Artificial Intelligence in Education Needs Design, Not Devotion |
AI in education is not an on/off switch; its value depends on curriculum design.
AI can speed performance yet still weaken the deeper formation of real learning.
Used as cognitive scaffold, AI helps. Used as a substitute, it can erode thinking.
Lately, the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in education seems split down the middle. AI is good, or AI is bad. But I'll argue that this argument is being framed too simply. One side celebrates speed and efficiency. The other warns that students are outsourcing thought and losing the friction that makes learning real. Both sides are seeing something important. Neither is getting to the center of it.
What matters isn't merely whether AI is present in education—like an on/off switch that shines a light but fails to illuminate. What really matters is where it sits inside the learning process.
That distinction has become more important to me as I think about two very different observations. In one case, I wrote about how cognitive performance can fall off quickly when AI support is removed, even after a short period of use. In another, I looked at the Nigerian study suggesting that students completed a two-year curriculum in about six weeks with AI-supported instruction.
At first glance, those ideas seem to tug against each other. How can AI dramatically accelerate learning while also threatening the integrity of learning itself? I don’t think that is a contradiction. I think it reveals that AI can do two very different things in education, depending on how it is used. It can support learning, or........