Africa-Press – Eritrea. As US-based technology companies accelerate the integration of artificial intelligence applications into education systems worldwide, debate is intensifying over whether the shift is improving learning or undermining students’ attention, critical thinking, and social development.
In early Nov. 2025, Microsoft announced that it would provide AI tools and educational support to more than 200,000 students and educators in the United Arab Emirates. Days later, a finance company in Kazakhstan said it had reached an agreement with OpenAI to roll out the ChatGPT Edu service for 165,000 educators.
In the US state of Florida, Miami-Dade County Public Schools made Google’s Gemini chatbot available to more than 100,000 high school students, while Broward County Public Schools deployed Microsoft’s Copilot for thousands of teachers and administrative staff.
Similar steps taken beyond US
xAI, owned by US billionaire Elon Musk, announced plans to develop a Grok-based AI teacher system for more than one million students across thousands of schools in El Salvador.
Microsoft also said it would collaborate with Thailand’s Education Ministry to offer free AI courses to hundreds of thousands of students and provide AI training to 150,000 teachers.
OpenAI has pledged to grant ChatGPT access to teachers working in public schools in India.
Technology firms and some education administrators argue that AI chatbots can reduce teachers’ workloads, personalize course content, and prepare students for an AI-driven economy.
Study warns AI bots may weaken critical thinking
However, concerns are growing that uncontrolled AI use may harm student development.
According to findings published in April 2025 from a study conducted by Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University, widely used AI chatbots may weaken critical-thinking skills.
The research found that as users’ trust in AI tools increases, they rely less on higher-order cognitive processes such as problem-solving, analysis, and evaluation.
A significant share of participants reported reduced mental effort when completing AI-assisted tasks, raising concerns about “cognitive laziness” in learning.
The study also warned that AI use in routine and low-risk tasks may reduce questioning, potentially undermining independent thinking and decision-making over time.
Ineffectiveness of past initiatives
In a Jan. 2 report, The New York Times cited experts warning that earlier technology-driven education initiatives failed to deliver promised outcomes.
Academic studies conducted in hundreds of schools in Peru under the “One Laptop per Child” program found that access to computers did not lead to meaningful improvements in students’ cognitive skills or academic performance.
UNICEF digital policy specialist Steven Vosloo told the NYT that the initiative resulted in wasted resources and weak learning outcomes, cautioning that unguided AI use could lead to similar skill loss among students and teachers.
Teachers’ role extends beyond delivering information
Stephen Cicirelli, an English professor at St. Peter’s University in Jersey City, New Jersey, told Anadolu that tablets, laptops, and AI-powered tools have not produced the educational gains many expected.
Recounting a classroom incident, Cicirelli said he allowed laptop use for one class session and noticed a student using an AI chatbot.
“I could see the ChatGPT browser open because I know what the ChatGPT icon looks like… I failed her for the assignment, and she had to drop the class,” he said.
The incident illustrates how “irresistible” technology has become for students, he added.
Cicirelli said technology creates a chain effect in classrooms, where one student browsing online distracts others.
He stressed that teaching goes beyond transmitting information, noting that students also learn from facial expressions, tone of voice, and nonverbal cues—elements often lost in online-only instruction.
He said face-to-face education is especially important for younger students, adding that screen-based learning can hinder empathy, communication, and interpersonal skill development.
Human interaction to become marker of educational privilege
Cicirelli also raised concerns about inequality, arguing that limited access to AI may ultimately benefit some students.
He said many US technology executives send their children to tech-free schools.
AI- and screen-based education would likely be directed toward under-resourced schools, while more privileged students would continue to receive teacher-centered instruction with limited reliance on the internet, he said, adding that high-quality education would increasingly be defined by human interaction rather than technology.
Drawing a parallel with organic food, Cicirelli suggested that “processed education” heavily supported by AI will be easily accessible, while human-centered education becomes a luxury.
‘Learning is slow; AI was never made to be an education tool’
He said he saw no alternative to the process, stressing that it cannot be rushed.
“I don’t see any other way of doing it. You can’t speed that process up… It happens when it happens. There’s no speeding it up,” he said, adding that “AI was never made to be an education tool.”
Cicirelli further argued that AI is fundamentally ill-suited for education because it is designed to accelerate output rather than support deep understanding. “Learning is a slow process… It (AI) was designed to make production faster,” he said.
Cicirelli likened AI’s role in education to using a chainsaw: while it can handle rough tasks, it is unsuitable for the careful, nuanced work that learning requires. He warned that pushing AI into classrooms is likely to produce negative outcomes.
He also argued that students’ reading abilities, concentration, and critical thinking in the US have deteriorated since tablets and laptops became common in schools.
According to Cicirelli, the more pressing question may not be how to make AI better for education, but whether the technology itself is part of the problem, suggesting that the very tool being introduced could be contributing to students’ struggles to learn.
