AI Is an Artificial Fix for American Education

The American Prospect ^ | October 24, 2025 | Logan Chapman

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Though Americans are coming to grips with the impact of artificial intelligence on their lives, there’s still a significant amount of distrust. A 2025 PDK Poll, an annual survey of American attitudes toward the public schools, finds diminishing confidence in AI where it intersects with K-12 education.

Over the past year, the poll found declining support for AI in the classroom across a range of areas, from tutoring and standardized test preparation to homework assignments. The sharpest decline involved lesson plans. In 2024, 62 percent of respondents supported teachers using AI to “review and use” in preparing lesson plans. This year, only 49 percent did.

As for teachers, a recent informal Education Week poll of 700 instructors noted that while many people accept AI use in the classroom experience, others have doubts. One reason for concern is the troubling fact that as long as students have access to their phones, there’s a good chance that homework or another assignment might be AI-generated.

Students, of course, are all in. The earliest adopters and heaviest users of AI chatbots have been middle and high school students. When students aren’t in the classroom on weekends and during the summer months, there’s a noticeable drop in usage of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

State education officials have long lagged behind tech developments, and now they’re playing catchup on establishing guidelines for AI use in K-12 classrooms. The 2025 State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) report finds that AI is the top priority of state education tech leaders. Sixty percent of the education officials surveyed said their states already have professional training efforts focused on AI—but funding remains the biggest obstacle.

More than half the states have issued AI guidelines for teaching and learning. Most of those guidelines are voluntary and provide similar recommendations: Some suggest spending more time...

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TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: 5postsinarow; gooutside

[discostu]

Mmmm. No. AI isn’t as smart a dumb 2nd grader.

[PGR88]

technology in the classroom is a golden calf, always to be worshipped by the educrat apparatchiks

Because its promise can always be spun into a nice fairy tale, and above all, it deflects any questions one might have of the educrat bureaucracy, their methods, or their culture/politics.

[ansel12]

No modern technology helps education and learning in any substantive way, books, paper, pencils and good teachers, desks and decent lighting, and heating and cooling pretty much covers it.

[Salman]

The underlying problem is the education system is in the hands of the enemy.

[cymbeline]

“AI Is an Artificial Fix for American Education”

Could you say that AI reduces the need for an education?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Could you say that AI reduces the need for an education?

You could say that if your goal was to make people as stupid as possible.

[Semper Vigilantis]

AI is basically an interactive knowledge bank like we used to code as an end user’s Q & A site. Granted, 20+ years ago we didn’t make them talk or give them cool names, but the basic idea is the same.
The biggest difference is that AI ‘reads’ the internet. It compiles and catalogs data found there.
If I went on all the social media sites and interactive websites and used “Taylor Swift murdered Elvis Presley” as my opening line, end line and signature tagline, eventually AI would include that in it’s data-bank. Once it moves up in rank it will begin to include it in it’s replies to queries about Elvis’ death.
If I was coding it and added some ranking tweaks (much like google does) I could control the conversion, so to speak.
AI is not a toy. It is dangerous.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

AI is not a toy. It is dangerous.

In theory, generative AI is the wisdom of crowds.

In practice, it is the same old GIGO.