Ai in the classroom: much used, but knowledge is lacking. The survey

Nearly nine out of ten students use artificial intelligence, the vast majority of them for personal purposes, but then only six per cent say they know it thoroughly, less than half have only a basic knowledge of it. For the vast majority of students, AI offers a real possibility of enrichment, but one in three is convinced that it will make them lazier and more ignorant. As for teachers, seven out of ten use the new technology, half of them for teaching purposes, but only one in ten has more than a basic knowledge of it.

In the Italian school world, there is a wide gap between the actual use and the perception of artificial intelligence, with a lack of awareness that ultimately holds back its enormous potential in the educational sphere. This is the picture that emerges from a survey administered to 1,175 male and female students and 136 teachers in the 50 schools throughout Italy that took part in the research project "ImparIAmo a scuola con l'Intelligenza Artificiale" (Let's learn at school with Artificial Intelligence), promoted and coordinated by the Centro Studi Impara Digitale with the technical partnership of Edulia Treccani Scuola and ScuolaZoo.

The gaps are amplified if one goes even further into the specifics of the topic, confirming a generally false perception of awareness: 14% of teachers and 45% of students say they have never heard of generative artificial intelligence, while 47% and 36% have only a basic knowledge of it respectively; almost a third of teachers have never heard of 'large language models', a figure that rises to 82% among students; machine learning is ignored by 15% of teachers and 59% of students, while 55% of teachers and 28% of students have only a basic knowledge of it.

More than half of the students (54%) say they have never delved into its risks and dangers, although the vast majority of students (74%) are convinced that AI offers a real possibility for enrichment, but almost one in three believe it will make them lazier and more ignorant. In the meantime, the majority of pupils use it to search for information, process texts, create images, presentations, videos/music. Only a quarter of the children use it for teaching purposes in agreement with teachers.

It is interesting to highlight what teachers propose it for in the classroom. The use of AI apps for school purposes was proposed by teachers mainly for searching for information (77%), editing texts (50%), creating presentations (31%), images (28%), videos or music (18%), and interviews with fictional, historical or famous people (14%).