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PARIS: The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools can help with solving tasks but hinder learning and lead to laziness and disinterest, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said, reported German news agency dpa.

The OECD, in a study, said new findings suggested that versatile AI models such as ChatGPT could improve pupils’ task performance but did not necessarily lead to learning progress. It said there was a discrepancy between task performance and genuine learning (pic).

Outsourcing tasks to general chatbots could hinder the acquisition of skills in the long term, the OECD said. Pupils’ mental effort to turn answers into understanding could decline.

Research showed that pupils with access to general-purpose AI models achieved better results on tasks, the Paris-based organisation said.

However, that advantage disappeared and sometimes even reversed when access to the AI tool was withdrawn during exams.

When students depended too much on AI, the mental processes and effort that turn answers into understanding declines, it said.   

By contrast, AI tools developed for educational purposes tended to deliver lasting learning improvements, the OECD said.

It added that these specialised AI tools could help rookie teachers improve teaching quality and thus raise pupils’ learning outcomes.

The organisation advised deploying AI applications in schools selectively and purposefully to enrich learning, not to replace cognitive effort or weaken the human relationships at the heart of education. 

This suggested that one of the most effective uses was not to replace humans, but to scale expert pedagogy across a variable workforce, the OECD said.

It said learning and teaching should primarily aim to develop valuable human knowledge and skills such as independent thinking and fundamental abilities across all subjects.