A new study from the Brookings Institute finds artificial intelligence undermines educational and social-emotional development, as well as teacher-student trust, according to an article in The 74.
“The risks we found are things like shortcutting learning so that you have less cognitive development,” says Rebecca Winthrop, who heads Brookings’ Center for Universal Education and is an author of the report.
Here are four key findings from the report:
1) AI poses risks that undermine children’s foundational development.
Researchers note that AI is a set of powerful productivity tools now being harnessed most effectively by “professional adults with fully matured brains. They have already developed sophisticated metacognitive and critical thinking skills that undergird their approach to their work.” They use AI as a “cognitive partner.”
For most young people, AI isn’t a “cognitive partner” but a surrogate. It doesn’t accelerate their development — it diminishes it via cognitive offloading. The result, researchers say: declining skills across the board. Their brains are still developing and school should ideally help them practice critical thinking and “sustained engagement with challenging material.”
2) AI can impede students’ social and emotional development.
Kids don’t learn in isolation. Relationships with others —in and out of school — help them develop a sense of well-being. But using AI can undermine their ability to form relationships, recover from setbacks and stay mentally healthy, observers tell researchers.
Young people’s use of AI chatbots — for everything from homework to emotional support, therapy and companionship — has adults worried, researchers report. Nearly one in five teachers worry about AI’s influence on student well-being, even though just 7% of students mentioned chatbots’ emotional harm.
It’s equally possible kids aren’t experiencing emotional dependence — or that they simply lack “the self-reflective capacity” to recognize unhealthy emotional dependence and how it impacts their well-being.
3) AI is eroding trust between students and teachers.
Teachers tell researchers they increasingly doubt that students are producing authentic work — while students think the same about their teachers.
Researchers found a fracturing of trust between students and teachers. Teachers trust students less when they suspect them of using AI to complete homework. In interviews, 16% of teachers said this erosion of trust is “a significant concern.”
And students also trust teachers less when teachers use AI to create lesson plans and assignments but aren’t open about it.
This development could undermine students’ trust in educational institutions themselves. “One of AI’s greatest casualties may be the trust that ensures young people have what they need in school to meet their needs and prepare them for the future,” according to the report.
4) It’s not too late to turn things around.
Researchers say AI is doing damage but the wounds are “fixable” and that adults “should neither capitulate to these harms nor focus solely on limiting their repercussions.”
The report offers 12 recommendations, including:
- Shift education away from “transactional task completion” that AI can most easily help students with.
- Co-create AI tools with educators, students, parents and communities. Schools can create “student AI councils” that can help embed student voice into AI tool design “to ensure their relevance, inclusivity, and pedagogical soundness” before adoption.
- Use AI tools that “teach, not tell.” Winthrop suggests using AI to interface with a difficult digital text. “I’ve read this paragraph twice,” she says. “I don’t get it. Can you explain it to me in a different way?” Used in such a fashion, with vetted content, she say, “it can be really effective.”
- Offer AI literacy that helps students, educators, and families understand its capabilities, limitations and broader implications. This includes robust professional development that equips teachers with deep knowledge to teach students about AI.
Report co-author Winthrop highlighted the National Academy for AI Instruction, created last fall by the American Federation of Teachers. AFT President Randy Weingarten has said that over the next five years it will train 400,000 educators, or one in 10 U.S. teachers, in effective AI usage.
The 74
