Unveiling Biases: An Exploration of ChatGPT-3.5-generated ‘Technology Stories’

Abstract

A technology that is increasingly affecting our daily lives is artificial intelligence (AI). An example of such a technology is ChatGPT-3.5, which has received a lot of attention recently. ChatGPT-3.5 is a text generator that is developed on a large number of existing texts. Currently, there is a debate about negative consequences in education, for example, if students let the chatbot write texts for them. In this study, however, our point of departure is on how ChatGPT-3.5 and storytelling can be used as a tool in teacher education to develop students’ critical thinking in relation to technology. A main objective of technology as a school subject is to prepare pupils to act in a technology-intensive world, which includes critical thinking about technology and its impact on individuals, society, and nature. However, a critical aspect of technology education is that it easily becomes an unreflective doing without a meaningful context. A way to circumventing this problem is to use storytelling in technology teaching. This is a pre-study for a coming project aiming to let teacher students create stories using ChatGPT-3.5 and then critically analyse the technological content in the stories. In this pre-study, we gave ChatGPT-3.5 the instruction to generate ten shorter stories for children with a focus on technology. A qualitative content analysis shows that there are several dominant themes within the stories, and that the chatbot presents a view of technology that is mainly positive and without any critical reflection on its effects on individuals, nature and society. Furthermore, in the stories, high-tech male coded technology is a dominating theme. The pre-study highlights the importance of critical thinking and reflections when using AI tools in technology teacher education. It also indicates that stories generated by a chatbot can be a steppingstone to visualise technology bias and contribute to developing teacher students’ critical gaze