The U.S. Department of Education today launched “Designing for Education with Artificial Intelligence: An Essential Guide for Developers,” a resource for education technology (edtech) community members — product leads and their teams of innovators, designers, developers, customer-facing staff, and legal teams — as they work to establish safety, security, and trust while creating artificial intelligence (AI) products and services for use in education. 

The new guide builds on the Department’s 2023 “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning” report, as a growing array of AI models and capabilities will be incorporated into the products that specifically serve educational settings. The Department is committed to encouraging innovative advances in edtech to improve teaching and learning across our nation’s education systems and to supporting developers as they create products and services using AI for the educational market.  

We have found an e-bike analogy – first offered in our 2023 AI report – to be a good starting point for discussions about AI across the education ecosystem. Teachers and students should be in control as they use the capabilities of AI to strengthen teaching and learning. Just as a cyclist controls direction and pace but preserves energy with the assistance of an e-bike’s drivetrain, so should participants in education remain in control and be able to use technology to focus time and energy on the most impactful interactions and activities. 

Continuing the analogy in the context of designing for education with AI, developers should take precautions to design AI-enabled educational systems for safety, security, and to earn the public’s trust, just as riders would expect e-bike developers to ensure their rider’s safety and security, and to earn the public’s trust.  

The guide is responsive to President Biden’s October 30, 2023, Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence (Executive Order on AI).  The newly launched resource was informed by public listening sessions held in 2023 that engaged developers, industry associations, and non-profit organizations in broad discussions of the issues. This included a cross section of developers representing a variety of company sizes, funding models, and organization type (for-profit/non-profit).  

Key themes emerged from these sessions that informed the guide:  

• Trust is a shared responsibility. The President’s Executive Order on AI makes clear, beginning with its title, that the federal government has a responsibility to address “safe, secure, and trustworthy development,” and articulates a stance of shared responsibility. Consequently, developers will find information within this document on where to find federal laws and other federal resources that are directly applicable to their work in education.  
• Trust requires actively managing AI risks so that we can seize its benefits. Through its conversations with developers, the Department observed an important shift in how developers are engaging with others around their work. Whereas it has been common to present “solutions”—how technologies can improve teaching, learning, and other educational processes—developers are now also openly discussing how they are managing risks, too. Developers have publicly shared details on the process they went through to identify, prioritize, and manage risks. 
• Coordinating Innovation and Responsibility Throughout Development: A “Dual Stack” The Department strongly encourages development organizations to now define a parallel strength via a coordinated “responsibility” stack. This stack would establish how people in a complex edtech development organization work together to earn the trust of educational users of their products. 

The guide has five sections to support developers creating AI products and services using for the educational market: 

1. Designing for Teaching and Learning 
2. Providing Evidence of Rationale and Impact 
3. Advancing Equity and Protecting Civil Rights
4. Ensuring Safety and Security
5. Promoting Transparency and Earning Trust

Ultimately, the Department envisions a healthy edtech ecosystem highlighting mutual trust amongst those who offer, those who evaluate or recommend, and those who procure and use technology in educational settings.