AI & media literacy risk

Traditional risk management tends to be framed by prioritising risks to the organisation.

Risks to humans (especially children and staff) are generally covered through compliance with statutory regulations such as those covering safeguarding and health & safety, where expected high standards of organisational process are subject to inspection and audit. 

But safeguarding is mostly focused on the risk of abuse in its many forms. It says little about the risks to children (and teachers) arising from such things as:

• no guidance in the usage of AI, leading to undisciplined and corrupting habits.

• over-exposure to social media and other forms of non-curated, unaccountable and exploitative media.

• systemic overreliance on large language models (LLMs), leading to reduced human ability to correct them or challenge their output (more on this here).

• the decline of public trust in traditionally reputable sources of institutional authority and broadcast media, i.e. in government, newspapers, TV and radio. 

We need to think much more about the educational risks that are not covered by statutory regulations.

These risks are summarised in the table below.