Artificial Intelligence in Education

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming embedded in everyday life, influencing how people work, learn, and interact with the world. To prepare all young people to navigate and shape this changing landscape, a cohesive approach is essential to ensure all young people are equipped to live and work in a world entangled with AI.

AI literacy

In January 2025, the Royal Society hosted a roundtable of leading experts, researchers, and practitioners to explore the core competencies students will need to thrive in an AI-infused society, including technical knowledge, critical thinking, and ethical understanding.

AI literacy is not a matter of simply adding new content to the curriculum, but of reimagining the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to thrive in a technological world.

The Society will continue to convene diverse expertise across sectors, contribute to the evidence base for effective and equitable AI education, and engage with policymakers to ensure that emerging strategies are ambitious, inclusive, and grounded in best practice. Education about AI must not only reflect the pace of technological change, but anticipate its social consequences and prepare young people to meet them with confidence, criticality, and care.

Emerging conversations on AI in education

The Society is also monitoring conversations about AI in education that can broadly be sorted into three categories:

• Teaching about AI - Supporting young people in detecting, understanding, and critically interpreting content created by AI and how it works (AI literacy), so that they can use digital technology and media in safe, responsible, and ethical ways. These skills could be defined as: technical understanding, data literacy, ethical awareness, critical thinking, and continuous learning
• Teaching for AI - Equipping young people with the mathematical, data, and computing skills required to manage and build AI systems in the future. This would include the development of computing education, digital skills in the wider curriculum, qualifications, and careers information
• Teaching with AI - How teachers can use AI to reduce administrative burdens and create increasingly personalised learning and assessment experiences for students. This category has considerable ethical implications, including mitigating harm to students, closing or exacerbating existing inequalities, reducing plagiarism and other forms of cheating, and the skills and role of teachers