The use of Artificial Intelligence has grown tremendously in the current times. From understanding basic explanations of everyday concepts to learning complex skills like writing software programs, AI is being used for it all. People can see the benefits that AI has to offer, while also being aware of certain drawbacks it may have. AI has a vast potential in the educational field; it can be used in various ways, from administrative work to direct student engagement. Hence, it becomes essential to create guidelines for the use of AI to ensure that its use is constructive and fruitful rather than confusing and daunting.
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Using AI as an Educator
The use of AI in the education sector focuses on its integration with the traditional role of an educator as that of dispensing knowledge. This integration leads to the transformation from AI merely being a tool to being a dynamic facilitator of learning. This transformation and increased use of AI do not aim to replace the teacher, but rather expand their capabilities. To use AI for their own benefits, teachers must be equipped to not only use the AI tools but also to understand their technical, social, and ethical consequences. Therefore, this implies a collaborative approach between artificial intelligence and educators to make learning more accessible, equitable, and tailored.
Artificial intelligence emphasises an individualised focus on each student, thereby improving the understanding and learning of concepts. AI adapts according to personalised needs, providing students with tailored and targeted approaches to enhance learning. In the field of education, planning, organising, comparing, and consolidating information is primarily used by teachers. AI can help streamline these processes, making educators’ work easier, faster, and more efficient. Another big advantage of using AI as an educational guide would be its ability to provide some sort of equality in education, in terms of access to knowledge, larger research, understanding of diverse cultural expressions, etc., to people who don’t otherwise get such an opportunity (Sandford et al., 2024).
A Double-Edged Sword
Even though AI has a plethora of advantages in acting as an educational guide, including its individualised focus on students, personalised teaching methods, adaptive approach, and instant feedback, among many others, it does not come without any disadvantages. Educators, policy makers, students, and parents need to be taught how to carefully and efficiently use artificial intelligence to get all its benefits while also eliminating risks. Hence, they must be informed about its potential to transform learning as well as any harms that may occur because of it.
Benefits Of AI in Education
1. Personalised Learning
Artificial Intelligence can personalise educational learning to meet the unique needs of each student. Studies have shown that when students learn in personalised learning environments, they can remember better, have higher self-efficacy, and a positive attitude towards education. AI can thus help tailor plans and resources according to the student’s strengths, weaknesses, and learning pace (Vieriu & Petrea, 2025).
2. Improved Academic Results
This personalisation of learning leads to improvements in the students’ academic results. The 24/7 availability of AI causes students to learn whenever they want and comfortably at their own pace to revisit information. Additionally, Artificial Intelligence can process a large amount of data quickly and can then easily identify patterns and correlations. It also has a massive search power, which allows AI to incorporate a lot of knowledge into the preexisting textbook information, further improving learning (Sandford et al., 2024).
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3. Enhanced Student Engagement
AI tutoring systems provide immediate feedback and support for students to help them identify their strengths and work on their weaknesses. These teaching systems, which adapt to the students’ needs, enhance their engagement with education and improve their academic performance. Further, the increased autonomy that comes with the use of AI results in students being willing to learn, and at their own pace (Vieriu & Petrea, 2025). Moreover, research has found that independent learning, without teachers’ support, is more effective in fostering students’ critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. And this can be achieved with the help of artificial intelligence-assisted learning. This enables students to actively engage in their learning (Kundu & Bej, 2024).
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4. Cognitive Outcomes
Effective optimisation of AI enables the students’ access to vast educational resources, allowing them to correlate, form patterns, and make inferences. This integrative learning promotes an individual’s critical thinking and problem-solving skills (Kundu & Bej, 2024). Effective learning involves a combination of knowledge acquisition and skill development. Knowledge refers to things that students understand and remember, i.e., declarative information. Whereas skills refer to procedural understanding of how to perform tasks, which are developed through practice. Individuals require specific knowledge and skills in specific domains, yet certain crucial skills are applicable across various domains, i.e., transversal skills. These include communication, teamwork, resilience, problem-solving, critical thinking, etc. In the 21st century, AI literacy has become one such essential transversal skill, which may be needed by everyone in the near future (Bauer et al., 2025).
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Drawbacks
1. Overdependence on AI
AI does provide accurate responses with a single prompt, but this may cause a serious risk of over-reliance. As people’s use of AI increases, they tend to have a lesser ability to independently solve problems or think critically; they also may be unable to think creatively or self-regulate. This may result in students becoming passive recipients of information rather than active constructors of knowledge if they use artificial intelligence for everything. Thus making it essential for them to draw a line and moderate use (Kundu & Bej, 2024). Educators, policy makers, students, and parents, therefore, need to be taught how to carefully and efficiently use artificial intelligence to get all its benefits while also eliminating risks of overdependence.
2. Not a Substitute
While we know that AI is good at processes that may be more challenging for humans, such as pattern recognition and statistical analysis, it does remain weaker in aspects that come easily for humans, such as common sense, emotional detection, and value judgments. Moreover, AI can only respond to what has been asked of it; it cannot read between the lines. AI requires humans to specifically give an input, frame the problem precisely, formulate a particular question, label the data properly, etc., therefore highlighting the key role that humans play. Thus, people are now emphasising artificial intelligence to be known as augmented intelligence, especially with the huge role that humans play (Miao et al., 2021).
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3. Social Isolation as a Consequence
Excessive use of AI can lead to a lack of human interaction and thus eventually to social isolation. This is likely to occur only if AI is used as a sole means, without going to a physical classroom. Learning in the classroom is a social process and not just for acquiring knowledge. The classroom space promotes the development of essential skills like communication, cooperation, teamwork, and empathy. Hence, an AI teaching system in isolation is likely to eliminate a student’s essential interpersonal interactions, especially in critical developmental stages in childhood and adolescence (Kundu & Bej, 2024).
4. Ethical Dilemmas and Bias
AI systems are limited to the data they are trained on. Thus, if their data is limited to a certain population, it can lead to the AI system being embedded with the existing societal biases. If an AI system is built on a biased dataset, it can provide individuals with unfair or unequal informational outcomes, thereby creating a divide. This can reinforce inequalities. Additionally, data input on the AI systems can lead to a violation of various ethical standards, such as data privacy, user consent, algorithm biases, etc. (Wang et al., 2024).
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Conclusion
Hence, it can be understood that using artificial intelligence comes with its benefits as well as drawbacks. While using AI as an educational guide can help in creating personalised tutoring plans, improve academic results, enhance student engagement, and improve overall cognitive outcomes, it can also lead to some drawbacks, such as overdependence on AI, considering it to be a substitute, social isolation, and ethical violations that AI systems may have.
Thus, people are leaning towards artificial intelligence to be called augmented intelligence. Since, in the end, people themselves are the ones making sense of it, remembering the information, and applying it in the real world. Therefore, effectively integrating the use of artificial intelligence by humans can be much more beneficial. Being taught about how to carefully and efficiently use artificial intelligence can result in it being a powerful tool and an effective educational system. This makes it important for students, parents, teachers, policy-makers, and all others to understand clearly the implications of the use of artificial intelligence.
FAQs
1. How can artificial intelligence be used as an educational tool?
AI can be used as a modern learning facilitator. It aims at extending the powers of human teachers rather than fully replacing them. A collaborative approach between artificial intelligence and educators can help make education more accessible, equitable, and oriented toward individual student needs. AI can also make the teacher’s work easier, faster, and more efficient by helping them with various administrative activities and in formulating lesson plans.
2. What are the benefits of using AI as an educational guide?
The benefits of using AI as an educational guide include improved academic results by using systems that adapt to individual needs, enhancing a student’s engagement, and fostering critical thinking and problem-solving skills. AI also promotes equality in education by providing wider access to knowledge and resources.
3. What are the drawbacks of using AI as an educational guide?
Using AI as an educational guide poses the risk of overdependence, which can hinder independent thinking and creativity. Another drawback is that AI cannot replace human attributes of teaching, such as empathy and emotional support, but must rather be used in collaboration. Other concerns include social isolation due to a lack of interpersonal interaction and ethical considerations related to data privacy and discriminatory algorithmic bias.
4. How can we use AI in the future to improve learning?
In the future, we can improve learning by using AI as “augmented intelligence,” where it serves as a collaborative partner to educators, not a substitute. This involves focusing on using AI to support human instruction, developing clear ethical guidelines for its use, and training all stakeholders to ensure AI is a tool for empowerment rather than a source of over-reliance.
References +
Bauer, E., Greiff, S., Graesser, A. C., Scheiter, K., & Sailer, M. (2025). Looking beyond the hype: Understanding the effects of AI on learning. Educational Psychology Review, 37(2). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-025-10020-8
Kundu, A., & Bej, T. (2024). Psychological impacts of AI use on school students: a systematic scoping review of the empirical literature. Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning, 20, 030. https://doi.org/10.58459/rptel.2025.20030
Miao, F., Holmes, W., Huang, R., Zhang, H., & Unesco. (2021). AI and education: A guide for policymakers. UNESCO Publishing.
Sandford, A., Mulligan, B., Gittens, E., Norris, M., Fernandes, M., & Canadian Psychological Association. (2024). ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND PSYCHOLOGY BRIEFING PAPER. In the Canadian Psychological Association. https://cpa.ca/docs/File/CPD/Artificial%20Intelligence%20and%20Psychology%20E N%202024.pdf
Vieriu, A. M., & Petrea, G. (2025). The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on students’ academic development. Education Sciences, 15(3), 343. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15030343
Wang, S., Wang, F., Zhu, Z., Wang, J., Tran, T., & Du, Z. (2024). Artificial intelligence in education: A systematic literature review. Expert Systems With Applications, 252, 124167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2024.124167
