Why students should use AI in schools.

The collective spontaneous visceral opposition of the education class to all things AI has not only, once more, condemned education to what seems to be a perpetual technological lag, but, what is even worse, it has cast a kind of malevolent aura to its use by educators and students, explicitly associating it with cheating.

This has resulted in that what are by now the explicit negative connotations associated with ChatGPT and GenAI applications seemingly preclude the use of these applications by students, placing a guilty until proven otherwise burden of proof on educators who seek to empower their students by – lo and behold – exposing them to direct use of AI tools.

Should students use GenAI applications? Should they use them in schools as part of their learning process? Both answers are of course yes! Like with any powerful tool, parents and educators should guide and facilitate use and access, but there is a lot to gain from their creative and judicious use.

When can students start using AI? This is an often asked question and there isn't a definite answer, but the rule of thumb would be when they are able to think critically, since these are very powerful tools that require a certain level of discernment and critical analysis on the part of the user.

This does not mean that younger children cannot use these applications, but rather that their access is mediated by adults who set up the appropriate learning interactions for them.

It must be noted that ChatGPT and its siblings are unprecedented in terms of ease of access, so we cannot ignore the blatant fact that students are going to use these tools whether we agree or not, so it is absolutely indispensable that we deal openly with this topic and involve students in reflecting on its appropriate uses.

So what should students be doing with AI? These are some suggested generic applications:

• Supplementing skills: Schools are structured - at least in theory - to foster the development of age-appropriate skills, cognitive as well as social and emotional. The main risk of overreliance on AI tools is precisely that their indiscriminate use may stifle the acquisition of those skills, which challenges us specifically to channel their use to extend these capabilities in ways that were hitherto unimaginable. Basically, GenAI tools can act as a mechanical extension of our brains to apply these skills and conjure scenarios that allow us to develop higher order mental pathways. Examples include mathematical simulations of scenarios where students set the rules and conditions, students creating detailed plots and having the AI write professional level stories, developing case studies, role playing historical or fictitious situations like a job interview, and so on. The fundamental premise is that the AI tools provide students with opportunities to apply these newly learned skills in ways that are original, creative and in contexts that are stimulating and engaging.
• Immersive high impact scenarios. One of the most wonderful applications of AI is its ability to create scenarios that are inaccessible normally to schools, and to develop learning interactions that expose students to these engaging themes and topics. Science simulations, interviewing famous characters, role playing scenarios, time travel to the past or the future, and many other creative learning instances take advantage of the capabilities of AI tools to develop unlimited settings for learning.
• Creativity applications. We can leave the raging debate on whether the use of AI tools constitutes art or not to the usual pundits to favor their application to becoming a unique and powerful catalyst for student expression. Controversies notwithstanding, AI tools can provide our students with wonderful possibilities to channel their creativity by producing images, music, videos, texts, animations or anything that our minds can imagine. It is as if they suddenly became producers, directors, editors or any other role where they transcend the instrumental task of producing the works of art themselves to enable a direct conduit for their creative expression.
• Learning from mistakes. Probably the most defaulted on promise of the future of learning, AI can create the conditions for unashamed learning from mistakes. Acting as a personalized, positive and encouraging tutor, the AI interface can provide a safe environment for students to learn through practice without the stigma of being ridiculed by their peers, or even the teachers themselves, when they make mistakes. In that respect, chess is an excellent example, since the use of computer-based chess programs who consistently beat human players has resulted in marked improvements in the level of competition at all ability ranges, and even the most competitive of players does not mind being defeated repeatedly by an AI. Extrapolating to learning, relying on AI as a friendly tutor and, hopefully, the development of AI based learning games and simulations, may indeed make learning from mistakes more than wishful thinking in education.
• Personalization. The other perennial aspiration of most future of learning scenarios, personalized learning, can happen straight away, simply by configuring ChatGPT or any other GenAI application to act as a personalized learning instructor, catering to, for example, learning difficulties, preferred topics, learning styles, age levels and levels of proficiency un whatever subject area or skill that seeks to be learned. The mobile application, and most certainly soon also the desktop interface, now allow for oral conversations with almost no latency, making it even easier and more natural to interact with the AI for a personalized experience.

These suggested uses are, of course, merely examples of how students can utilize AI in productive ways and by no means a taxonomy or anything of the sort. Given that it will form part of their everyday lives, students can and should use AI themselves, accompanied by their teachers, and their families as well. Regardless of our own stance on AI for learning, there are two indubitable realities: students will use these tools anyway, and the alternative to them learning their positive application at school is far worse, since it entails using them in secret and without appropriate guidance, which may, in that case, materialize well-founded fears stemming from indiscriminate use.

The most important consideration is, however, that GenAI tools have opened up possibilities for learning like never before. It is the greatest breakthrough in history for the democratization of learning, and it will allow for easier, more intuitive, unlimited access to learning. As such, it is our moral imperative as educators to guide our students into this unlimited potential for joyful learning.

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