Back to School, Now With A.I.

We’ve written about how A.I. threatens jobs. About how it’s fomenting a political backlash. And, most recently, about how some in Silicon Valley now put the risk of a “total A.I. takeover” at more than 50 percent.

As a parent, one of the scariest things about A.I. is how pervasive it has already become in my children’s lives. Kids are not only using A.I. to answer questions. They’re using it to identify which questions to ask. (Although I was intrigued to hear from friends in New York that their teenagers were boycotting A.I. altogether.)

Today my colleague Natasha Singer, who has just published a book about how Big Tech is reshaping education, writes about Silicon Valley’s push to get A.I. into classrooms around the world — and why this year might be a crucial one.

The mass A.I. experiment in schools

by Natasha Singer

Children in much of the world are heading back to class right now, and it’s shaping up to be a school year like no other.

I’ve spent much of the past year reporting on how Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic are racing to spread their A.I. chatbots in schools and universities.

This year alone, OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, signed A.I. education deals with Greece, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Slovakia and Trinidad & Tobago. Microsoft said it has helped “upskill” more than 160,000 educators in Thailand on A.I.

Anthropic says educators in more than 60 countries are learning to use its Claude chatbot. And Google turned on its Gemini chatbot in Google Classroom, an app used by tens of millions of students and teachers, in certain schools.

Many tech executives and billionaires say chatbots are poised to revolutionize education.

The industry’s pitch is that A.I. products will make teachers more efficient, engage children, automatically customize their learning and equip students with crucial career skills. In some schools, students are already using A.I. to help explain math and science concepts, build online games, and analyze data sets.

So far, however, there is little rigorous, peer-reviewed evidence to suggest that A.I. chatbots significantly improve students’ educational results. In fact, a number of recent studies show the technology can hinder critical thinking and reading comprehension.

And so unleashing unproven chatbots in schools amounts to a mass experiment, with the future of education at stake. Will A.I. become an effective tool for learning, or a classroom crutch?

The industry push for A.I. in schools pits Silicon Valley’s might against some local politicians and concerned parents’ groups — with many teachers and students caught in the middle.

A patchwork of policies

Amid the uncertainty, some countries are temporarily barring classroom chatbot use for students. Norway, for instance, has curbed student access to A.I. in elementary and middle schools. New York City, the largest U.S. school district, just announced a one-year ban on student A.I. use in elementary and middle schools.

Other school systems are studying the potential benefits and drawbacks of A.I. for students and teachers.

Iceland started a pilot program last fall in which teachers used chatbots like Claude, from Anthropic, to help brainstorm ideas for new lessons, create learning games and help explain complex concepts to students.

In Sierra Leone, Google recently conducted an eight-week study with local schools to test whether its “guided learning” A.I. system could help students with math. The company reported that its short study had found modest gains. Google also noted that students who already had strong math skills benefited more from using A.I. than students who were struggling.

Estonia, one of the first countries to provide computers to students in schools, has embarked on a more comprehensive program. Last year, researchers and education leaders there worked with OpenAI to develop a customized chatbot in Estonian that is designed to ask students questions and push them to think for themselves, rather than do students’ work for them.

“The idea is to create guardrails to make sure that students are not losing their cognitive skills in the age of A.I.,” Kristina Kallas, Estonia’s minister of education and research, told me.

Countries and school districts that are incorporating A.I. into classrooms note that many students are already using commercial chatbots like Gemini and ChatGPT on their own for help with their schoolwork. They argue that schools have an important role to play in training students and providing guidelines on how to use A.I. productively. Otherwise, they say, Silicon Valley will set the rules.

Tech values vs. education values

The fight over A.I. in education is ultimately a clash of values.

Tech giants, which have a financial duty to shareholders, want to train schoolchildren to use their products. Those business imperatives have helped fuel an industry-backed drive for A.I. education that has focused largely on teaching students to use chatbots and vet their outputs.

Public schools, in contrast, are government institutions whose mission is to serve the best interest of children. To do that, global groups like UNESCO, the U.N.’s agency for education, are urging schools to take a more human-centered approach to A.I. education — one that is less focused on how to use chatbots, and more focused on teaching kids about where A.I. products come from, how they work and how they are upending humanity.

“It’s not about how to use an A.I. chatbot,” Mark West, an education specialist at UNESCO, told me. “It’s: ‘What are A.I. chatbots?’ and ‘What are they doing to us?’”

As Silicon Valley drives schools to adopt A.I., it may be as important — or even more important — to teach students how A.I. is driving us.

(Read an adapted excerpt from Natasha’s new book, “Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools,” here.)

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