AI Ethics

Tread lightly. AI should support the people in the room and the relationships between them. Trellis takes on the note-taking and admin so that educators can give their full attention to the child, and so that everyone's voice in the room, especially the child's, is captured.

When designing Trellis, we ask, "What would you want an intern to do in this meeting?"

A good task for an intern must be clearly defined (you know exactly what you are asking them to do) and easily evaluated (you can quickly check whether they have done a good job). Capturing what was said and drafting clear, structured minutes and plans fits that description well. Deciding what a child needs does not.

If AI is the intern, then the SENCO or teacher is the professional in command.

We design Trellis to reinforce the educator's role as the final decision-maker. Trellis produces draft minutes and plans. Staff review, edit and finalise them.

User-centred design has been central to effective product design since the 1980s.

For all that changes with AI, this user-centred approach remains crucial. User-centred design reminds us that AI-based systems are still software and need to be designed with close understanding of user needs.

At Trellis we’ve done workshops and interviews with hundreds of teachers, SENCOs and quality improvement officers. We’ve spoken with dozens of parents and students. This put us on a path, we hope, to ensuring that Trellis genuinely helps us alleviate some of the admin pain in the system.

With AI, it is easy to cherry-pick amazing examples for demos. Making it work in the real world is much harder. 

Systematic evaluation is essential. "This feels good" is insufficient. 

This requires clearly defining what a good write-up looks like, measuring against it and regularly checking performance.