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Why?

This lesson introduces students to the growing influence of AI in finance, a field that significantly impacts our economy and daily lives, providing a basic understanding of modern financial dynamics. By exploring both the potential and the pitfalls of AI in financial decision-making, students develop critical thinking skills and learn the importance of ethical considerations and transparency in technology. Equipping students with this knowledge prepares them for a future where AI plays a central role in various sectors, ensuring they are informed, adaptable, and responsible participants in an increasingly tech-driven world.

Materials Needed

Materials Needed

Printout of Simulation Handout for each student group Printout (one copy) of AI Market Movers for teacher Whiteboard and markers

Time needed

Time needed

Approximately 50 - 60 minutes

Objectives

  • Students will be able to explain the basic concept of Artificial Intelligence and its application in financial markets.
  • Students will be able to identify the potential benefits and challenges of using AI in financial decision-making.
  • Students will be able to discuss ethical considerations and the importance of transparency in AI-driven financial systems.
  • Students will be able to evaluate the role of AI in finance and formulate their own opinions on its potential risks and rewards.

Key Concepts & Vocabulary

  • Financial Market: Places where people buy and sell stocks, bonds, and other assets
  • Investing: Putting money into something, like stocks, to earn more money over time.
  • Market Volatility: Rapid and significant changes in stock prices within short periods.
  • “Black Box” in AI: A system where the decision-making process is not visible or understandable to users.

Lesson Components

  1. Before You Watch: Connect lesson to background knowledge of AI in daily life and get students’ attention focused on finance.
  2. Video: Show the pedagogy.cloud video explaining the ethical considerations in the topic of AI affecting financial markets.
  3. Case Study: Detail a real-world scenario that relates to the issue of operating the stock market when AI influences prices.
  4. Simulation: Lead students through an interactive activity exploring the possible ethical considerations
  5. Discussion: Ask whole-class questions to reflect on experience and consider perspectives.
  6. Assessment: Verify student understanding with an exit ticket

Warm Up

AI in Daily Life: Ask students to list in one minute all the devices or systems they think use AI in their daily lives, highlighting AI’s prevalence. Student ideas will likely include smartphones, self-driving cars, social media, generative AI, etc.

Have students state entries on their lists. Highlight how AI is integrated into many aspects of daily life, often without us noticing.

Bridge to the topic of finance by asking, “If AI can recommend movies or navigate roads, how might it handle something complex like managing money or investing?”

Encourage students to think this through by asking, “What do you think could happen if we let AI manage our money or make investment decisions?”

Video

Transcript

Video Script for Narrations

Hello Young Innovators! Today we’re discussing the ethics of gendered voices of AI assistants.
Artificial Intelligence is becoming a bigger part of our lives every day. From smartphones to smart homes, AI voice assistants are everywhere, helping us with tasks, answering our questions, and even keeping us company. But have you ever wondered why most of these voice assistants sound female?
AI voice assistants haven't always been around. In the early days of technology, computers were large, clunky machines that certainly didn’t talk. As technology evolved, so did the ability for machines to interact with us using voice – a feature that is becoming increasingly common.
Imagine asking your AI for the weather, and a deep, authoritative voice responds. Or, picture a soft, gentle voice helping you with homework. Why do these differences matter? Well, they bring us to our main topic: the ethics of gender representation in AI voice assistants. For a long time, most AI assistants like Siri or Alexa had female-sounding voices. This wasn’t just a random choice.
Research showed that people generally found female voices to be warmer and more welcoming. And people were used to hearing women’s voices from back when operators connected phone calls.
On the flip side, some people prefer to hear male voices for authoritative roles, like GPS navigation or voiceovers in documentaries. But this leads to ethical concerns. Are we reinforcing traditional stereotypes about gender roles, stereotyping men in roles of power and women in roles of service?
One method of dealing with this issue is to use gender-neutral voices. These are designed to not clearly sound male or female, aiming to represent a wider range of human experiences and identities. It's a step towards inclusivity, and an attempt to avoid the stereotypes of gender from previous generations.
When AI voice assistants reinforce gender stereotypes, they might also impact how we view gender roles in real life. But when we make these voices gender-neutral, are we erasing gender differences that are a real part of many people's identities?
Some people argue that having a range of gendered voices in AI can reflect the diversity of human experiences. Others believe that breaking away from gendered voices entirely is the key to challenging stereotypes and promoting equality. There’s no easy answer, and technology is constantly evolving to reflect our changing society.
So, what do you think? Should AI voice assistants have a gender? Or should they be gender-neutral to avoid reinforcing stereotypes? As we continue to integrate AI into our daily lives, it's important to think about how the choices we make about technology today shape our future.
Let’s discuss: How do AI assistants impact our attitudes toward gender in the real world?

Case Study

Distribute or read Case Study handout.

Summary: An advanced trading system powered by AI can make almost instantaneous  and smart decisions in the stock market, but it also brings big challenges like unpredictable market swings, confusing decision-making, and tough ethical questions. To handle these issues, we need stronger rules, clearer explanations of how AI makes decisions, and teamwork among banks, regulators, and tech experts. This approach is important to make sure that the power of AI in finance is used safely and fairly for everyone.

Student Handout

Case Study: AssetInvest Enters the Market

In the fast-paced world of financial markets, a (fictitious) investment firm, GainFin, unveils its latest creation: AssetInvest, an AI-powered trading system. Designed to execute trades at superhuman speeds, AssetInvest promises to revolutionize profit-making strategies. However, as AssetInvest begins to interact with the market, it triggers unexpected ripples, leading to dramatic fluctuations in stock prices.

 

AssetInvest leverages cutting-edge algorithms to parse through massive datasets, making split-second buy or sell decisions. Trained on historical data and real-time market inputs, AssetInvest aims to outperform human traders. AI systems across various firms are causing the financial market to morph into a complex network of AI-driven trading.

 

Issues raised by AssetInvest

  • Market Volatility: AssetInvest and its AI peers start responding to each other’s actions, creating a feedback loop of rapid trades. This results in market volatility, with stocks surging and crashing unpredictably. Investors find themselves in a whirlpool of value fluctuations, struggling to secure their investments.
  • Opaque Decision-Making: The trillions of calculations behind AssetInvest’s trades are too complex for human understanding, shrouding its decision-making process in mystery. This opacity shakes investors’ confidence, as they grapple with unseen forces manipulating their financial futures.
  • Ethical Dilemmas: AssetInvest’s relentless pursuit of profit often overlooks broader economic repercussions, sparking debates about the moral obligations of AI in finance. Questions arise about the necessity of safeguards to prevent detrimental impacts on both the market and individual stakeholders.

 

Possible Solutions

  • Stricter Regulations: Proposing tighter  rules for AI trading to maintain market integrity and protect investors. Suggestions include imposing taxes on high-frequency trades or pause intervals for AI systems to slow market changes.
  • Enhanced Transparency: Advocating for the development of transparent AI systems, where the rationale behind each decision is clear and comprehensible.
  • Collaboration: Fostering partnerships among banks, watchdogs, and developers to balance innovation with market stability. Encourages industry-wide ethical guidelines to monitor and control systemic risks.

 

Discussion Questions

  • How can AI-driven trading be used to benefit the economy at large and not just individuals who are already rich?
  • What can programmers do to make AI’s financial decisions more understandable to people?
  • Even with the goal of profit, how can the financial market be protected from the unpredictable ups and downs AI can cause?

Simulation

The simulation activity for this lesson is an exploration of the stock market as if it was being influenced by AI advisors causing changes in the market. The simulation is broken down into 10 individual days where changes are announced at the beginning of the day. Students in small groups represent investment firms, buying or selling stocks due to changes in the market.

 

Introduction

  • Explain the objective of the game.
  • Introduce the four sectors: Tech, Energy, Retail, and Agriculture.
  • Briefly describe how AI can influence market decisions.

 

Setup

  • Divide students into small groups (3-4 students per group).
  • Pass out a copy of the Simulation Handout to each group.
  • Explain that they will be investing in these sectors and trying to maximize their returns based on market changes.

 

Explain the Rules

  • Each round, a new “AI Market Move” card will be revealed, indicating a market scenario.
  • Teacher will write the new values on the board without explaining why the shifts have been made. (Up and Down change the value up or down by $15. Neutral doesn’t make any change in the value.)
  • Groups will have a few seconds to decide how to invest based on the scenario.
  • After students make their stock changes, they have the option to find out why the AI caused the changes in the market.

 

Investment Rounds

  • As described above, for each of the 10 days, the teacher turns over a random “AI Market Move” card and updates the stock values for each sector on the board.
  • Groups have a few seconds to discuss whether to buy, sell, or hold on to their stocks.
  • Allow students to ask about what caused the changes, if they are interested. Teacher can then read the text above the changes on the Market Move card.
  • Repeat this process for each of the remaining rounds.

 

Debrief

  • Groups should sell all of their stocks on the last day and see how much money they made, or lost.
  • Have groups announce how much money they made.

Student handout

Simulation: Scenario Cards

Scenario 1: 

Content Curation and Mental Health

Issue: The AI algorithm has promoted a series of posts advocating for an extreme “zero-carb” diet, which has become highly popular among teenagers. However, health experts have raised concerns about its potential harm to young users.

Challenge: Decide whether to continue promoting the “zero-carb” diet content based on its popularity or to limit its visibility due to health concerns.

 Scenario 2:

Echo Chambers and Political Polarization

Issue:  A political post advocating for a highly controversial immigration policy has become extremely popular, leading to an intense echo chamber. Users who engage with this post are seldom shown opposing viewpoints, leading to increased polarization.

Challenge: Decide whether to adjust the algorithm to introduce more diverse political content, including counterarguments to the immigration policy, at the risk of reducing user engagement, or to maintain the status quo. 
Scenario 3: 

Data Privacy and Targeted Advertising

Issue: A new advertising campaign for a teen-focused fashion brand uses detailed user data (like recent search history for fashion blogs and geolocation tags from malls) for targeting. This campaign is highly successful but has sparked debate over invasive data practices.

Challenge: Decide  whether to continue the highly targeted ad campaign, which has shown increased sales for the fashion brand, or to scale back on data usage to address privacy concerns of users.

 Scenario 4: 

Misinformation and Fact-Checking

Issue: A viral post claims that drinking lemon water can significantly boost the immune system to prevent common colds, a claim not supported by medical evidence. While not harmful, this post misinforms users about health.

Challenge: Decide whether to remove the post for spreading misinformation about health or to allow it to remain on the platform, respecting users’ freedom to share non-harmful home remedies.
Scenario 5: 

AI Bias and Discrimination

Issue: An analysis has shown that the AI algorithm is 30% less likely to recommend content from minority creators compared to similar content from other creators. This disparity has raised concerns about algorithmic bias against minority groups.

Challenge: Decide whether to implement an AI adjustment that would actively promote minority creators’ content, potentially impacting the organic nature of content recommendations.

Discussion

These questions are designed to be used in whole-class discussion. Ask questions that relate most effectively to the lesson.

  1. How did the AI Market Moves influence your investment decisions?
  2. Were there any unexpected outcomes? How did you adapt your strategy?
  3. Usually stock traders know what is causing stock value changes. In this simulation, the reasons were kept hidden until after you made trades. Was it frustrating not knowing the reasons for the changes?
  4. Will AI in finance create or reduce job opportunities?
  5. What ethical issues should tech developers consider regarding AI in finance?
  6. What ideas do you have to make AI more transparent in financial markets?

Assessment

Exit Ticket: Provide a prompt for students to reflect on their learning, such as: 

  • What did you learn about the influence of AI on market dynamics?
  • How do AI decisions differ from human ones in finance?
  • What would make people more or less likely to accept AI advice regarding their investments?

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