How UK Says Its New Investment in AI Will Help Teachers

Teachers and students can both benefit from a new investment announced Monday that will support efforts to test artificial intelligence (AI) classroom tools, according to United Kingdom government officials.

Valued at up to £2 million ($2,430,000), the government investment will go to Oak National Academy, a public group that is sponsored by the U.K.'s Department of Education (DoE), but operates independently. The academy collaborates with teachers to create free and "high-quality digital curriculum resources," according to one government description.

Among the resources that the new government investment is expected to support are AI tools used to make quizzes and design lesson plans. The idea behind these tools is to have the technology tackle time-consuming tasks so that teachers can devote more of their time to their students.

"Thousands" of teachers have already tested the AI quiz-making and lesson-planning tools, the DoE said in a Monday press release. The new £2 million investment will further refine these kinds of tools to iron out any lingering issues before they are made widely available to teachers, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in the press release that AI "has extraordinary potential to reform our education system for the better," and that the technology offers "considerable value for both teachers and students."

The U.K. is in the "early stages" of "working towards a goal of providing every teacher with a personalized AI assistant," Keegan tweeted. "Whether it's planning lessons or building classroom quizzes, AI has the potential to reduce teachers' workloads significantly."

While there is "no doubt" AI tools could help ease teachers' workloads, the emerging technology also presents risks, and "we need to be very careful before jumping in head-first," according to Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the U.K. school leaders' union the National Association of Head Teachers.

"AI is not a silver bullet, and we need to be mindful of its limitations," Whiteman said in a statement shared with Newsweek. "More importantly, the government needs to work far more closely with the whole profession when it comes to AI. There are all sorts of training and ethical considerations that the government should be doing more to support schools with."

Discussions about the potential risks and benefits of AI are increasing. Several technology experts and politicians have raised concerns about AI over the past several weeks ahead of the first global AI Safety Summit, a two-day event the U.K. is hosting that begins on November 1.

Days before the summit was due to start, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres announced the launch of the U.N.'s own AI Advisory Board that will aim to determine how the international community can work together to regulate the use and development of AI. The body must work fast, Guterres said, because humans are working "against the clock."