Report says risks of artificial intelligence in schools outweigh benefits

Teachers say AI can also help improve students’ writing, as long as it is used to support students’ efforts rather than do it for them: “Teachers report that AI can ‘spark creativity’ and help students overcome writing blocks… During the drafting stage, it can help improve organization, coherence, syntax, semantics and grammar. During the revision stage, AI can support editing and rewriting ideas, as well as assisting with… punctuation, capitalization and grammar.”

But if there’s one refrain from the report, it’s this: AI is most useful when it complements, rather than replaces, the efforts of flesh-and-blood teachers.

Disadvantages: AI poses serious threat to students’ cognitive development

The top risk listed by the Brookings Institution is the negative impact of AI on children’s cognitive development—how they learn new skills and perceive and solve problems.

The report describes an AI-dependent doom loop in which students increasingly turn their minds to technology, leading to the cognitive decline or atrophy often associated with aging brains.

Rebecca Winthrop, one of the report’s authors and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, warned that “when kids use generative AI to tell them what the answer is… they’re not thinking for themselves. They’re not learning to parse truth from fiction. They’re not learning to understand what makes a good argument. They’re not learning about different perspectives in the world because they’re not actually engaging with the material.”“

Cognitive offloading is nothing new. The report states that keyboards and computers reduce the need for handwriting, and calculators automate basic mathematics. But artificial intelligence “accelerates” this way of reducing the burden, especially in schools where learning can feel like transactional work.

As one student told the researchers, “It’s easy. You don’t have to (use) your brain.”

The report provides substantial evidence that students using generative AI have seen declines in content knowledge, critical thinking and even creativity. If these young people grow into adults without learning to think critically, this can have huge consequences.

Pros: AI can make teachers’ jobs easier

Another benefit of AI, the report says, is that it allows teachers to automate tasks such as “generating parent emails…translating materials, creating worksheets, rubrics, quizzes and lesson plans,” among other things.

The report cites multiple studies that have found significant time savings for teachers, including one U.S. study that found teachers using AI saved an average of nearly six hours per week and about six weeks over the course of the school year.

Pro/Con: AI can be an engine of fairness or inequality

According to the Brookings Institution report, one of the strongest arguments for the educational use of AI is its ability to reach children who have been excluded from the classroom. The researchers pointed to the example of Afghanistan, where the Taliban does not allow girls and women to receive formal post-primary education.

One project targeting Afghan girls “uses artificial intelligence to digitize the Afghan curriculum, create lessons based on it, and disseminate content in Dari, Pashto and English through WhatsApp lessons,” the report said.

Artificial intelligence can also help make classrooms more accessible for students with various learning disabilities, including dyslexia.

But Winthrop warned that “artificial intelligence can also significantly exacerbate existing divisions.” That’s because the free AI tools that are easiest for students and schools to use can also be the least reliable and inaccurate.

“We know that more affluent communities and schools are going to be able to afford more advanced AI models,” Winthrop said, “and we know that those more advanced AI models are more accurate. That means this is the first time in the history of education technology that schools have to pay more for more accurate information. And that really hurts schools that don’t have a lot of resources.”

Cons: AI poses serious threat to social and emotional development

Survey responses revealed deep concerns that the use of artificial intelligence, particularly chatbots, “is harming students’ emotional well-being, including their ability to form relationships, recover from setbacks and maintain their mental health,” the report said.

One of the many problems with children’s overuse of AI is that the technology is inherently sycophantic—it’s designed to reinforce the user’s beliefs.

Winthrop said that if children develop social-emotional skills primarily by interacting with chatbots designed to agree with them, “it becomes very uncomfortable to be in an environment where someone disagrees with you.”

Winthrop gave the example of a child interacting with a chatbot, “Complaining about your parents and saying, ‘They want me to do the dishes — it’s so annoying. I hate my parents.'” The chatbot might say, ‘You’re right.’ You misunderstood. I’m sorry. I understand you. And a friend will say, ‘Man, I’ve been at home washing dishes. I don’t know what you are complaining about. This is normal. The problem lies here. “

A recent survey by the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit that advocates for civil rights and civil liberties in the digital age, found that nearly one in five high school students said they or someone they knew had been in a romantic relationship with an artificial intelligence. 42% of students in the survey said they or someone they know already uses AI for companionship.

The report warns that AI echo chambers can stunt children’s emotional growth: “We learn empathy not when we are fully understood, but when we misunderstand and recover,” said one expert surveyed.

what to do

The Brookings report offers a long list of recommendations to help parents, teachers, and policymakers (not to mention the tech companies themselves) harness the benefits of artificial intelligence without exposing children to the risks that the technology currently poses. These suggestions include:

• Schooling itself could focus less on what the report calls “transactional task completion” or grade-based endgame, and more on cultivating curiosity and a desire to learn. If students feel invested in the work, they will be less willing to ask AI to do the work for them.
• AI designed for children and teenagers should be less sycophantic and more “confrontational,” pushing back against preconceived notions and challenging users to reflect and evaluate.
• Tech companies can collaborate with educators in “collaborative design centers.” In the Netherlands, a government-backed center has brought tech companies and educators together to develop, test and evaluate new AI applications in the classroom.
• Comprehensive AI literacy is critical for both teachers and students. Some countries, including China and Estonia, have developed comprehensive national AI literacy guidelines.
• As schools continue to embrace AI, it is important not to leave underfunded districts in marginalized communities behind, allowing AI to further exacerbate inequalities.
• Governments have a responsibility to regulate the use of AI in schools and ensure that the technology used protects students’ cognitive and emotional well-being, as well as their privacy. In the United States, the Trump administration has sought to ban states from regulating artificial intelligence on their own, although Congress has so far failed to establish a federal regulatory framework.