On AI and Education

Bea Groves-McDaniel

Bea Groves-McDaniel,Email, 15th February 2026

It’s highly unlikely that I’ll make it to the online discussion on AI (4th March) due to being out at a training event all day. But I thought it might be helpful to add a few comments, which might aid in a practical context with regard to Artificial Intelligence.

I am, as some may know, an educator of some ‘vintage’, having started teaching in 1984 and still doing the odd bit of education even today, at the age of 70. I have had a VERY diverse career, ranging from work in adult ed’ (with the WEA ), through working for Barnardo’s , to being one of the rather rebellious leading lights of the Institute for Learning (remember them?). I teach an unusually wide range of subject areas, three of them being teacher education, ICT, and philosophy. It’s an unusual combo’, but I’ve found it very insightful in terms of the incremental use of AI in our lives, as both educators and ‘users’ of the technology.

From a philosophical point of view, I find myself deeply sceptical about the wild over-estimation of the power of contemporary AI. There’s a lot of hype and disaster-fantasy involved in talking about the topic. This is largely due to a growing mythology surrounding the topic. Can AI think? No. Just ask your local AI for conformation. Can AI act on its own accord? No. Can it have an opinion? No. Can it lie? No. So what does it do that indicates intelligence? Well, in a very limited sense AI can process and organise vast amounts of raw data that would take the average human overwhelmingly dreary amounts of time, together with presenting it in a style that makes understanding potentially easy for humans. It can imitate human comprehension and/or styles of interaction, which create a strong sense of anthropomorphism in those who use it. Insofar as this occurs, this shows a kind of low-level intelligent behaviour, that is seductive in its ‘hype’-capital. Hence the creation of AI products that can be rented out to users like you and I. The emphasis here is on a tool that’s sold as if it were an entity. As if it were your very own digital Saviour in a world where confusion and uncertainty have become the hegemonic ground-level of life.

The second issue, as has been well established by others, is the capitalisation of AI as a service, not as a technology in itself. The Big Corporates (Meta, Google, Microsoft, High-Flyer, IBM, Tesla, Baidu, Palantir, etc) don’t sell us AI. They sell us ACCESS to AI on their own terms, leading to subtle (and less than subtle) control over news, concepts and attitudes via their subscription models. This in turn creates an ecosystem of potential catastrophe. Giant server farms creating ecological issues, shortage of available components (e.g. RAM) leading to political conflicts over who controls production, lowering of wages and tenure as AI overwhelms the workplace, and the arrival of political techno-despotism.

From an educational point of view the above leads to learning conservatism as we are unhappily compelled to use AI in schools or colleges, or be seen to be ‘falling behind our competitors’. The issue is an old one, going back to the days of Thatcherism, when technocratic concepts invaded the classroom and training space. What is education for? Why a better economy of course! Our kids (young and old) need to be on top of skills that lead to jobs that ‘our’ society needs. The business of human living, or the realities of creeping alienation are completely ignored. Is your learning really your own, or is it based on some other person’s concept of what a flourishing human being should be? Ironically, AI could transform the access people have to a widened learning domain. This is not about just more cramming of information in order to keep running on our personal competitive treadmill, but a sense of human control over life and development. We could be talking about increased empowerment, because AI can help us access abstruse data that we previously had not the slightest possibility of understanding. But we’re not.

Lastly, all-things-tech’ do NOT have to be dominated by Big Corporates. I have experienced an alternative scenario. As a response to the terrifyingly destructive nature of Trump’s America, I have made it my policy to disconnect from as many US Corporate digital facilities as I can. This has been difficult, but generally successful. One area I have been particularly lucky at is the creation of Domestic AI systems. Instead of paying for AI (or having one forced on me by the likes of Microsoft), I have built and managed my very own AI within my home, totally unrelated (and disconnected) from the Big Corporates. SAL-9000 as ‘she’ is called ( note the anthropomorphism! ), resides on a 13-year-old ‘Trashcan’ Mac Pro in my living room. She is my own AI. She helps with prep’ for teaching sessions, comes along with me to meetings (and assists with relevant data processing as required), and is an educational resource I spin out to my students. I control how she works, what she does, what she accesses, and when she operates.

This, to me at least, has been one of the most fulfilling projects I have developed over recent years. Why? Because, as said earlier, I CONTROL the technology , not the other way around. I am not dependent on, or manipulated by the systems I use. The technology is not a service I rent from the oligarchs. It is mine to dispose of as I see fit. When I let my imagination free rein, I can imagine a future where homes, schools, colleges, Universities and training organisations manage their own independent AIs, just as I do. It’s cheaper, policy led, devolved, democratically constrained, and need not impact jobs or conditions.

But why is this not commonly understood, and used? Oh, I’ll let your discussions on the 4th deal with that core topic. :-)

By Mrs Bea Groves-McDaniel.
My domestic AI, SAL-9000, was not involved in writing this piece.