{"id":637541,"date":"2026-04-30T01:27:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T01:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/637541\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T01:27:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T01:27:14","slug":"edmonton-students-get-lesson-in-proper-use-of-artificial-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/637541\/","title":{"rendered":"Edmonton students\u00a0get lesson in proper use of artificial intelligence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edmonton high school students are learning how to use artificial intelligence at the Fantasyland Conference Centre on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

This comes as lawmakers look to crack down on AI chatbots for youth, with Manitoba recently making moves to ban chatbots for those under 16.<\/p>\n

\u201cA more important point is that you just don\u2019t want them to use it for the wrong reasons,\u201d said Kanwar Bajwa, a Grade 12 student at W.P. Wagner School<\/p>\n

Bajwa is one of more than 300 students who got a crash course in AI on Wednesday. He understands why Manitoba would want to put an age limit on chatbots to avoid youth blindly following what AI says, potentially influencing\u00a0their opinions\u00a0in a harmful way. But doesn\u2019t know how it could be enforced with age verification.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ll probably try and find some way to circumvent it or try to probably find some way to like use somebody else\u2019s ID or have their parents sign off on it in a way that makes it look like. \u2018Yeah, I\u2019m above 16,\u2019\u201d said Bajwa.<\/p>\n

\"\"Edmonton high school students at an artificial intelligence conference about how they see the tech shaping their careers. (Leo Cruzat, CityNews)<\/p>\n

Jill Kowalchuk, an AI literacy manager with Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, said, \u201cGuardrails are incredibly important, and we need to work with the government. We need to work with school boards to build out the right AI policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The expert in AI literacy says AI with kids can be a safety issue, and that relying on the tech could deprive students of critical thinking skills needed for their careers. That\u2019s why the Edmonton-based Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute is working with the province and school boards on how to bring AI into the classroom safely.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to make sure that students are building those critical thinking skills and abilities without AI first, so that when they do use it, they can use it responsibly and effectively, and it is a way to extend their cognition,\u201d said Kowalchuk.<\/p>\n

\"\"Edmonton high school students at an artificial intelligence conference about how they see the tech shaping their careers. (Leo Cruzat, CityNews)<\/p>\n

Adding\u00a0the tech isn\u2019t going anywhere and will be part of these students\u2019 future jobs, needing to prepare them now.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur students get to learn about where AI fits within their world, and with AI being here already, and it\u2019s going to be part of their future. This really helps them build their skills and understand what they\u2019re going to need for their future,\u201d said Bernice Pui, conference chair of the EPSB Student AI Conference.<\/p>\n

For Bajwa, already finding uses for AI, and just hoping his fellow students use it as a tool rather than a crutch.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI should do the boring stuff for me, so I can focus more on the interesting stuff, the new things,\u201d said Bajwa, \u201cAs long as you\u2019re being smart about how you\u2019re using or why you\u2019re using it\u2019s not going to cause issues in that vein.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tEdmonton high school students at an artificial intelligence conference about how they see the tech shaping their careers. (Leo Cruzat, CityNews) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Edmonton high school students are learning how to use artificial intelligence at the Fantasyland Conference Centre on Wednesday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":["post-637541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-edmonton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}