Early and unsupervised use of AI could lead to a weakening of cognitive effort.
education : The Higher Council for Education, Training and Scientific Research (CSEFRS) insists on the imperative of regulating the uses of AI in an educational environment. It recommends the design of a national reference framework intended to regulate these uses.
The Higher Council for Education, Training and Scientific Research (CSEFRS) has published a recommendation resulting from a self-referral concerning the adoption of a national orientation framework relating to the use of artificial intelligence in education, training and scientific research. This recommendation is based on diagnostic elements which reveal an increasingly accelerated presence of AI in the digital environment of children and young people and its effective intrusion into the educational space. This accelerated presence of AI is manifested through smartphones, digital platforms, generative search engines. This presence is marked by its early, invasive and accelerated nature. Most of the time, this exceeds the capacity of families and educational institutions to support or regulate these uses. Added to this is an increase in daily connection time and an increasingly frequent use of digital services for learning and completing school homework.
The Council notes that this transition highlights a dysfunction resulting from the gap between the accelerated pace of the expansion of the uses of AI within the educational space and the delay in terms of institutional framework capable of guiding and regulating the impact of these technologies. The CSEFRS believes that in children and adolescents, whose linguistic, analytical and critical skills are still being built, early and unsupervised use of AI could lead to a weakening of cognitive effort and weaknesses in basic learning (reading, writing, calculation, logical reasoning). Modern educational analyzes reveal that true learning requires time, trial, error, and the cognitive effort necessary to build deep understanding. Whereas informal use of AI can only lead to superficial and rapid learning, which is not very consistent.
Public responsibility of the State for AI
The Council calls for urgent public intervention intended to supervise and guide the uses of AI in the educational field. It proposes a set of recommendations which revolve around 4 axes, namely: institutional and regulatory, educational and organizational, societal and strategic. At the level of the institutional and regulatory framework, the Council considers that recourse to the State for the regulation of this area is an essential prerequisite for guiding uses in harmony with the general interest and strengthening confidence in the educational space. It recommends launching the design of a national reference framework intended to regulate the uses of AI in the field of education. Such a framework should define the educational aims, the framing principles, the conditions of use as well as the institutional responsibilities. Furthermore, the Council calls for the establishment of a national body dedicated to the production of knowledge on AI and its uses in the fields of education and training.
This structure would make it possible to develop a detailed understanding of the changes underway and to provide reliable data likely to contribute to the direction of public policies. Furthermore, the Council recommends adopting an approach based on the effective participation of learners, girls and boys, in ways adapted to their age and their educational background, in reflection on the uses of AI in education, ensuring that their experiences and perceptions are taken into account, including those of categories in vulnerable situations, alongside the mobilization of the professional expertise of teachers. This involvement is not limited to a one-off advisory role, but must be considered as a founding principle aimed at developing in learners the ability to act with knowledge of their digital environment.
