When Kier said, “AI wasn’t coming, it was already here”, he wasn’t kidding.
I spent Monday and Tuesday morning at twin webinars by UNESCO on the topic of AI in education. I spent this morning with an AI consultant talking about the ins and outs of its capacities for learners.
Incredibly, for all of us that fear AI—either because we feel it is too powerful already, too clever, too much like us, too much better than us—all these expert voices all said the same thing: AI is a tool that is here to stay, but it is best understood as a tool rather than a replacement of human beings.
Some insights: Antonia Wulf, Director of Research, Policy and Advocacy at Education International, talked about the importance of teachers and their pedagogical expertise in education and made clear that their input was fundamental to making decisions about how AI was to be used appropriately in classrooms. It’s not going to replace the teacher: skills of empathy, working together, team negotiations and conflict mitigation are all supported by the human bond, not an algorithm.
Education analyst and expert to the European Commission Lidija Krajl raised the important point that most AI tools are not designed specifically for education but are applied to it and so cannot replace traditional teaching entirely. Accountability is the teacher’s responsibility. Grades and feedback are fundamental to the learning process and it is teachers that are behind those. There is much still left to learn about how AI tools will affect or even define learning, particularly pertinent for SEND students or those from marginalised communities.
These views were supported by a strong advocate for AI, consultant Rufus Curnow, whom I spoke to this morning. He said that fears around AI only reflect their degree of AI illiteracy. The more we teach ourselves about these tools, the less scary they become, and the more we can learn to understand their value. However AI is used is education, it will need to be reviewed at the onset, during the process, and afterwards to ensure that it is managed and implemented correctly.
AI is not a threat. It’s a presence. Best we get to know it well.
