AI and Education Policy: An Urgent Debate for Our Shared Future

Artificial intelligence can be found everywhere in education, even where no intentional policy decisions have been made about its use. Primary school children watch AI-generated content as a reward in class for good behaviour and university students start their assignments by appealing to “chat” for ideas. In some cases, education institutions have decided to use AI agents to mark essays – even against LLM-written marking criteria. While policymakers, academics, teachers, students, parents, and employers debate permissive versus restrictive policies on AI use, uptake has already been rapid and thorough. We are at a far later stage than we think. As educators struggle to align strategies for genuine learning with the push for building AI capability, policymakers need to grapple with the empirical evidence for how human learning works, and what this means for policy and practice at each level of the education system. Despite the speed of change and sense of haste that it brings, there have been few opportunities for sensemaking. That is, to ask, what does the advent of artificial intelligence have to say about what is unique to human intelligence? In an age of machine learning, what might human learning look like? And what choices could we make now to shape the future? To begin such a conversation, the Sydney Policy Lab is bringing together people from within the University of Sydney with diverse perspectives and areas of relevant academic expertise to have an honest exchange on the role, opportunities, and risks of AI in education: what should be permitted, what should be protected, and how do we build educational strategies that ensure real learning? What should teachers, education systems, and policymakers be doing in response to this fundamental change in the education landscape? Please join us for this panel discussion, followed by Q&A.