Rosemary J Thomas forecasts the future of artificial intelligence in education

In recent years, we have witnessed a technological resurgence, with artificial intelligence leading the charge across various sectors, education being one of the most affected. As we enter 2025, the integration of AI in further and higher education continues to evolve, offering unprecedented opportunities for both educators and students.

While we remain conscious of the risks and ethical considerations associated with AI, its innovative applications are already transforming how we learn and teach. From automating administrative tasks to providing personalised learning experiences, AI is reshaping the educational landscape in thoughtful ways. The future of education lies in the seamless collaboration between human intelligence and AI, creating an environment where both can thrive and complement each other.

Enhanced human-AI collaboration in education
AI can strengthen human capabilities in the educational sector, increasing productivity, creativity and decision-making.

AI can help in creative endeavours by helping educators and pupils brainstorm on specific styles or themes, pushing the limits of their work. Educators can concentrate on more complex and value-added tasks by automating administrative tasks. In most sectors, AI can streamline the research process by reviewing documents and spotting relevant information, accelerating the time-consuming process for educators.

AI can analyse vast amounts of educational data to identify trends and patterns, helping educators make informed decisions about curriculum design and teaching strategies. AI can also help teachers in their continuous professional development by recommending resources, providing feedback on teaching methods, and accelerating peer collaborations.

AI-enabled tools in education
The global education technology market has seen significant growth, valued at $105.48 billion in 2021 and projected to reach $436.68 billion by 2030. This growth is driven by the increasing acceptance of online learning, especially accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which pushed many pupils and educators to digital platforms to continue their education and teaching without disruptions.

AI-enabled tools can revolutionise global education technology changing the way pupils learn and teachers teach. Below are three practical applications of ed tech tools:

1. Personalised learning – AI has the potential to tailor educational experiences to each pupil’s unique needs, preferences and learning styles. By analysing data on pupils’ performance, attitudes and behaviour, AI systems can create customised learning paths, recommend resources, and adjust the pace of teaching. This allows teachers to leverage AI without experiencing burnout. Such a personalised approach ensures that all pupils can grasp concepts more effectively, regardless of their learning differences, and remain engaged in their educational journey.

2. Intelligent tutoring systems – Educators can deliver personalised one-on-one lessons to students using Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS), which is particularly advantageous for neurodivergent learners. These systems provide immediate feedback, identify areas where students face difficulties, and offer additional practice or explanations. ITS can replicate the experience of having a personal tutor without the significant cost for parents and institutions, making high-quality education more accessible to a broader range of pupils. For instance, Carnegie Cognitive Tutor can deliver personalised and immediate feedback, aiding pupils in understanding complex concepts more effectively throughout their learning journey.

3. Administrative productivity – AI can significantly reduce administrative tasks in schools, allowing educators to focus more on teaching and less on paperwork. Ed tech tools can automate tasks such as grading, scheduling, and managing student records. For example, AI can instantly grade multiple-choice tests and even mark structured written assignments much faster than human counterparts, saving hundreds of hours each year for educators and enhancing the school’s operational efficiency. For example, Education Copilot is ideal for creating quality, structured lesson plans for any subject, lesson or concept. It offers an AI lesson planner that can create lesson plans, presentations, and more, aligning activities, resources and assessments with learning objectives.

LessonPlans.ai helps in creating high-quality lesson plans with engaging activities and resources. Teachers can provide a detailed description of the lesson they want to create, and the AI generates a tailored plan to their needs.

ChatGPT is a large language model capable of answering questions, helping with tasks, and generating creative content. It can generate lesson plans with learning objectives and activities based on the details provided.

Ethical AI development
It is crucial to establish responsible AI from the outset to guide current AI education developments, thereby paving the way for successful AI projects in the future.

It is imperative to address the constantly evolving nature of AI. It has the tendency to take on human biases and amplify them, causing people who use that AI to become more biased themselves. As this could affect the lives of pupils, ethics should be at the forefront of AI developments in education. To maximise the return on investment from AI while minimising downsides, it is essential to implement AI governance, trust and risk management systems in educational institutions.

Managing AI governance primarily involves several key processes: obtaining insights into the future of education, developing value-driven use cases for the institutions and pupils, achieving tactical objectives, and scaling operations to deliver educational value to pupils while generating profits for institutions. Every educational institution must establish a solid foundation with structured approaches to manage unanticipated risks.

The importance of transparency, fairness and accountability
Ensuring continuous transparency in the implementation for AI in the educational sector is vital. Controlling the AI model is imperative to managing how data is handled. Also, transparency concerns should encompass all stages of the model’s life cycle, including public data, confidential or private data, intellectual property, and copyrighted or generated synthetic data used in training.

Biases or prejudices inherent in human-collected data often find their way into AI models and the educational sector is not exempt. We can address these biases starting with educators being consciously fair in their day-to-day activities, so we have a decisive solution that can cap biases. Educators can diversify the training data for more representation or cap the data which will not help in arriving at useful decisions. Synthetic data can be helpful in minimising biases if used appropriately.

Given that AI models, particularly GenAI, are used in high-risk areas like education, the potential for harm when these systems make errors is significant. This raises the question of accountability and to what extent each party is responsible. The EU AI Act has stringent guidelines for systems in this category. But it’s vital for educators to take responsibility for their choices and exercise controls wherever possible to prevent errors or, better yet, avoid them altogether.

There is rising global pressure for educational institutions to maintain an AI registry that details all the measures they took for ethical AI development to be made available. This became a mandatory requirement from 2 February this year. Transparency, fairness and accountability are essential to mitigating risks, enhancing trust, and ensuring that AI systems line up with educational values and regulatory requirements.

A brighter future for generations to come
AI is destined to play a predominant role in shaping the future of our educational sectors – whether we like it or not. AI is ready to enhance the lives of educators, pupils and learners. The impact of AI surpasses simple convenience, holding the promise to address some of the most critical challenges faced by humanity. But what is clear is that these advancements must align harmoniously with our own growth and progress.

As we progress through 2025, it is crucial for school boards to embrace AI optimistically and responsibly. By integrating AI thoughtfully into our lives, we can ensure a brighter future for the next generations.

Rosemary J Thomas is a senior technical researcher at software company AI Labs Version 1

Rosemary Thomas