Prior work has established the importance of integrating AI ethics topics into computer and data sciences curricula. We provide evidence suggesting that one of the critical objectives of AI Ethics education must be to raise awareness of AI harms. While there are various sources to learn about such harms, The AI Incident Database (AIID) is one of the few attempts at offering a relatively comprehensive database indexing prior instances of harms or near harms stemming from the deployment of AI technologies in the real world. This study assesses the effectiveness of AIID as an educational tool to raise awareness regarding the prevalence and severity of AI harms in socially high-stakes domains. We present findings obtained through a classroom study conducted at an R1 institution as part of a course focused on the societal and ethical considerations around AI and ML. Our qualitative findings characterize students' initial perceptions of core topics in AI ethics and their desire to close the educational gap between their technical skills and their ability to think systematically about ethical and societal aspects of their work. We find that interacting with the database helps students better understand the magnitude and severity of AI harms and instills in them a sense of urgency around (a) designing functional and safe AI and (b) strengthening governance and accountability mechanisms. Finally, we compile students' feedback about the tool and our class activity into actionable recommendations for the database development team and the broader community to improve awareness of AI harms in AI ethics education.

翻译：先前研究已证实将AI伦理议题纳入计算机与数据科学课程的重要性。我们提供的证据表明，AI伦理教育的关键目标之一必须是提升对AI危害的认知。尽管有多种途径可以了解此类危害，但AI事故数据库（AI Incident Database, AIID）是少数致力于构建相对全面的AI技术现实部署中危害或近似危害事件索引数据库的尝试之一。本研究评估了AIID作为教育工具在提升学生对高风险社会领域中AI危害普遍性与严重性认知方面的有效性。我们展示了在R1研究型大学开展的课堂研究结果，该研究隶属于一门聚焦AI与机器学习社会伦理问题的课程。定性研究结果揭示了学生对AI伦理核心议题的初始认知，以及他们渴望弥合技术能力与系统性思考工作伦理社会维度之间教育鸿沟的诉求。研究发现，接触该数据库有助于学生更深入理解AI危害的规模与严重性，并使其产生对以下两方面的紧迫感：（a）设计功能完备且安全可靠的AI系统，（b）强化治理与问责机制。最后，我们将学生针对该工具及课堂活动的反馈意见转化为可操作的改进建议，供数据库开发团队及更广泛的社区参考，以提升AI伦理教育中对AI危害的认知水平。