Those Schools Banning Access To Generative AI ChatGPT Are Not Going To Move The Needle And Are Missing The Boat, Says AI Ethics And AI Law

Attempts to ban generative AI such as ChatGPT are not all they are cracked up to be. To ban, or not to ban, that is the question. I would guess that if Shakespeare were around nowadays, he might have said something like that about the recent efforts to ban the use of a type of AI known as Generative AI, which is especially exemplified and popularized due to an AI app called ChatGPT. Some high-profile entities have been attempting to ban the use of ChatGPT. For example, the New York City (NYC) Department of Education recently announced that they were proceeding to block access to ChatGPT on its various networks and connected devices. The reported rationale for the ban consisted of indications that this AI app and the overall use of generative AI seemingly portend negative consequences for student learning. Students that opt to use ChatGPT are said to be undercutting the development of their crucial critical-thinking skills and undermining the growth of their problem-solving abilities. On top of those rather stoutly worrisome qualms, there is the undisputed fact that such AI can produce inaccurate outputs that contain errors and other factual maladies. The dangerous icing on the cake is the imagined possibility that the outputs could potentially be used in an unsafe manner by students that unknowingly rely upon said falsehoods. No such documented harms have yet surfaced that I've seen, so we'll need to just take at face value that this could potentially happen (I have discussed the range of possibilities in my postings; for example, some have posited that generative AI essays could tell someone to take medicines that they should not be taking or provide mental health advice that ought to be proffered by human mental health professionals, etc.).