Letters to the Editor: Is that sloth really smiling? Kids need to learn to spot online fakes

To the editor: As a tech instructor in a public elementary school, I believe the timing of editorial writer Tony Barboza’s piece on his experience with AI-generated fake images when helping with his daughter’s school project couldn’t have been better. I just finished a few lessons about the need to determine if websites, online photos and other resources are real or fake.

Common Sense Media is a great starting point for educators to help students learn the ins and outs of how to use critical thinking skills to determine if information or photos and videos have been altered using manipulation or deception.

My students are learning about the importance of not always believing what they see or read online. Much has changed, especially in the last 10 years, but as one instructional video noted, we all should use an important tool when going online: our brain.

Valerie Belt, Pacific Palisades

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To the editor: What a sad article on young children wasting time on fake AI pictures. Young students should be encouraged to first develop their own critical thinking skills without using computers.

How about developing their vocabulary and social skills by interviewing their own families and friends for information on whatever subject? How about learning to use books to research the topics? How about using their own handwriting to record the report in their own words? How about drawing their own illustrations rather than wasting time wondering if the images they found online are fake?

Would developing good, basic critical-thinking skills at this young age help them in later years to see differences between true information and disinformation?

We should strive to develop our young students’ minds so they eventually use computers and artificial intelligence only as a side tool and not the first go-to in a project. Isn’t that what education is really about?

Mary Sikonia, Manhattan Beach