Read 2024-2025 Scholarship Winner Isabella Calabro’s Essay

Every year, NATCA offers a scholarship program for spouses, children, stepchildren, and legally adopted children of active, retired, and deceased members in good standing for at least two consecutive years. This scholarship is for full-time attendance at accredited colleges and universities within the United States and its territories for an undergraduate degree program.

This year’s prompt asks candidates to examine the effect of artificial intelligence on workers and labor unions.

Isabella Calabro, child of Keith Calabro (New York Center, ZNY) is among this year’s 20 scholarship winners. Below is the essay that Isabella submitted.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) by definition is the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. A labor union is an organization formed by workers in a particular trade, industry, or company for the purpose of improving pay, benefits, and working conditions. The extraordinarily rapid development of computer based tasks that can be accomplished with AI, drives the need for companies and unions to quickly adapt to a changing environment. Traditional roles and collaborative missions have changed and will continually need to be reassessed and modified to keep up with computer advancements. In order to provide a comprehensive strategy to contend with these changes a host of professionals will be required for their expertise. Various changes that need attention vary from legal aspects, morality, training, implementation, systems maintenance, and data privacy and security.

My career goal is to become a Certified NYS Teacher. AI in the education field has been expanding into many daily responsibilities of an educational program. AI can aid in a multitude of routine tasks driven items:
Grading
Test Preparation
Lesson Planning
Determination of exam effectiveness
Research Aids
Online FAQ’s and discussion
Language translation
Disability Assistive Technology

This is just a short list of how AI is currently incorporated into the field of education. The future additions and benefits of AI in the workplace is quickly expanding. Unions have the responsibility to protect their members’ working conditions. The introduction of modern technology into an entire industry can become overwhelming for many people. I foresee the union becoming vital from the initial entry of systems. Ensuring the proposed AI systems are put into effect in a fair, transparent manner. Training all participants in the workplace of advancements with AI is important. The only way to ensure the proper implementation of a change in working conditions is to provide sufficient training of products and procedures. Training gives the employees an opportunity to embrace changes at a pace that is beneficial to their job task. Training also allows employees to provide valuable feedback regarding potential hazards of products and procedures that may arise.

There are inherent risks of AI that unions can help to mitigate. Overdependence on technology can create a lack of personal connection with students, thereby hurting the learning process. By creating continuing education programming, educators will be reminded of the role AI has and how to utilize it in a beneficial way. Overdependence on AI could also lead to an increase in student class size. Increasing student to teacher ratios can result in a degradation of human interaction and reduce learners overall progression. Protecting employee and students data and security is a monumental task and expense. Unions and management must jointly strive to endure the massive amount of data input, processed, and analyzed, will be used in a safe and secure fashion. These burdensome but necessary tasks require an increased degree of union/management cooperation to ensure success.