AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL, AI IS TRANSFORMING CHILDHOOD

It brings many benefits, but also hidden dangers

- The Economist

Students and teachers alike report that they have had little guidance on how they may use AI. Parents express wildly varying views on whether it should be used for homework.

(ISTOCKPHOTO)

Teachers were baffled. Some of the children using Khan Academy, an online learning platform, seemed to be cheating at their maths assignments with the help of an unknown accomplice. An investigation eventually unmasked the culprit: Pythagoras, an ancient Greek mathematician with a penchant for right-angled triangles. As a study aid, Khan Academy allows pupils to chat with AI simulations of towering intellects of the past. Children had discovered that with some gentle prompting, the digital Pythagoras was happy to complete their homework.

Children are the pioneers—and guinea pigs—of artificial intelligence. American teenagers are more likely than their parents to use AI at home and more likely to use it at school than their parents are at work, according to a survey by the Centre for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a nonprofit group. At school, AI promises to change how children are taught, how they are assessed and, ultimately, how they think. At home it is changing how they play, how they are supervised and with whom—or what—they share confidences and form friendships. Generation AI is growing up with opportunities that previous generations could not have imagined. It is encountering novel risks, too.

High-school muse

Start in the classroom, where much of childhood is whiled away. Two years ago more schools in America banned AI than permitted it. Today its use has become the norm. Some 61% of high-school pupils and 69% of teachers get help from AI with their work for school, according to a survey from the RAND Corporation, a research organisation (see chart).