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Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

reuters.com

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Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#3

Post by embedding-shape »

jenthoven wrote: post #2

Surprised to read this as Norway also has Sikt AI for schools, where teachers can monitor how AI systems are used. Seems like it has both embraced AI and banned it.

> Seems like it has both embraced AI and banned it.

Indeed, seemingly they done so by age/educational progression:

> Pupils from first through seventh grade, aged 6 to 13, should as a general rule not be using AI, while those in lower secondary school, aged 14 to 16, can cautiously adopt tools under teachers' supervision, the government said. In upper secondary education, from ages 17 to 19, students should learn to use AI appropriately so that they are prepared for further education and work, it added.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#6

Post by FloorEgg »

Wouldn't it matter a lot how AI is being used?

I would assume if children are allowed to use AI without rails as a shortcut it will undermine their learning, and it's used for feedback and as a patient tutor it would accelerate their learning?

It seems like the problem is that they don't have the science and tooling to use it constructively at scale, so the desperate solution is to ban it outright until a scalable constructive approach is understood?

The article doesn't explain any of this directly...

It's frustrating to me when bold statements are directed at "AI" holistically and vaguely, completely ignoring any nuance.

There is a massive gap between letting elementary students free reign use chatGPT 3.5 (hallucinations and all) to do whatever, vs using a very guard-railed pedagogically optimized app powered by a SOTA model to support students in a specific way that accelerates good outcomes.

Most respectful interpretation is that the leaders know this and have a plan to figure it out, but for some reason it's not making it's way into this article. Is the absence representative of the truth of the situation, or some editors choice to pile on to a holistic anti-ai narrative?

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#7

Post by JumpCrisscross »

FloorEgg wrote: post #6

Wouldn't it matter a lot how AI is being used? I would assume if children are allowed to use AI without rails as a shortcut it will undermine their learning, and it's used for feedback and as a patient tutor it would accelerate their learning? It seems like the problem is that they don't have the science and tooling to use it constructively at scale, so the desperate solution is to ban it outright until a scalable co…

> it's used for feedback and as a patient tutor it would accelerate their learning?

We have mounting evidence AI hurts learning and cognition in many circumstances. I have not yet seen similar-quality evidence for it helping.

Given that balance, restricting AI in education in the general population (while studying how to best deploy it) seems prudent. Especially given the Norwegian approach, which gradually introduces AI as kids get older.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#8

Post by morkalork »

Social media execs are already known for keeping their children off their platforms* and even phones so my question is: Do the leading ML/AI people let their children interact with LLMs yes or no?

[*] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/13/youtubes-ceo-is-latest-tech-...

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#9

Post by JumpCrisscross »

petcat wrote: post #4

I wonder if at some point we will look back on stuff like this as back in the 1990s schools banning internet research and search engines. Obviously that seems ridiculous now, but the internet was big and scary back then too.

Those bans were implemented without evidence. We have evidence AI exposure reduces learning and cognition. There are probably situations where it enhances it. But we haven’t delineated those yet, and so shouldn’t be rolling out a half-baked system more likely to hurt than to help.
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