Ready, Fire, Aim: As Schools Embrace AI, Skeptics Raise Concerns

theodp writes: "Fueled partly by American tech companies, governments around the globe are racing to deploy generative A.I. systems and training in schools and universities," reports the NY Times. "In early November, Microsoft said it would supply artificial intelligence tools and training to more than 200,000 students and educators in the United Arab Emirates. Days later, a financial services company in Kazakhstan announced an agreement with OpenAI to provide ChatGPT Edu, a service for schools and universities, for 165,000 educators in Kazakhstan. Last month, xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, announced an even bigger project with El Salvador: developing an A.I. tutoring system, using the company’s Grok chatbot, for more than a million students in thousands of schools there."

"In the United States, where states and school districts typically decide what to teach, some prominent school systems recently introduced popular chatbots for teaching and learning. In Florida alone, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the nation’s third-largest school system, rolled out Google’s Gemini chatbot for more than 100,000 high school students. And Broward County Public Schools, the nation’s sixth-biggest school district, introduced Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot for thousands of teachers and staff members."

"Teachers currently have few rigorous studies to guide generative A.I. use in schools. Researchers are just beginning to follow the long-term effects of A.I. chatbots on teenagers and schoolchildren. 'Lots of institutions are trying A.I.,' said Drew Bent, the education lead at Anthropic. 'We’re at a point now where we need to make sure that these things are backed by outcomes and figure out what’s working and what’s not working.'"