“Technology is a game-changer for education. It offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education. “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

This discussion sparked many revelational thoughts regarding the possibility of Artificial Intelligence taking over, not just classroom activities, but also jobs throughout the education field. In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. 

As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process. The possibility of AI taking jobs is worsening as schools continue to adopt artificial intelligent programs that automate lesson plans, assignment grading, etc… While this advanced technology could be seen as an upside, due to AI being able to track a student’s progress every second—something a person could never do—and being a reliable data-base, there is a massive downside. 

The increasingly possible downside of featuring AI more frequently in classrooms is exemplified by many sources, saying that many educators will be out of a job. Thinking back to Dan Schwartz’s statement, society must use technology responsibly.