Let's keep artificial intelligence inside prisons and out of classrooms: Here's why

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.A combustible mix of policymaker FOMO, industry self-interest and parental anxiety about the future of work is fuelling Asia’s push to introduce AI into classrooms at ever younger ages. The result risks turning a generation of developing minds into guinea pigs, while gains flow not to students, but to tech companies.You don’t have to be a Luddite to see the problem: AI’s inherent promise is convenience, while learning requires effort. Those aims are fundamentally at odds.

The technology does not belong in elementary school classrooms, and the later students encounter it, the better. A more effective place to focus would be teaching AI skills to adults with immediate vocational needs, such as prison inmates.Last week, Singapore’s education minister made headlines by saying the city-state would introduce AI in the fourth year of primary school, although “under close supervision and with low exposure.” In Beijing, schools have already begun offering AI courses to primary and secondary students. But the push is colliding with reality.

In South Korea, an AI learning plan was rolled back after just four months amid backlash from educators, parents and students. This is a global debate. But since education has been central to Asia’s economic rise, the stakes are especially high.

The region’s countries regularly dominate the OECD’s PISA rankings, which measure the performance of 15-year-olds in mathematics, reading and science. Singapore topped the latest round—even before introducing 10-year-olds to AI. The strength of Asia’s education systems comes from rigour and repetition, not removing friction.Where academic pressures run high, so does the money and parental anxiety.