A Remedy to the Unfair Use of AI in Educational Settings

This paper addresses concerns related to the ethical implications of artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on human values, with a particular focus on fair outcomes. Existing design frameworks and regulations for ensuring fairness in AI are too general and impractical. Instead, we advocate for understanding fairness as situated in practice, shaped by practitioners’ values, allowing stakeholders control in the situation. To accomplish this, the paper contributes by conceptually exploring a potential synergy by combining Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and Meta-Design. By doing so, human activities can be transformed to deal with challenges, in this case, those emerging from adaptive AI tools. While professional software developers are essential for making significant changes to the tool and providing solutions, users’ involvement is equally important. Users are domain experts when it comes to determining practical solutions and aligning structures with their work practices. CHAT contributes through its emphasis on context, history, and mediation by tools. This enables a critical analysis of activity systems, helping to reveal underlying contradictions and identify areas where improvements or innovations are necessary. Meta-Design provides design concepts and perspectives that aim to empower participants, allowing them to actively shape the processes of tool design to align with their specific local needs and evolving conceptions of fairness in use-time. This offers an approach to empowering people and promoting more fair AI design.