Session
Organizer 1: KYOUNGMI OH, Open Net Korea
Organizer 2: Kyung Sin Park, Open Net
Speaker 1: KYOUNGMI OH, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 2: Sunghwan Kim, Private Sector, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 3: Sandra Cortesi, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
KYOUNGMI OH, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
KYOUNGMI OH, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
KYOUNGMI OH, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Roundtable
Duration (minutes): 60
Format description: The Korean government is arbitrarily pushing for technological development and a change in education methods. There is a need to convey opinions on policy from as many experts as possible to the international community and the Korean government.
A. What impact will Korea’s digital textbook development policy have on children’s digital human rights?
B. How should digital education be designed to fully guarantee children's right to education?
What will participants gain from attending this session? The digital education expert, the international academic having children's digital rights as a respective area, the policymaker responsible for AI digital textbook development, and the tech company's policy officer involved in improving children's digital rights will be participating in this discussion to review the progress of South Korean AI digital textbook development policies. The panels discuss specific concerns, and essential considerations (such as the technology development prioritizing children’s digital rights, especially privacy and security, above all) that need to be discussed priority during the development process, and share ideas.
Description:
In early 2023, the Ministry of Education of South Korea announced the "AI Digital Textbook Development and Operation Plan" with the aim of mitigating educational disparities and fostering everyone's talent in the era of declining birth rates, using educational technology. President Yoon Suk-yeol said: "Textbooks … should now be phased out... Education should transition to individualized, tailored approaches." In short, AI will be made to study the particular needs and talents of each student and present next learning goals tailored to those needs and talents. Various learning outcomes produced by students will be uploaded as ‘data’ to the platform for AI to design that student's next learning phase. The concern is that students' names, faces, voices, locations, and other personally identifiable information might not be properly and thoroughly removed from the students’ learning outcomes. Although the necessary data for learning will be determined, so far there has been no discussion on what information should be and could be collected. The AI digital textbook policy should include considerations for children’s rights to privacy and the risks of surveillance. The procedures for children’s and parents’ consent and their rights to be informed and request diverse methods of learning should be guaranteed and clarified. Governments and policymakers need to prioritize the development of robust standards for the design and development of digital technology and regulate to ensure that children’s safety, rights, and privacy are upheld by design and default. This initiative is the world's first attempt to deploy AI in providing customized education for each individual student and we need to pay attention to data governance. This session will be a follow-up from the Korean-only discussion that took place on the 3rd Summit for Democracy [https://www.opennetkorea.org/en/wp/5547] and we would like to expand to and learn from discussions through this IGF session.
Building on the results of the conversation at the IGF and the 3rd Summit for Democracy, Open Net will draft a multistakeholder report to be presented to the South Korean government (publicly so that other governments considering similar initiatives will also learn). Open Net may conduct more follow-up events and consultation toward completion of such report.
Hybrid Format: We will have a online moderator who will provide important points made by on/offline speakers in summaries in the chat box so that the online attendees will be able to follow and respond to the discussion more coherently. We will project the chat box to a big screen so that the off-line speakers and attendees follow and respond to the online input more coherently. The main moderator, operating offline, will recognize, aggregate and synthesize the discussions in the chat box with the discussions taking place on the venue.