Associate Professor Jacqueline Ho, an educational sociologist at Singapore Management University (SMU), pointed to existing research showing how AI can provide customized, on-demand feedback to students.
However, over-reliance on AI can also hinder the development of basic skills such as reading, writing, and thinking.
“This is especially concerning for very young students whose neural pathways are still forming,” she added.
However, it added that there was not enough research to determine “the conditions under which AI would result in these benefits and harms.”
CNA TODAY contacted the Ministry of the Environment about why fourth grade was chosen as the age to introduce AI in schools.
what is true and what is not true
Meanwhile, parents said that even if students’ over-reliance on the tool was managed, there were still concerns that young children would have difficulty intuitively distinguishing between accurate and inaccurate information.
Valerie Tan, a 36-year-old tutor, has three children, her eldest in third grade and her middle child in second grade.
She said her children learned about AI tools through their friends at school. Then one day I got home and asked if I could try out the “GPT app that answers it all.”
Since then, she has allowed children to use generative AI tools, but before doing so, she has had to insert contextual prompts such as, “You are talking to an 8-year-old. Please only use vocabulary appropriate for a K-3 reading level and do not generate output that would be inappropriate for the child.”
Ms Tan said that while she generally agreed with MOE’s approach to introducing tools to students, she had concerns about the extent to which students were able to understand the distinction between “true thinking” and “prediction” in large-scale language models (LLMs).
“Keeping in mind that technology will only continue to improve, it is becoming increasingly difficult to discern what is real and what is generated,” she added.
