As Chatgpt is now widely used by students around the world, concerns about the erosion of cheating and critical thinking skills are growing. Openai is well aware of these issues and is working to solve them. Kevin Mills, Director of Education and Government at the AI Good Summit in Geneva today, outlining the company’s efforts to explore how AI tools can be used to support rather than replace meaningful learning.
“We know that real learning requires friction. It requires struggle,” Mills said. “You have to interact with the material, and if students offload all of this work into tools like Chatgpt, they won’t learn these skills and they won’t gain critical thinking. That is, when Chatgpt is properly used as a learning assistant and tutor, the results are powerful.”
Although Chatgpt is only available in less than three years, OpenAI has partnered with the Estonian government to introduce customized generative AI tools to public schools in European countries. The company also opens campuses with Harvard, Arizona State University and the California State University system.
Given Mills’ claims, the need to fine-tune guardrails is becoming increasingly urgent given that 40% of CHATGPT users are under 24 years of age (and learning is the first use case for the platform). Pew Research reports that nearly one-third of teenagers who use Chatgpt now compared to 2023 said it is acceptable to use the tool to solve math problems.
In response, Mills said Openai is actively studying the appearance of appropriate AI in education and plans to share the guidance widely and quickly with educators around the world.
As part of this initiative, OpenAI yesterday announced a new partnership with the American Federation of Teachers to launch the National Academy of AI Teaching, which aims to provide practical AI fluency to more than 400,000 educators between 2030 and 2030.
The company also recently launched Openai Academy, “providing many free online courses on AI literacy and skill building for a variety of roles,” Mills said.
Although Openai’s research on how to most effectively incorporate AI into teaching is still underway, Mills stresses that thorough longitudinal research is coming. But these take time. Meanwhile, educators are turning to existing research for guidance. One such example: AI in education “can help students acquire problem-solving and online collaboration skills to improve learning quality,” Shan Wang of the University of Saskatchewan wrote in his 2024 academic paper.
However, according to the Center for Progress, gaming-based, hands-on and social learning remain a key component of K-12 education. “It is important to consider critically whether adopting AI tools will further make students relevant to their brains how to learn through movement, gaming, and social interaction,” the Research and Advocacy group wrote in a 2024 report.
Mills said Openai has begun to consider the social dimension of learning through programs like Chatgpt labs, “students come together to share how they use Chatgpt to further their education.” He added that this peer-to-peer knowledge sharing is key: “One of the coolest things about AI technology is that after the technology leaves the lab, there is actually a lot of innovation happening.”
