03-05-2026IMPACT COUNCIL

AI in education requires national strategy

What Shanghai can teach us about using AI in K-12 education.

[Photo: Getty Images]

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BY Jean-Claude Brizard

In January, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, announced that it would use its chatbot to develop an AI tutoring system for more than a million students in El Salvador. The announcement came on the heels of similar ones from OpenAI, which is connecting students in Kazakhstan with its ChatGPT Edu services, and from Microsoft, which is similarly equipping students and teachers in the United Arab Emirates with AI-based tools and training.

While other countries are executing on national infrastructure projects for the AI era and treating it as an economic imperative, here in the United States, we can’t seem to move past a narrative of how AI makes it easier for students to cheat. Where is the enthusiasm for how AI and other emerging technologies can support our education system? Where are the creative partnerships, the research and development teams, the initiatives to get educators up to speed? Risks are inherent with any major shift in how we learn, work, and live, but it seems that in the K-12 setting that we’re focused on the wrong ones.

I recently spent time in Shanghai, with an international learning community of high-ranking school system and city officials who collaborate to identify common, high-priority problems, research best practices, and then develop effective, practical solutions that can be adapted to varying........

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