New nationwide program utilizing AI in schools, will turn kids into 'robots' warn critics

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Melissa Jackson and Apryl Dukes sound the alarm on Artificial Intelligence being used in schools

Dukes and Jackson, both with No Left Turn in Education, said parents should be concerned about how AI is being used in schools, and what information it may gather on students.

Educators at over 120 school districts across the United States are in the process of implementing an education program critics believe is a top-down approach to manipulate student's values and beliefs through the embrace of government programs and a dependence on artificial intelligence and machine learning.  

The program, called Learning 2025, and implemented by the School Superintendent's Association, (AASA) calls for a "holistic redesign" of the United States' public education system by 2025, with an eye toward equity and technology. But districts across the country have already started rolling out the program. 

Critics of the program have concerns with its potential use of artificial intelligence (AI), which they say could lead to treating students like "robots."

The program is based on a national commission convened by AASA, which included superintendent's from across the country, as well as representatives from organizations such as Battelle for Kids and the Successful Practices Network. 

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Critics warn that AI is being used in schools across the country.  ((Photo by Arne Dedert/picture alliance via Getty Images))

The Learning 2025 commission report focused on "future-driven" education, emphasizing a focus on technology. Parent's-rights group No Left Turn in Education Chief Operating Officer Melissa Jackson and Chief Research Officer Apryl Dukes said they believe this approach fails to teach skills the basic skills they need, and rather will treat them like "robots." 

The Successful Practices Network, which was involved in the Learning 2025 commission, has promoted an artificial intelligence (AI) model created by OpenAI, called Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3), which is similar to ChatGPT3, according to documents obtained by No Left Turn in Education and shared with Fox News Digital. The AI model answers question and generates human-like text, including summaries, essays, outlines, reports, computer code, even creative writing pieces. 

The document touted the use of AI in education, including being able to "monitor and measure many skills that were traditionally not assessed because there was no way to do so." These skills, which could be monitored by AI, included communication, collaboration, creativity and innovation. 

"As we move forward, many believe doubling down on teaching reading writing and arithmetic needs to be schools' top priority, and to some the only priority," the document said. "Although those basic cognitive skills are essential for a solid academic foundation, simply getting back to teaching them is not the answer."

At the Learning 2025 conference, where the program was rolled out to educators across the country, GPT-3 was advertised as a tool for students to do both their classwork and homework, according to Holly Terei, the National Director of Teacher Coalition for NLTE, who attended the conference last summer. 

While she said many superintendents seemed to embrace AI as part of a technological renaissance, critics have raised questions about the wide-ranging implications of the technology. Parents have concerns that their child won't be able to think for themselves, successfully write an essay or solve a math problem and instead will become overly reliant on technology. 

Technology like this, and the similar technology ChatGPT, take the "create" aspect out of education, which is going to turn kids into "robots," Dukes said. 

Terei said elements of AI's use in the classroom were promoted at the conference, including teaching students how to write a paper using AI rather than writing it themselves, or a scenario where a student is assigned an AI teacher at three years old that would follow them to graduation and beyond. 

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"From a parent perspective, I am incredibly disturbed when this whole room of superintendents is subscribing to this idea that our children should be completely relying on technology … instead of having the knowledge themselves," she added. 

"Machine learning mimics the neural networks in our brain, so the more data they gather, the smarter the algorithm gets, and they see patterns," Jackson said. "If children are answering questions in certain ways that maybe conflict with how they would like for them to answer the questions, they can change the questions."

The Learning 2025 model also promotes the use of AI in gathering information on students. 

"In recent years, we have seen the emergence of several dynamic e-learning systems that leverage artificial intelligence to adapt to an individual learner’s progress and accelerate growth accordingly," the document said. "These technologies blur the distinction between assessment and instruction … As children use them, the technologies mine data that can further inform personalized instruction, and they accelerate growth from within an individual’s zone of proximal development, which is where learners are most engaged and motivated."

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Apryl Dukes said using AI in schools is an ‘experiment’ which we do not know the results of.  ((Photo by Annette Riedl/picture alliance via Getty Images))

Jackson said Learning 2025 makes the case for an increase in technology use in school because students will get bored in the classroom since they already use so much technology and therefore the classroom simply won't be stimulating enough. 

"They talk about how if a kid is at home, they don't really have to get out, ride their bike to go down the street and play with their friends anymore, [instead] they can do it in their basement, on their PlayStation," Jackson said. 

"The whole machine learning, AI, it's a hard concept to grasp," said Dukes. "It's one of those things that we may not know the implications of what this will do. … This is a test, this is a big experiment. What is this going to do to our children? I personally don't have a lot of faith that it's going to be the answer and things are going to turn out for the best." 

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The Learning 2025 commission report also places an emphasis on "Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Growth," which Jackson said is essentially social and emotional learning (SEL).

"That's the sales pitch, to make them stronger emotionally … but what they're really doing is they're trying to shape their perspectives and their values through social emotional learning," she added. 

The focus on SEL and AI in combination with the move away from academics should make parents pause and question what the ultimate goal is, Jackson said, because "technology is great until it's used for nefarious purposes."

"How is using an algorithm that can do a child's work for them going to help that child academically?" she asked. "I can only surmise that we're just dumbing down our children."

Education used to be a source of freedom, where a child was told that if they got a good education, they could do whatever and accomplish whatever they wanted, she said. Instead, she believes the goal now is to dumb children down to control them, so they will perform the tasks that have been prescribed to them. 

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"It's no longer 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' It's 'Here's what you will be, here's what we need and here's what you can do," she said. A student will just be a "consumer of technology, and by the time they're done with the SEL, his mind will be controlled."

"It's thought control," she concluded. "He won't have the ability to or even the freedom to have a different perspective or a different belief. He'll have to conform and that's not America."

AASA and the Successful Practices Network did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.