1.1 Potentials & Risks
If you remember only one sentence form this page: AI has made its way into schools like a medicine that comes without a patient information leaflet. As a teacher, you don’t know when to use AI; you lack dosage instructions, and there is no information on the side effects. This chapter serves as the patient information leaflet for the Playbook.
Take-home message
Should AI come with a leaflet like a medicine?
You know that slip of paper tucked inside every medicine box? The one you likely toss aside without a glance? It may seem dull, but this little paper is a quiet triumph of the last century. That leaflet spells out four essentials: what the medicine treats, how much to take, the surprises it might bring, and who should steer clear.
Behind every line on that leaflet stands a whole machinery: clinical trials, regulators, and a responsibility to reveal mistakes. No one believes the leaflet itself heals you. Its real power is making the medicine safe for anyone. That is the magic we are missing when we let AI teach without guidance.
The AI tools now quietly settling into your school arrived with no instructions. In the UK, a review found that only 7 out of 100 education technology companies had ever put their products through a controlled trial, and only 12 out of 100 had sought outside certification. The classroom tells the same story. Only 11 out of 100 school leaders and teachers across 17 American states had ever requested peer-reviewed proof before adopting a new tool.
The result, in many cases, is wasted money. In the US, two-thirds of school software licenses gathered dust, and 98% saw almost no use. The EdTech Genome Project looked at about 7,000 teaching tools worth 13 billion dollars and found that 85% were either mismatched or misused.
This chapter may look like the dry, necessary section, but it reveals the hidden stories behind the rules. It tells what really happened, who was affected, and shines a light on the side effects, even those that quietly reached children who never signed up.
Potentials of AI
Let's make this clear right from the start. Most studies on AI's potential focus on university students. School pupils have so far featured relatively rarely in these studies. Most studies relate to short-term interventions lasting from a few hours to a few weeks. Consequently, the so-called novelty effect may have positively influenced the results. Last but not least, the test used to assess effectiveness was often devised by the very people who delivered the lessons. This, too, may have confounded the data.
(1) Explaining a new topic
(2) Making better use of lesson planning time
(3) Providing better support for learners who do not benefit fully from standard lessons
(4) Teaching learners how AI fails
(4)Risks of AI
