The companies could face an uphill battle. Right now, most of the public perceives AI’s use in the classroom as nothing short of ruinous—a surefire way to dampen critical thinking and hasten the decline of our collective attention span (a viral story from New York magazine, for example, described how easy it now is to coast through college thanks to constant access to ChatGPT).
Amid that onslaught, AI companies insist that AI promises more individualized learning, faster and more creative lesson planning, and quicker grading. The companies sponsoring this initiative are, of course, not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.
No—as they hunt for profits, their goal is to make users out of teachers and students. Anthropic is pitching its AI models to universities, and OpenAI offers free courses for teachers. In an initial training session for teachers by the new National Academy for AI Instruction, representatives from Microsoft showed teachers how to use the company’s AI tools for lesson planning and emails, according to the New York Times.
It’s early days, but what does the evidence actually say about whether AI is helping or hurting students? There’s at least some data to support the case made by tech companies: A recent survey of 1,500 teens conducted by Harvard’s Graduate School of Education showed that kids are using AI to brainstorm and answer questions they’re afraid to ask in the classroom. Studies examining settings ranging from math classes in Nigeria to colleges physics courses at Harvard have suggested that AI tutors can lead students to become more engaged.
And yet there’s more to the story. The same Harvard survey revealed that kids are also frequently using AI for cheating and shortcuts. And an oft-cited paper from Microsoft found that relying on AI can reduce critical thinking. Not to mention the fact that “hallucinations” of incorrect information are an inevitable part of how large language models work.
There’s a lack of clear evidence that AI can be a net benefit for students, and it’s hard to trust that the AI companies funding this initiative will give honest advice on when not to use AI in the classroom.
Despite the fanfare around the academy’s launch, and the fact the first teacher training is scheduled to take place in just a few months, OpenAI and Anthropic told me they couldn’t share any specifics.
It’s not as if teachers themselves aren’t already grappling with how to approach AI. One such teacher, Christopher Harris, who leads a library system covering 22 rural school districts in New York, has created a curriculum aimed at AI literacy. Topics range from privacy when using smart speakers (a lesson for second graders) to misinformation and deepfakes (instruction for high schoolers). I asked him what he’d like to see in the curriculum used by the new National Academy for AI Instruction.