A combustible mix of policymakers’ fear of missing out, industry self-interest and parental anxiety about the future of work is fueling Asia’s push to introduce artificial intelligence (AI) into classrooms at ever younger ages.
The result risks turning a generation of developing minds into guinea pigs, while the biggest gains flow not to students, but to tech companies.
You do not 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, Singaporean Minister of Education Desmond Lee (李智陞) made headlines (and fired up parenting blogs) 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 after the government’s AI Plus plan called for the technology to be integrated across all levels of education.
The push is already colliding with reality. In South Korea, an AI learning plan was rolled back after just four months amid backlash from educators, parents and students. Meanwhile, a pilot program at a Japanese elementary school, looks more like a Black Mirror episode than a sign of progress.
It is a global debate, but stereotypes about tiger moms and math nerds aside, education has been central to Asia’s economic rise, making the stakes especially high. The region’s countries regularly dominate the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment rankings, which measure the performance of 15-year-olds in math, reading and science. (Singapore, notably, topped the latest round — even before introducing 10-year-olds to AI.) The strength of Asia’s education systems comes from rigor and repetition, not removing friction.
Where academic pressures run high, so does the money and the parental anxiety. Prior to Beijing’s 2021 crackdown on private tutoring, a Stanford University study found that frugal Chinese households spent an average of more than 17 percent of their annual income on education. In Singapore, the latest government household expenditure data show spending on education continues to climb.
It makes some of the broader regional so-called EdTech initiatives look less like a public good than a lucrative captive market. Combined with government pressure to appear progressive, the rush by tech companies into schools deserves scrutiny.
It also distorts the definition of what success for these programs would look like. Even if AI lifts short-term test performance, that might say little about whether students are actually learning. One study found that those who used ChatGPT retained significantly less than those who relied on traditional methods such as study groups. On a surprise retention test 45 days later, the ChatGPT users “scored significantly lower.” The researchers found that while AI assistance may ease initial study, “it appears to undermine the effortful process needed for robust learning.”
In other words, friction, repetition and struggle are how people learn. Removing too much of that may reshape how minds develop in ways we do not yet understand — even in adults. More long-term research is needed, but that uncertainty alone should be reason enough for caution before these tools are rolled out to children whose brains are still developing. The money pouring into pilot programs might be better spent hiring human teachers.
None of this means AI has no sensible place in education. One Singapore initiative worth watching is the plan to offer AI literacy courses to elderly prison inmates. There, the students are adults and the goal is practical: Equipping incarcerated people with skills that could help them find work and reenter society.
These key distinctions make AI education more than a buzzword, highlighting the real-world difference between pupils learning career-ready technical skills versus efforts to force the nascent technology into primary school classrooms. A small US study found that expanding access to inmates’ digital education programs was associated with lower recidivism.
The fears driving much of the agenda are easy to understand: Children without AI knowledge might be left behind in tomorrow’s labor market. The reality is that as automation spreads, skills like critical thinking, communication and emotional intelligence become more valuable. These cannot be instilled via a machine.
Policymakers are racing into the next classroom fad before reckoning with the damage from the last one. After years of proliferating screens and educational technology, a growing body of data indicate that Gen Z has become the first generation less cognitively capable than the previous one. It is hard to see how AI, which would only bind students more tightly to digital devices, would improve that trajectory.
AI is supposed to make our lives easier, but education exists to force the kind of mental effort the technology’s optimization is designed to remove. AI training might make sense in prisons. It has no place in primary schools.
Catherine Thorbecke is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia tech. Previously she was a tech reporter at CNN and ABC News. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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