AI and public education

Our Manitoba public education systems are promptly responding and adapting to the upcoming technological revolution spurred by artificial intelligence.

As Melissa Martin and Maggie MacIntosh highlight in their article, Learning in an AI world, Dec. 12, we need to educate youth on the ethical and responsible approaches to utilizing AI. Students are inevitably going to be using the technology and we, as educators, need to proactively plan for how to support their learning and development in a rapidly evolving world.

I caution my colleagues, however, to critically reflect upon technological acquiescence, as automation should never supplant professionalism, even if initially deemed to be merely assistive. Just as teachers for decades have resisted standardization of practice, the normalization of AI into classrooms is an incremental threat to teachers’ professional autonomy.

To what extent AI is eventually integrated into Manitoba curricula remains uncertain.

Globally, there are already large-scale educational reforms underway, notably El Salvador’s recent announcement to nationally implement Elon Musk’s “Grok” AI program, projected to affect over one million students.

As tech moguls invest hundreds of billions of dollars into AI development, and global economic superpowers race for the achievement of artificial general intelligence (AGI), the sociological experience of “schooling” is unquestionably going to be affected.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates described AI as the “first technology that has no limit.”

These sentiments were similarly corroborated by Dr. Demis Hassabis, the Nobel laureate in physics for his contributions to AI, who remarked that this movement is poised to be “10 times bigger than the Industrial Revolution, and maybe 10 times faster.”

Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, also a Nobel laureate and colloquially dubbed the “Godfather of AI,” recently met with Sen. Bernie Sanders in a town hall meeting to express his mounting concerns. Hinton argued that the risks posed by AI are all-encompassing, ranging from mass occupational layoffs, the perpetuation of class inequities and that the risks may even be existential.

Every aspect of daily life is projected to be revolutionized within the upcoming decades, as Hinton believes that AGI with human-like cognitive function may be achieved within five years.

I acknowledge that there are a myriad of immediate possibilities through integrating AI into routine educational experiences. AI may generate new opportunities for students’ access to individualized tutorship, better accommodate students with learning disabilities and enhance the speed in acquiring information, among countless other prospective benefits.

However, AI also poses significant challenges to experiential learning processes. The technological capacity to generate essays in seconds complicates the assessment of students’ learning processes as it is increasingly difficult to differentiate authentic from plagiarized work. As deep fake videos and disinformation begin to proliferate online, students’ ability to ascertain truth from distortion is a worrisome threat to our democratic infrastructures.

AI may also negate youth’s intrinsic motivation to embark upon exploratory learning experiences if answers are instantaneously available. This concern is corroborated by the results of a 2025 study by MIT, sharing early evidence indicating that students’ usage of AI compromises deeper learning outcomes. This is perhaps not surprising as the expeditious nature of AI negates youths’ necessity to exercise patience and contemplative thinking.

Precarious forecasts of massive labour market disruptions are further disconcerting, as another MIT study concluded that 11.7 per cent of the American population is already at risk of being occupationally laid off and replaced by automated workers.

If this analysis is accurate, significant labour market disruptions will, in turn, necessitate stark structural reconfigurations to our public education institutions. Educational stakeholders will need to critically reconsider what the apex purposes our public school systems serve if there are fewer jobs to aspire for.

My hopeful objective in generating this piece is to spark critical discourse on how we may proactively plan for this seemingly inevitable technological revolution.

We must heed the warnings advanced by industry leaders to not only safeguard our democratic and educational infrastructures, but to ensure a promising future for our youth.

We must continually ponder how increased technological consumption will impact the academic and healthy development of our youth.

Jordan Laidlaw holds a Ph.D. in educational administration.