Posts

by Ilana Nguyen

Last week I spoke at the UN about AI in education. The central question: How do we ensure that AI expands opportunity rather than reinforce existing inequities?

I shared findings from my research on two critical challenges:
AI systems portray Global Majority/Global South nationalities in stereotypical, one-dimensional ways—erasing the plurality of human experience. And we still don't fully understand how these models’ internals work, which means harmful behaviors keep slipping through.

I also talked about two paths forward:

We need Critical AI Literacy programs like Data is Power from the Young Data Scientists League (YDSL), which empowers students to research how AI impacts their communities, resulting in projects like high schoolers investigating how their peers think AI is hurting their learning.

We also need participatory design in EdTech, where students, teachers, and marginalized communities have real power to shape what gets built from the beginning. One insight that stuck with me is that regulation doesn't slow adoption in education; it enables it. Teachers are way more willing to use AI when they know it's been vetted for safety.

My biggest takeaway? We need a civic movement in which people understand both AI's opportunities and its limitations so that we can collectively shape this technology's future.

And that movement is already underway. I was inspired to hear from the other speakers how the Hope Group works to co-develop AI with underestimated communities, how Brandeis is launching a racial justice tech policy program, and how public-private partnerships in South Africa are building localized innovations.

Rev. Chris Hope, Mary Burns, Mmaki Jantjies (PhD), and Dr. Maria Madison, it was a privilege to learn from you. I hope we can keep building this movement together!

Thank you to Lana Zaman, Rashmi Banga, Shantanu Mukherjee, Cornelia Kaldewei, and Charlie Hoag for the opportunity to speak at the Strategizing AI in Education: Opportunities and Risks side event with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Multi-stakeholder Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation!

P.S. My paper with Evan Shieh, Thema Monroe-White, PhD, and Harini Suresh on "Representational Harms in LLM-Generated Narratives Against Global Majority Nationalities" is available on arXiv preprint, and I will be presenting it at FAccT '26 in Montreal! (link: https://lnkd.in/eFgiNCmU)