Education and school in the era of AI. Educationist’s dilemmas

For at least several decades, the school environment has been under strong pressure from technology. New ICT tools bring educational hopes, but they also raise many doubts. This paper concerns the presence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the teaching-learning process. AI in education (AIED) provides enormous opportunities for individualising the teaching-learning process, adapting the entire process to the schoolchild’s capabilities and motivation level. It also allows for more effective education management. It can predict trends, but also profile the education path of individual schoolchildren based on previous educational achievements. It also allows for support for teachers, especially in those aspects of education that can be standardised in some respects (e.g. assessment). However, the presence of AI in the education system brings specific challenges and difficulties that demand taking action so as not to squander the educational opportunities associated with new technologies. Firstly, Artificial Intelligence collects huge amounts of data in its activities, including sensitive data related to children's privacy. It is necessary to take care of their protection so that they are not used to the detriment of children or processed for commercial purposes. The presence of AI in schools also requires a redefinition of the role of the teacher. Undoubtedly, the emphasis in their work will have to be distributed differently and their position defined more precisely. To a large extent, this is related to another threat, which may be deficits in interpersonal communication. Until now, the teaching-learning process was based on interpersonal relations between the teacher and schoolchildren and was strongly vectored. The message had a specific direction. In the case of AI, interpersonal communication disappears and the message becomes more spontaneous and interactive. It is difficult to determine today whether AI will bring only benefits or whether the threats will outweigh them. The example of smartphones shows that not every new technology has a positive impact on the development and level of education of children. It seems that due to the dynamic development of AI models and their commonness as general-purpose technologies, we will not wait longer than a decade to make a substantive evaluation of the presence of AI in the education system.