Back to school in the UAE, with AI on the syllabus

As students around the UAE head back to classrooms today, or during this week, their summer breaks will become memories as they heed the call of the scholarly world, and return to a routine of early rising, time tables, classmates, homework and school runs.

For children, teachers, staff, and parents, the first few days of a new academic year - or a new academic term, in some cases - are often a demanding, yet exciting readjustment considering that another significant chapter in the development of young people will have begun.

Quite apart from the usual differences that accompany every school year - a new syllabus for a new grade and new faces - a number of other changes lie in store this year in the UAE: the introduction of Arabic, the aligning of school holidays with national holidays (which often determines their parents' time off from work), and perhaps most consequential for their futures, the introduction of AI learning into the curriculum.

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There's no denying the effect that AI has had on numerous sectors globally just in the past few years. The opportunities and challenges that AI has created keep becoming more apparent, as the world tries to keep apace of this disruptive change.

On a national level, the UAE has been quick to adapt to the potential of AI and has in a relatively short period of time become a global leader in harnessing the possibilities of a rapidly changing technology.

A prime example is the world's first AI university, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence. This year, MBZUAI has begun undergraduate courses, from previously only accepting post-graduate students. That in itself demonstrates a quick pivot of a secondary education system adapting to a demand for AI specialists in the future.

At the primary level, the introduction of AI learning has come not a day too soon. The UAE has been working diligently to adapt an entire education system around AI, increasingly indispensable to modern lives. It is only fitting then that pupils this semester onwards begin to prepare and are imparted with the skills they will need to navigate this dynamic concept that educators and parents are still learning about.

"AI is fundamentally different from previous technological shifts, demanding a unique response," UAE Minister of Education Sarah Al Amiri wrote in these pages earlier this year.

She wrote: "Our priority must be AI literacy among students, teachers and parents. We need a collective understanding of how AI tools operate and are trained; potential biases and ethical challenges; safe, critical and effective AI use; and how to leverage AI to enhance human skills and productivity."

When social media and smartphones became common more than a decade ago, there was no formal framework at the school level to help still-developing minds understand and cope with the risks and consequences of their online behaviour, as they adopted these new technologies.

That is an example to learn from, in honing the human capacity to use AI wisely, as it becomes ever more central to our lives and will possibly only more so in the adult lives of the children still in school uniforms.

Dr Sonia Ben Jaafar, chief executive of the Abdulla Al Ghurair Foundation, told The National: "We're not handing kids tablets and walking away. We're helping them ask better questions – who built this tool, what values are embedded in it and how do we shape it?"

With knowledge often stated on equal terms as power, equipping pupils from an early age with a solid and comprehensive grounding in AI is necessary on many levels. Perhaps not least because it may be the tool that they most grow to rely on in a complex future that lies ahead.

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