The risks of using generative artificial intelligence to educate children and teens are now overshadowing its benefits, according to a new study by the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution.
This extensive research includes focus groups and interviews with K-12 students, parents, educators, and technology experts from 50 countries, as well as a literature review of hundreds of research articles. The report said the use of AI in education could “undermine children’s fundamental development” and, while “remediable”, “the damage already caused is frightening”.
Generative AI is still young, and ChatGPT was released just over three years ago. The report’s authors termed the review a “pre-mortem” aimed at studying the potential of AI in the classroom without the benefits of post-mortem analysis, such as time, long-term data, and hindsight.
Below are some of the strengths and weaknesses the report presents, as well as a sample of the research’s recommendations for teachers, parents, school leaders, and government officials.
Pros: AI can help students learn to read and write.
Teachers surveyed for the report said AI could help with language acquisition, especially for students learning a second language. For example, AI can adjust the complexity of sentences depending on the reader’s skill, providing privacy for students who struggle in large group settings.
Teachers reported that AI can also help students improve their writing, as long as it is used to support students’ efforts, not to support students’ efforts. “Teachers report that AI ‘stimulates creativity’ and helps students overcome writer’s block. … During the drafting stage, AI can assist with structure, coherence, syntax, semantics, and grammar. During the revision stage, AI can assist with editing and rewriting ideas, as well as… punctuation, capitalization, and grammar.”
But if there’s a refrain in the report, it’s this: AI is most useful when it complements, rather than replaces, the efforts of physical teachers.
Cons: AI poses a serious threat to students’ cognitive development
At the top of Brookings’ list of risks is the negative impact AI will have on children’s cognitive development — how they learn new skills and recognize and solve problems.
The report describes a kind of destructive loop of AI dependence, in which students increasingly rely on technology to control their thinking, leading to cognitive decline and atrophy often associated with brain aging.
Rebecca Winthrop, one of the report’s authors and a senior fellow at Brookings University, said, “When kids use generative AI to tell them the answers… they’re not thinking for themselves. They’re not learning to parse truth from fiction. They’re not learning to understand what constitutes a good argument. They’re not actually engaging with the material, so they’re not learning about different perspectives on the world.””
Cognitive offloading is not new. The report notes that keyboards and computers have reduced the need for handwriting, and calculators have automated basic mathematics. But AI has “turbocharged” this kind of offloading, especially in schools where learning feels transactional.
As one student told researchers, “It’s easy. You don’t have to use your brain.”
The report provides a wealth of evidence to suggest that students who use generative AI are already experiencing declines in content knowledge, critical thinking, and even creativity. And if these young people reach adulthood without learning critical thinking, this can have huge consequences.
Pros: AI will make teachers’ jobs a little easier.
Another benefit of AI is that teachers can automate some tasks, such as “composing emails to parents, translating materials, and creating worksheets, rubrics, quizzes, and lesson plans,” according to the report.
The report cites multiple research studies that have found significant time savings for teachers, including a U.S. study that found that teachers who use AI save an average of nearly six hours a week, or about six weeks over the entire school year.
Pros and cons: AI can be a force for fairness or inequity
According to the Brookings report, one of the strongest arguments in favor of using AI in education is that it can reach children who have been excluded from the classroom. Researchers cite the example of Afghanistan, where girls and women are denied formal primary education by the Taliban.
According to the report, one of the programs for girls in Afghanistan “leveraged AI to digitize the Afghan curriculum, create lessons based on this curriculum, and disseminate content in Dari, Pashto, and English through WhatsApp lessons.”
AI can also help make classrooms more accessible to students with various learning disabilities, including dyslexia.
But “AI also has the potential to significantly widen existing disparities,” Winthrop cautioned. The free AI tools that are most accessible to students and schools may also be the least reliable and factually accurate.
Winthrop said, “We know that wealthier communities and schools can afford more advanced AI models, and we also know that those more advanced AI models are more accurate. So this is the first time in the history of education technology that schools have to pay more for more accurate information. And this is a huge blow to schools that don’t have a lot of resources.”
Cons: AI poses a serious threat to social and emotional development
Survey responses revealed deep concerns that the use of AI, particularly chatbots, is “undermining students’ mental health, including their ability to form relationships, recover from setbacks, and maintain their mental health,” the report said.
One of the many problems with the overuse of AI by children is that the technology is inherently sycophantic. That is, it is designed to strengthen the user’s beliefs.
Winthrop says that if children are primarily building social-emotional skills through interactions with chatbots designed to agree with them, “they become very uncomfortable when they’re in an environment where someone doesn’t agree with them.”
Winthrop gave the example of a child interacting with a chatbot, “complaining about their parents and saying, ‘My parents want me to do the dishes. This is really annoying. I hate my parents.'” The chatbot would likely say, “You’re right.” you are mistaken. sorry. I understand. ” To a friend who says, “Hey, I always wash the dishes at home.” I don’t know what you’re complaining about. That’s normal.” That’s the problem. ”
A recent survey by the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit organization that advocates for civil rights and civil liberties in the digital age, found that nearly one in five high school students said they or someone they knew had been in a romantic relationship with an artificial intelligence. And 42% of students in the study said they or someone they knew had used AI in their relationships.
The report warns that AI echo chambers can stunt children’s emotional growth, with one of the experts surveyed saying: “We learn empathy not when we are completely understood, but when we get it wrong and bounce back.”
what to do about it
The Brookings report offers a long list of recommendations to help parents, teachers, and policy makers, not to mention the tech companies themselves, take advantage of the benefits of AI without exposing children to the risks that technology currently poses. Among its recommendations are:
- School education itself could focus more on fostering curiosity and a desire to learn, rather than what the report calls “task performance” or grade-based end goals. If students feel engaged with the task, they will be less likely to ask the AI to do it for them.
- AI designed for use by children and teens should be less flattering and more “adversarial,” pushing back against preconceptions and asking users to reflect and evaluate.
- Technology companies could collaborate with educators in “co-design hubs.” In the Netherlands, a government-backed hub is already bringing together technology companies and educators to develop, test, and evaluate new AI applications in the classroom.
- Comprehensive AI literacy is critical for both teachers and students. Some countries, including China and Estonia, have comprehensive national AI literacy guidelines.
- As schools continue to implement AI, it is important to ensure that underfunded school districts in marginalized communities are not left behind and that AI does not further promote inequity.
- Governments have a responsibility to regulate the use of AI in schools and ensure that the technology used protects the cognitive and emotional health and privacy of students. In the United States, the Trump administration is seeking to prohibit states from regulating AI on their own, although Congress has so far failed to create a federal regulatory framework.
The authors argue that now is the time to act on this “life”. The risks of AI to children and teens are already significant and clear. The good news is that many treatments are as well.
