Training software experts say they are cautiously optimistic about a Trump administration campaign to integrate AI into classrooms, but such a program needs clear objectives, specific rules – and enough money to finance expensive systems.
“The AI is, intrinsically, very expensive,” said Ryan Trattner, CEO of the study of AI-Ai studies. “It is not something that evolves as normal software where it could be the same price for 1,000 people to use it at 100,000.”
Among a handful of decrees linked to education last week, President Donald Trump published an order to incorporate the education, training and literacy of artificial intelligence in kindergarten schools in the 12th year for students and teachers.
This decision complies with the other actions that Trump has taken promote rapid growth in artificial intelligence In the United States, including turning back the 2023 biden administration executive order
This aimed to promote competition within the AI industry while creating guidelines for responsible use of the technology government. Presentation of AI to primary schoolchildren is supposed to create a “workforce ready for AI and the next generation of American AI innovators”, ” order said.
A working group made up of members of various federal departments – such as the departments of agriculture, education, energy and work, as well as the directors of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science Foundation and other representatives of federal agencies – will develop the program over the next 120 days.
Some AI tool manufacturers for students have declared that they were cautiously optimistic about the more widespread use of AI in schools, saying that this would better prepare children in the current labor. But they say that success with this program depends on the ability to measure the results for learning AI, an understanding of how AI plays a role in society and a set of clear federal directives around AI, which The United States does not currently have.
Many students, parents and teachers already use AI in part of their learning, often through tutoring, advice, training, study or AI monitoring tools.
Bill Salak, Director of AI learning and studying technology, said a cervitive that many AI tools built for education are currently aiming to fill gaps in schools where teachers are often thin. They can use AI tools to help them make course plans, presentations or study guides. Country was based on the idea of simulating study groups managed by students and is a complement to class learning, said Salak.
Salak is happy to see an initiative that will encourage educators to integrate the literacy of AI into schools, affirming that he considers that we are in a “rapidly evolving world” which requires a large part of the workforce to have a basic understanding of AI. But he says that he hopes that the working group will be precise on their objectives and develops the ability to measure the results.
“I think there will be other necessary mandates, in particular the one in which we revisit again, like, what do we teach?” He said. “What standards we hold our teachers in terms of class results?”
Specific objectives can occur after the 120 -day research period, but the executive decree currently indicates that the initiative will develop online resources focused on the education of skills in the fundamental literacy of AI and the critical thinking of students, and to identify the means for teachers to reduce administrative tasks with high intensity of time, to improve assessments and to effectively teach IAI in computer sciences and other classes. He also seeks to establish more learning programs related to AI intended for young people.
Trattner of Study Fetch said that it was impatient to see a green light from the administration so that schools invest in IA education. The FETCH study platform allows students and teachers to download course equipment from a class and receive personalized study equipment. Trattner said that at the start, many educators feared that the AI would allow students to cheat or take the lessons without learning the equipment.
But he said that last year, teachers find specific tasks that AI can help alleviate their long lists of tasks. Generative AI chatbots are probably not the best suited to classrooms, but specific AI tools, such as platforms that help students learn their program equipment in a personalized manner.
“Everyone knows, but teachers are extremely overloaded with work, with several classes,” said Trattner. “I think AI can certainly help educators be much more productive.”
But the cost is something that the committee should consider, said Trattner. The executive order calls for the development of public-private partnerships and declared that the Committee could be able to make discretionary subsidies intended for education, but that it did not describe a budget for this initiative. AI tools are often more expensive than other software that schools can be used to buy in bulk, said Trattner.
Some AI tools are intended for other parts of school experience, such as the EVA of Guidance Network, an AI consulting assistant who helps users to cross the college candidacy process and help parents with social and emotional dynamics with their children.
The founder and CEO, Jon Carson, said that he was not sure that this decree will have a significant impact on schools, because schools tend to follow state or local directives. He also has the impression that the current administration has damaged its authority on questions from kindergarten to 12th year by trying to close the Ministry of Education.
“At another time, we could even talk about it if we were talking to a school district,” said Carson. “But I don't think we are lifting, because the administration has lost a lot of credibility.”
Carson hopes that the Committee provides security and confidentiality policies around AI in schools and folds these principles into the program. The federal advice on AI privacy could help shape the use of everyone, but in particular students who are at the start of their experience with technology, he said.
A successful version of this program would teach students not only how to interact with AI tools, but how they are constructed, how they process information and how to critically think of the results they receive, Salak said. Educators have the right to criticize AI and the accuracy of the information he provides, he said. But critical thinking and validation of information is a skill that everyone needs, that the information comes from a manual or an algorithm.
“In a world where there is so much easily accessible information and a disinformation that is so easily accessible, learning very early on how to wonder what AI says is not a bad thing,” said Salak. “And so it does not need to be 100%precise. But we have to develop skills in our students to be able to think critically and question what she says.”
The specific recommendations and programs resulting from the Working Group on Artificial Intelligence Education will probably not come before the next school year, but Salak said that he thought that the American workforce has been late on AI for some time.
“I really hope that we are able to revise the agility to which the institution of education in America changes and adapts,” said Salak. “Because the world changes and adapts very, very quickly, and we cannot afford to have an education system which is lagging behind so far.”
