Since the debut of ChatGPT and with the public’s growing familiarity with generative artificial intelligence (AI), the education community has been debating its promises and perils. Rather than wait for a decade to conduct a postmortem on the failures and opportunities of AI, the Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education embarked on a yearlong global study —a premortem— to understand the potential negative risks that generative AI poses to students, and what we can do now to prevent these risks, while maximizing the potential benefits of AI.

After interviews, focus groups, and consultations with over 500 students, teachers, parents, education leaders, and technologists across 50 countries, a close review of over 400 studies, and a Delphi panel, we find that at
this point in its trajectory, the risks of utilizing generative AI in children’s education overshadow its benefits. This is largely because the risks of AI differ in nature from its benefits — that is, these risks undermine children’s foundational development — and may prevent the benefits from being realized.