Spencer Launches New Initiative on AI and Education

Our AI and Education Initiative, led by Sepehr Vakil, is designed to re-envision possibilities for education in an era when new technologies are fundamentally reshaping the educational landscape—influencing how educators teach, how young people and adults learn, and how educational institutions run. These technologies are a source of great promise as well as concern, particularly around how they will impact equity in education systems and our most vulnerable communities. Scholars have identified areas of teaching and learning that AI could potentially benefit, from supporting teacher learning to reducing the administrative burden in schools. They have also identified a range of challenges, from a widening digital divide to algorithmically driven bias and discrimination to the environmental costs of computationally demanding AI systems. Rigorous research is necessary to properly weigh these concerns while remaining open to the potential for AI to positively transform educational systems from early childhood to higher education and beyond.

Activities under the AI & Education initiative will:

• Support novel research on key, forward-leaning topics on AI and education; 

• Cultivate new connections and collaborations between researchers, the tech industry, policymakers, and educators; and 

• Broaden the public discourse on AI and education.

Our website includes more details about the type of research we are looking to fund through this initiative.