Artificial intelligence in schools: Towards a democratic future

The introduction of artificial intelligence in education (AIED) is likely to have a profound impact on the lives of children and young people. This article explores the different types of artificial intelligence (AI) systems in common use in education, their social context and their relationship with the growth of commercial knowledge monopolies. This in turn is used to highlight data privacy rights issues for children and young people, as defined by the 2018 General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). The article concludes that achieving a balance between fairness, individual pedagogic rights (Bernstein, 2000), data privacy rights and effective use of data is a difficult challenge, and one not easily supported by current regulation. The article proposes an alternative, more democratically aware basis for artificial intelligence use in schools.