Support for generative AI in elementary and middle schools clusters around the belief that early exposure to the technology will foster digital-media literacy, give students a foundation in engineering concepts, and prepare them for a future in which most professions are steeped in AI. Proponents say that teachers can use AI to save time on grading papers and tedious administrative tasks; they also tout the adaptive-learning aspects of AI tools, which adjust in real time to a child’s progress and, by producing troves of data, help teachers give individualized attention to each student. “One of the core things that we think about when we bring AI to education institutions is: how do you put the educator at the centre of that experience?” Shantanu Sinha, who is one of the VPs of Google for Education, told me. Gemini’s aim, Sinha went on, is to “empower the educators” in “creating richer experiences. We are not the pedagogical experts.”
Other advocates suggest that AI might eliminate the need for pedagogical expertise altogether. Alpha, a fast-growing private-school chain that employs “guides” instead of teachers and serves children as young as four, claims that it “harnesses the power of AI technology to provide each student with personalized 1:1 learning,” allowing kids to “crush academics in just two hours” per day, according to its website. At a recent White House summit on children and tech, Melania Trump appeared alongside Figure 03, a humanoid contraption by the robotics company Figure AI, which looks, sounds, and moves as if Eve from “Wall-E” had mated with an arthritic Imperial Stormtrooper. The First Lady asked her audience to imagine such an AI-powered robot as a teacher, one who is “always patient and always available” to its student. This lucky pupil will learn more quickly and have more time for friends and sports, Trump said; he or she will become “a more complete person.” Figure 03’s face is literally a black screen: a robotic balaclava.