Much of the discussion around Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the education sector has been focused on its use in assessment tasks. But the AI impact is far reaching, both as a potential productivity tool and in the way that people are accessing information. This is already impacting on how schools relate to their communities.
Increasingly people are relying on AI to provide the answer. Instead of using a google search, they are trusting AI to tell them what is ‘the best X’. AI is responding by providing them with a single answer, whether that is a pizza shop, doctor or school. What people are not asking is how AI sourced its answer. But some businesses and some schools are getting ahead of the game and encouraging AI to put them first, central to this is their website.
Traditionally websites have been built to look good for humans on computer screens but increasingly this is the least frequent type of visitor as behind humans on mobile devices, are search engine robots and AI robots. A well-designed website will treat each of these types of visitors differently. This can be readily seen when visiting a website on a PC or mobile device, but it is harder for a layperson to see the search engine and AI robots’ experience of your website.
AI will take content from multiple sources and repackage and rewrite them in response to a given prompt. If your school website does not appropriately cater for AI, then it is far less likely to include your school in its response. The other issue with AI responses is that they can readily ‘hallucinate’ – combining fact and fiction while still presenting it as fact. This is why most AI responses come with a warning. If your website does not cater for AI robots appropriately, then it may be accidentally feeding the hallucinations.
While websites are seen as more authentic and therefore carry more weight, social media is also used by AI to help inform its response. Subsequently, if a website is lacking information, then social media will be used to fill in the gaps. Given that the AI robots are able to access information not available to the public social media user, this can result in some surprising AI responses. This can lead to misinformation in the public domain about your school.
It is relatively easy to test what AI is currently saying about your school – just ask it. The challenge then becomes how can you positively influence its response – particularly if you don’t like what it is saying. Fortunately, like with Google rankings, there are things that can be done to help you get a more positive outcome. The starting point for this is to get an AI accessibility audit for schools.
Eddee has teamed up with the multi-award winning digital agency Straight Out Digital, to provide schools with a special support service to provide a quality assured AI audit for schools. You can find out more by getting in touch with our team regarding an affordable, once off fee to safeguard your school’s reputation in an AI era.