Report on AI and Education

Report Summary: AI and Education

AI is spreading quickly in classrooms. AI use among teachers more than doubled between 2022 and 2023 to 83%, with 47% of teachers, K-12 students, and undergraduates using AI daily or weekly.

AI offers numerous benefits, including new learning opportunities and improvements to existing processes, such as individually tailored learning and enhanced feedback.

But risks abound too:

• Cheating: AI tools have likely already increased certain forms of cheating, and will likely make it easier to cheat and harder to detect as they improve further.
• Emotional development: Students may spend more time online and less time engaging with peers to the detriment of their social and emotional development.
• The spread of ideology and bias: All current frontier models are left-leaning, and stand to subtly spread this bias to unknowing students. 
• Disengagement: AI could increase general disengagement from learning, negatively impacting educational foundations like creativity and critical thinking. 
• Preparedness for an AI world: AI will likely change society and the workforce in unpredictable ways, and students are currently unprepared for that future world. 

Policy Priorities #1 and #2: Evaluating AI’s effect on the classroom and crafting policies that guide use towards the positives and away from the negatives. There are some preliminary data on how AI is affecting the classroom, but further research on its effects is sorely needed. Congress should promote this research and direct the Department of Education to issue more in-depth guidance for K-12 teachers based on it. 

Policy Priority #3: Preparing students for an AI world. Congress should:

• Encourage development of K-12 curriculum on AI literacy: Students need to learn how AI works and how they can use it. The LIFT AI Act would support these efforts, funding the development of safety-inclusive AI literacy curricula. 
• Facilitate training teachers in AI: AI literacy training and classes on AI are promising opportunities to more deeply acquaint teachers with AIs promise and perils and help facilitate the implementation of AI literacy curricula.

Ensure education is putting students on a resilient career path. We have some idea of the skills and knowledge needed by a workforce impacted by AI, but there are conflicting predictions. Congress should pass the Jobs of the Future Act, which would further clarify the skills and knowledge needed for future work.

Read the full report here.