This presentation from the OECD Disrupted Futures 2023: International lessons on how schools can best equip students for their working lives conference looks at Enhancing guidance through digital technologies “AI for career guidance: possibilities and ethical considerations”. Presented by Egle Gedrimiene, Ismail Celik, Antti Kaasila, Kati Mäkitalo and Hanni Muukkonen. Discover the videos and other sessions from the OECD Disrupted Futures 2023 conference at https://www.oecd.org/education/career-readiness/conferences-webinars/disrupted-futures-2023.htm Find out more about our work on Career Readiness https://www.oecd.org/education/career-readiness/

1. AI for career guidance: Possibilities and
ethical considerations
Egle Gedrimiene, Ismail Celik, Antti Kaasila, Kati Mäkitalo, & Hanni Muukkonen
Educational Psychology Research Group, Faculty of Education and Psychology,
University of Oulu, Finland

2. What we know
• Guidance technology was utilized
more widely during the Covid 19
pandemic
• The need for guidance has
increased
• Research of AI use for guidance is
only starting to emerge
• AI, users, and their interactions
must be better understood

3. AI-based career recommendations
In what life
circumstances
people would use
such technology?
What are possible
benefits for users?
Do users trust and
understand this
guidance advice?
How is user age
related?

4. Participants
• The participants (N = 106) were real clients of
the career guidance services in Finland
• Majority were 17 years of age. On average
21.7 years old.
• Majority of participants had basic education
completed (9 grades).
• And were in further education or training
• Participants deployed the AI tool for guidance
in the career guidance centers and then
reported their experiences in an online
questionnaire.

5. LA career guidance tool
The tool illustrated possibility to
utilize national Finnish registry
data information for creation of
national guidance services.
The tool was based on a natural
language processing (NLP), a sub-
field of AI, called word
embeddings and similarity of
contents.

6. Results

7. When would individuals use this tool?
Transitional life situations often
characterized by uncertainty
Younger age group emphasized as
possible users:
Comprehensive school and upper
secondary school students
“For example, if you know that you don’t want to continue in
this field, so you can look for suitable field.” Woman, 17,
studying.
“[You would use it] when you have time to think about your
future plans and alternatives for continues education.” Woman,
23, working.
“I would use this when being unemployed.” Man, 24,
unemployed.
“If I'm applying to a vocational school and I don't know what
field I want. If you are not sure where to go [it] could help”
Woman, 17, studying.
It can work well in comprehensive school [1-9 grades], you can
see what options there are., Woman, 19, studying.

8. Diversification
of career
paths
Information
provision
Transition
support
Self-reflection Sense making
AI-based
career
guidance
What are user
identified benefits?
1. Information provision:
“If you don't know about training/education, you get information and get
acquainted with different levels of education or training.” Woman,
studying.
2. Diversification of ideas about career paths:
“[The tool] provides a wide variety of educational opportunities that you
may not have considered.” Woman, studying.
3. Support to understand and analyse provided recommendations:
“Makes you think about different fields.” Male student
“[I would use it] to compare study fields and different levels of education.”
Woman, studying, 22.
4. Support to chose, confidence to decide:
“You get assurance of what to start doing.” Male student, 19.
“The application could help me to apply for a study place that is just right
for me.” Man, studying, 18.
5. Self-reflection:
“I can associate certain interests with certain fields, such as "Art and
Culture.” Man, studying, 19.
“Application helps to identify own capabilities and strengths”. Woman, no
answer, studying.

9. Do users trust and understand AI guidance?
➢ The basis of recommendations was not clear for
majority of the users; however, the
recommendations were still seen as quite
trustworthy.
➢ Younger users claimed the guidance
recommendations were more clear, accurate
and sufficient to them then did older users.
➢ This indirectly influenced their trust in the
provided guidance recommendations and
willingness to follow provided advice.

10. Conclusions
• Results suggest that potential AI guidance tools’ user
might be vulnerable:
- younger users
- in transitional life situations
- often filled with uncertainty
• Users expect to:
- get and make sense of information
- diversity their ideas on career possibilities
- get assurance and encouragement
• More research is needed to understand if younger
users are at greater risk to overstrust AI based
guidance especially as the AI tools develop

11. Thank you for your attention!
egle.gedrimiene@oulu.fi
Presentation based on:
Gedrimiene, E., Celik, I., Mäkitalo, K., & Muukkonen, H. (2023). Transparency and Trustworthiness in User Intentions to
Follow Career Recommendations from a Learning Analytics Tool. Journal of Learning Analytics, 10(1), 54–70.
https://doi.org/10.18608/jla.2023.7791
Gedrimiene, E., Kaasila, A., Mäkitalo, K., & Muukkonen, H. (2023). Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enhanced Learning
Analytics (LA) for Supporting Career Decisions: Advantages and Challenges from User Perspective". (submitted).