The meeting between Artificial Intelligence and Education represents one of the most interesting and exciting fields to reflect on and think about how to design the role of AI in our society.

It is an unavoidable and urgent topic. As INVALSI wrote two years ago, “Familiarizing with artificial intelligence and its basic principles, starting from the early years of school, is essential."

Children who are now 5 years old will spend most of their working lives in the second half of the 21st century, in a world transformed by technology. Whether or not they possess the skills needed for that future depends on current educational systems.

“The role of the teacher is central. Teachers are guides, references, and emotional support in the educational journey of their students, and they also help them with social interaction."

Although AI can be a fundamental new tool, the role of humans in education cannot be diminished. However, it will be necessary for teachers to train and expand their pedagogical culture because their role will increasingly need to be central in teaching how to distinguish and correctly use what runs along the boundary between AI and data, and on the other hand, the ability to read data, information, and innovate knowledge.

When a question is posed to an AI, the issue becomes: asking the right question. And this can only be proposed if one possesses a solid conceptual framework, in which notions are certainly the basis, but the ability to process them, connect them, and “use” them is increasingly important.

How can we think of introducing AI (and Chat GPT can be the first experiment, especially since it already pertains to today) in schools?

We cannot think that young people (or anyone) will not use AI (Chat GPT) if they can benefit from it.

If it is possible for everyone to access structured data in real-time on even specific topics, it will therefore likely be necessary for education to aim in every field at two parallel but converging objectives:

- providing the essential basic data (“the Earth is a planet, the sun is a star, what is the difference” “the days of the week, the hills of Rome, and the dwarfs of Snow White are seven”)

- providing all the “cultural meta-structure”: the phenomena, the connections between phenomena, the stories, multidisciplinary approaches, lateral and out-of-the-box thinking, the books to read, the films to watch, the famous speeches to listen to again.

Only in this way can we think of starting to set up an intelligent and evolved use of AI systems.

It is necessary for everyone to understand that with AI (for example, with Chat GPA) the difficulty does not lie in obtaining the answer; the difficulty lies in formulating an interesting question. Or in formulating subsequent questions that are increasingly interesting.

This is what we must teach our kids: to have reference frameworks (and broad, extensive fundamental notions, of which they are actually masters, connectable, interdisciplinary, so that they know how to ask the right questions to obtain complete, interesting, and innovative answers, on which they can perhaps insert original insights and ideas that Chat GPT was unable to “bring out.” And if we have to evaluate the kids, we should evaluate them on these abilities. Give them a topic or a research task, and reward those who can pull out the special herb, the unusual and still unexplored contrast of flavors from the known soup.

And here, of course, the role of the teacher reaches its peak. No longer a dispenser of information/notions, but a trainer of the mind, with a Socratic spirit and approach, “my captain, my captain.” The role that every true teacher desires.

At BEST and BEST MIDDLE, we started a differentiated educational path (tailored to age groups) last year, which we are also implementing this year to:

- illustrate what Artificial Intelligence is

- investigate what impacts it will have in the world of tomorrow, the opportunities, the risks

- identify some immediately usable tools

- highlight the fundamental role of the user in getting the best from AI.