前提，这些故事与当今的新闻报道有着惊人的相似之处。

For educators seeking to help students wrap their minds around the societal change AI might spur, and its moral and ethical implications, fiction has become an indispensable teaching tool. After all, writers imagined how recent technology developments might change the world long before engineers and programmers created them.

对于教育工作者来说，他们希望帮助学生理解人工智能可能引发的社会变革及其道德和伦理影响，而虚构作品已经成为了一种不可或缺的教学工具。毕竟，在工程师和程序员创造出这些技术之前，作家们就已经想象出这些技术可能会如何改变世界了。

“For students to have a sense for where things are going in technology, you really need to have science/speculative fiction in addition to non-fiction,” said Matt Johnson, who teaches physics and artificial intelligence at Whitney High School in Southern California’s ABC Unified school district.

南加州 ABC 联合学区惠特尼高中教授物理和人工智能的马特·约翰逊说："要让学生了解科技的发展方向，除了非虚构类作品外，还需要科幻/推理小说。

Many of Johnson’s AI students—who are mastering high-level computer science skills—need the context fiction can provide.

约翰逊带的许多人工智能学生正在掌握高水平的计算机科学技能，他们需要小说提供的情境。

“Learning to do STEM is typically more about having [students] gain specific technical skills rather than broader awareness to help them understand the consequences of technology,” Johnson said. “You can, of course, explicitly teach those concepts without the use of fiction, but if you simply teach it in a lecture then students will tend to just memorize specific ideas rather than make connections themselves.”

约翰逊表示：“学习STEM往往侧重于让学生掌握特定的技术技能，而非培养他们理解技术广泛影响的意识。诚然，这些概念可以不借助小说来传授，但若仅限于课堂讲授，学生可能只会机械记忆具体知识点，而无法自主建立联系。”

Teaching AI beyond computer class

计算机课堂之外的人工智能教学

Fiction also offers an on-ramp into AI for students who aren’t hooked by codes and algorithms.

小说还为对代码和算法无感的学生提供了进入人工智能的入口。

Those students can “have fun thinking about the technology in a non-technical way. It allows [them] access into a space that’s been reserved for engineer-type minds.” said Hale Durant, who worked as a high school librarian before becoming an implementation specialist at ai.EDU, a nonprofit that works to promote AI literacy.

这些学生可以 "以一种非技术的方式来思考技术，并从中获得乐趣。Hale Durant 说，"这让他们有机会以工程师的思维来思考问题。"她曾是一名高中图书管理员，后来成为致力于促进人工智能扫盲的非营利组织ai.EDU 的实施专家。

And more technical-minded students may find an appreciation for reading that they can’t get from English class standards.

而更多痴迷科技的学生可能会对阅读产生好感，这是他们在英语课上无法获得的。

“They don’t really care so much about The Scarlet Letter or The Old Man and the Sea,” Durant said. But if they get to explore issues of “AI and futurism you might win over a few more readers,” he added.

杜兰特说：“他们对《红字》或《老人与海》不太感兴趣。”但如果他们开始探索“人工智能和未来主义”的问题，可能会赢得更多的读者”，他补充说。

Maybe most importantly: Using literature to teach about AI ensures that discussion of this game-changing technology—which is already influencing how we shop, treat disease, and drive our cars—isn’t confined to a few, typically elective courses, Durant added.

杜兰特补充道，也许最重要的是，利用文学作品来传授人工智能知识可以确保关于这项颠覆性技术的讨论不会仅限于几门典型的选修课程。而这种技术已经在改变我们购物、治疗疾病和驾驶汽车的方式。

“If we don’t use science fiction or classic literature to learn about AI, then AI stays in the computer science realm, or an AI-specific course,” at least initially, Durant said.

杜兰特表示：“如果我们不通过科幻小说或经典文学来探讨人工智能，那么人工智能的讨论就只会局限于计算机科学领域或特定的人工智能课程中。”

Fiction asks: ‘What could be’?

小说问道："会是什么呢？

Some English teachers are already experimenting with the concept.

一些英语老师已经在尝试这个概念。

When Jeremy Sell, an English teacher at Magnolia High School in California’s Anaheim Union High School district developed an AI and Science Fiction class as a summer school enrichment, he paired fact-based pieces about AI—articles and documentaries—with speculative fiction exploring similar aspects of the technology.

杰里米·塞尔（Jeremy Sell）是加利福尼亚州阿纳海姆联合高中（Anaheim Union High School District）木兰高中（Magnolia High School）的一名英语教师，他在暑期学校开设了一门人工智能与科幻小说课，将有关人工智能的文章和纪录片等基于事实的作品与探索该技术类似方面的推理小说搭配在一起。

One theme: The environmental concerns created by AI’s physical presence—and what exactly that physical presence is.

其中一个主题是 人工智能的实际存在所带来的环境问题，以及这种实际存在到底是什么。

“I’ll ask them, where is AI? What’s the cloud? And they’ll look up,” Sell said. In fact, AI is “very, very physical,” relying on massive server farms, he explained to them.

塞尔（Sell）说道，“我会问他们，人工智能在哪里？云是什么？然后他们会抬头看，”事实上，人工智能“非常非常实际”，依赖于大型的服务器群，他这样向学生们解释道。

To illustrate the point, he showed his students an infographic detailing the life cycle of an Echo, Amazon’s AI-powered assistant, and a documentary about Agbogbloshie, a massive e-waste dump in Africa where “a lot of our tech products go to die,” Sell said.

为了说明这一点，他向学生展示了一张信息图，详细介绍了亚马逊的人工智能助手Echo的生命周期，以及一部关于以及一部关于非洲大型电子垃圾场 Agbogbloshie 的纪录片。塞尔说“我们的许多技术产品都在那里消亡了。”

Sell paired those factual pieces with Folding Beijing, an award-winning 2012 Chinese novelette about a future in which many jobs are automated, leaving huge numbers of people unemployed and putting physical space at a premium.

塞尔将这些事实性的内容与2012年获奖的中国中篇小说《折叠北京》相结合。这部小说描绘了一个未来世界，许多工作都实现了自动化，导致大量人员失业，并且实体空间变得非常宝贵。

In the story, the lowest class of workers spend most of their time underground, only coming to the surface for a handful of hours to process waste, much of it created by the technology used by the upper classes. At one point, a character asks why waste management isn’t automated, and is told lower-class workers need something to do or they’ll riot, Sell said.

在故事中，最低阶层的工人们大部分时间都待在地下，有少数几个小时会来到地面处理废物，而这些废物大部分都是由上层阶级使用的技术产生的。塞尔说，在某个时刻，一个角色问道为什么实现垃圾管理自动化，却被告知低阶层的工人们需要一些事情来做，否则他们会发起暴乱。

Together, the story, the infographic, and the documentary allow students to explore questions like: What kinds of jobs will disappear when AI becomes more common and what will that mean for workers? What’s the real-world, environmental impact of the technology that surrounds us? Are its benefits worth these costs?

通过故事、信息图表和纪录片，学生们可以共同探讨以下问题： 当人工智能变得越来越普遍时，哪些工作会消失，这对工人意味着什么？我们身边的技术对现实世界和环境有什么影响？人工智能的好处是否值得付出这些代价？

It’s possible to probe those questions without bringing fiction into the mix. But, Sell explained, stories can be a hook for students whose eyes glaze over at a film about toxic waste in Africa.

在不引入小说的情况下探索这些问题是可能的。但是，塞尔解释说，故事可以吸引那些看了非洲有毒废物的电影而目瞪口呆的学生。

“Teenagers are only just beginning to get into this sort of thing. And I can lose them quickly,” Sell said. Fiction “can grab the imagination and spark ideas because it’s not limited to what is. It can ask: ‘What could be?’ And that makes it more interesting.”

塞尔说：“青少年才刚刚开始接触这类东西，我可能很快就会失去这个群体。小说能抓住人们的想象力，激发人们的想法，因为它不受现实的限制。它可以问：‘可能会发生什么？’这就使小说变得更有趣。”

What will AI look like 20 years from now?

20年后人工智能会是什么样子？

Science fiction can also illustrate the grim possibilities of overuse of social media and lack of data privacy—both closely related to the explosion of AI—in a more forceful way than traditional lessons on those topics, Sell said.

塞尔说，与传统课程相比，科幻小说能以一种更有力的方式阐释过度使用社交媒体和缺乏数据隐私（这两者都与人工智能的爆炸式增长密切相关）可能带来的严重后果。

“I can tell them till I’m blue in the face ‘Guys, social media may not be as great as you think it is. There are downsides to giving away all your information and all your privacy and to constantly recording everything you’re doing and putting it out there,’” Sell said. “They could read articles about it. But I don’t think they would feel it the way they would if they read” The Circle, a 2013 novel by Dave Eggers that offers a dramatic take on the dark side of data collection.

“我可以一直告诉他们，‘伙计们，社交媒体可能并不像你们想象的那么好。泄露你所有的信息和隐私，以及不断记录你正在做的所有事情并将其发布出去，这些都是有缺点的，’”塞尔说道，“他们可以阅读有关文章。但我认为，如果他们没读过戴夫·艾格斯的2013年小说《圆圈》，就不会有这么深刻的感觉。这部小说对数据收集的阴暗面进行了戏剧性的演绎。”

While that particular book includes content Sell isn’t sure is age-appropriate, even for high schoolers, plenty of other fiction explores the human impact of AI’s massive data acquisition.

虽然塞尔不确定这本书的内容是否适合高中生阅读，但其他很多小说都探讨了人工智能获取大量数据对人类的影响。

One example is the short story collection AI 2041 by Kai Fu-Lee and Chen Qiufan, a favorite classroom text for Andrew Smith, who teaches computer science at Woodstock High School in Vermont.

其中一个例子是李开复和陈楸帆的短篇小说集《人工智能 2041》，这是佛蒙特州伍德斯托克高中计算机科学教师安德鲁·史密斯（Andrew Smith）最喜欢的课堂教学课件。

The stories are set in different global cities 20 years after the book’s 2021 publication—when most of Smith’s students will be in their thirties. Many feature teenage characters.

该书于2021年出版，这些故事的背景设定在其出版 20 年后全球不同城市——那时史密斯的大多数学生都已三十多岁。许多故事的主人公都是青少年。

For example, “The Golden Elephant,” which takes place in Mumbai in 2041, centers on an insurance company that assesses risk—and adjusts the price of premiums—based on very personal data. When a teenage girl makes a date with a boy from a lower caste, her family’s insurance costs inch up, and her parents demand answers.

例如，《金象》（The Golden Elephant）一书以 2041 年的孟买为背景，讲述了一家保险公司根据非常个人化的数据来评估风险并调整保费价格的故事。当一个十几岁的女孩和一个低种姓的男孩约会时，她家庭的保险费用就会上升，她的父母就会要求女孩给一个解释。

The plot offers students a window into the pitfalls of the mind-boggling data consumption that powers AI, as well as the tendency of cutting-edge technology to reflect centuries-old societal biases. Since different castes often don’t interact much, the AI in the story naturally concluded the teens should steer clear of each other.

该情节为学生们提供了一扇了解外面世界的窗口，让他们了解驱动人工智能的令人难以置信的数据消耗的陷阱，以及尖端技术反映数百年社会偏见的趋势。由于不同种姓之间往往没有太多互动，因此故事中的人工智能很自然地得出青少年应该彼此远离的结论。

Busting through education’s silos

打破教育孤立局面

Bringing literature into a computer science class or talking about algorithmic bias in an English course can be difficult.

在计算机科学课上引入文学作品或在英语课上讨论算法偏差可能会很困难。

Computer science classes don’t usually lend themselves to a lot of debate and dialogue, so Smith had to puzzle his way through classroom management challenges he rarely deals with, such as figuring out how to ensure more reserved students had the chance to speak and no one dominated the conversation.

计算机科学课通常不适合进行大量的辩论和对话，因此史密斯不得不努力解决他很少会遇到的课堂管理问题，比如如何确保比较拘谨的学生有机会发言，而且没有人主导谈话。

That means adopting “some techniques that English teachers and those whose classes are discussion-based are already comfortable with,” Smith said. (He recommends the podcast Debate Math for tips.)

史密斯表示，这意味着“采用一些英语教师以及那些习惯于讨论式授课的教师已经驾轻就熟的技巧”。（他推荐收听播客《辩论数学》以获取更多建议。）

It can also be tough to find computer science educators who are jazzed about teaching fiction, Johnson said.

约翰逊说，也很难找到一位既精通计算机科学又对小说感兴趣的教育者。

“Because of our siloed secondary education system, the reality is that many STEM teachers aren’t really big readers,” Johnson said. “They can’t draw from the library of personal experience the way you’d expect from English teachers, and they struggle to do things like write qualitative questions for students to ponder or facilitate discussion” of even stories on topics that dovetail closely with their subject matter.

约翰逊表示：“由于我们各自为政的中学教育体制，事实上许多STEM学科的老师并不是真正的阅读爱好者。他们无法像英语老师那样从个人经验的宝库中汲取知识，他们也很难写出一些需要学生仔细思考的定性问题，或者引导讨论与学科内容密切相关的故事。”

English teachers may also feel out of their depth talking about AI. But Pam Amendola, an English teacher at Dawson County High School in Dawsonville, Ga., has embraced it. (It doesn’t hurt that she’s a long-time lover of science fiction.)

英语老师可能也会觉得谈论人工智能超出了自己的能力范围。但乔治亚州道森维尔市道森县高中的英语老师帕姆·阿门多拉欣然接受了这一点。（她长期热爱科幻小说，这也为她带来了便利。）

Stories that explore AI and its consequences are “timely, and predictive,” said Amendola, who accessed professional development on AI offered through the International Society for Technology in Education. “Teachers should take advantage of the fact that science fiction has a lot to offer, even if it’s scary” to get out of their comfort zone.

阿门多拉（Amendola）通过国际教育技术学会接触到了关于人工智能的专业发展知识，她说，探索人工智能及其影响的故事是“及时的，具有预测性的，”教师应该利用科幻小说的优势，走出自己的 "舒适区"，即使科幻小说很可怕。

Literary non-fiction: a starting point for the conversation

非虚构类文学作品：对话的起点

For teachers—or students—who aren’t big fiction readers, narrative nonfiction can provide an avenue for delving into the societal impact and ethical implications of AI that technical texts might otherwise miss.

对于不太喜欢小说的教师或学生来说，叙事性非小说类作品可以为他们提供一条途径，深入探究人工智能对社会的影响和伦理意义，而这些内容可能是技术性文本所忽略的。

Chad McGowan, who teaches computer science at Ashland High School in Massachusetts, is a fan of Girl Decoded: A Scientist’s Quest to Reclaim Our Humanity By Bringing Emotional Intelligence to Technology, a memoir by Rana el Kaliouby, whose work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology focused on getting machines to read human emotions.

查德·麦高恩（Chad McGowan）在马萨诸塞州阿什兰高中（Ashland High School）教授计算机科学，他是《解码女孩：科学家通过将情商引入科技夺回我们的人性的探索》（Girl Decoded: A Scientist’s Quest to Reclaim Our Humanity By Bringing Emotional Intelligence to Technology）一书的粉丝，这是一本由拉娜·艾尔·卡利欧比（Rana el Kaliouby）撰写的回忆录，她在麻省理工学院的工作重点是让机器读懂人类的情绪。

Computer science courses tend to be whiter and more male-dominated than the general school population, McGowan noted. Since his school serves students whose families come from all over the globe, he deliberately picked a book by a female computer scientist who immigrated from Egypt.

麦高恩（McGowan）指出， 与普通学校的学生相比，计算机科学课程的学生往往更白人化，男性占主导地位。由于他所在学校的学生家庭来自世界各地，他特意挑选了一本从埃及移民过来的女性计算机科学家的书。

The book reads like a novel, but wrestles with what it’s like “trying to be a woman from the Middle East breaking into tech,” McGowan said. “It is definitely very relatable for some of my students to just hear about that struggle.”

麦高恩（McGowan）说："这本书读起来像一本小说，但却讲述了 "一名来自中东的女性闯入科技行业 "的过程。"对于我的一些学生来说，听作者讲述打拼的过程，会产生很多共鸣"。

Once el Kaliouby succeeds in her work, which involves mapping facial expressions, she grapples with who should be allowed to use it and why, offering plenty of fodder for McGowan’s students to delve into some of the big ethical and governance questions surrounding AI—as well as think about what informs their own principles, McGowan said.

El Kaliouby 的工作涉及绘制面部表情图，一旦她的工作取得成功，她就会纠结于允许谁使用这项技术以及原因，这为麦高恩的学生提供了大量素材，这会给麦高恩的学生提供大量的素材，以深入探索围绕人工智能的一些重大伦理和治理问题，并思考自己的原则。

“One student might think AI needs to be government controlled, and a lot of regulation while another might think the open market needs to dictate the direction that AI goes in,” McGowan said. “They can be on opposite ends of the spectrum. But reading the book gives us a point of [starting] the conversation.”

麦高恩表示：“一个学生认为人工智能需要政府的管控和大量的监管，而另一个学生则认为开放市场需要决定人工智能的发展方向。他们会各执一词，但阅读这本书为我们提供了一个开始讨论的起点。”