Now that I’m a retired teacher, I have a lot of extra time on my hands. I fill my time with writing, gardening, knitting and throwing pottery. But it also gives me more time to reflect. Mostly, I’ve been thinking about my teaching years and how I got to inspire so many children. But it also makes me think about growing up and working in the Silicon Valley most of my life, teaching children there for about 20 years. I hope I inspired my students to be creative and have a love for learning.

I also built a community. Every teacher does this in their classroom. In fact, many teachers instill a lot of the culture and ethics of the society they teach in. They teach the morals needed to be a human.

As I’m watching the whole AI revolution going on, I keep seeing the references for the need of guardrails, and I realized, this is what teachers do. Parents do have some part in this too. They do guide their own child and teach their culture and beliefs, but teachers teach the next generation the morals and boundaries needed for life while out on the playground on yard duty or while instructing in the classroom. I often called myself a social mom. Teachers guide in the learning of basic social skills on a daily basis.

How is this done? Through years and coordination in the state standards, units planned, and activities done through out the school year. A lot is done at the beginning of the year, as you set up the boundaries of the learning environment in the classroom. All teachers create a learning environment in the classroom, helping children to learn the boundaries of society.

The rules of the classroom posted at the front of the class is an excellent example of this being taught. You might remember this as a child or seen this with your own children. Activities of getting to know the other students and socializing with others are often done through multiple subjects. Many a time I’d have students talk with each other to solve a problem. And these same social skills are practiced over and over, year to year, and increase in difficulty as they build upon each previous skill. It’s all a process.

So, it makes me wonder, have any of the AI companies like OpenAI or Anthropic tried creating a similar environment? Maybe create a classroom environment where AI agents learn morals and how to set boundaries for this emerging tech? Creating a moral sandbox might just be a start in the right direction. But then, I’m just a retired teacher mostly seeing what is reported on in regards to the current AI fear mongering. What am I to say to the CEOs and others with concerns that we need to teach AI agents to have boundaries? Just that I did teach the boundaries humans need to survive in our society for basically 20 years.

So, I wish they’d ask teachers to help. This is our line of work. Retired teachers or even current teachers would be a great resource for this new kind of student. Teachers might be able to help with this problem in the unique way that regular engineers might not think of. Teaching, after all, is not an easy thing to do. Which is likely why they might be having so many problems with the AI agents in the first place.

Well, I thought I’d throw this out there. Please leave your feedback and ideas in the comments. I’m sure an AI agent will eventually absorb this post and maybe it will be considered. If not by tech CEOs, but by AI agents scanning through sites. And maybe they’ll reach out. I’ll just be waiting.

-Tiffany Turner

Retired Elementary School Teacher

Author of the Crystal Keeper Chronicles Series