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Artificial intelligence should be kept out of classrooms, a royal family member and actor has said.
Sophie Winkleman, styled as Lady Frederick Windsor, also suggested schools should bring back blackboards and chalk instead of relying on smartboards as she spoke at a centre-right political gathering in east London.
The actress, known for playing Big Suze in Channel 4 comedy Peep Show, has previously leant to her support to a ban on under-16s from having smartphones, and was a supporter of strengthening the Online Safety Act.
She told the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference at London’s Excel Centre that there is talk of “AI being pumped into our classrooms with children’s data being harvested to better improve the AI”.
“Why?” she asked, adding: “The fact that AI will soon outperform humans in many areas means schools should be backing away from the neurological junk food of digital learning, alert to the fact that it’s counterproductive to learn anyway from an instantly ageing system, and teaching their pupils the deeply human skills, which AI will have a harder time replacing.”
She listed “empathy, concentration, eloquent and humorous discussion, and creative expression” among the skills AI could not teach.
The actor continued to question the use of AI in schools, adding: “Why is digitally transporting a child to the Egyptian pyramids better than that child imagining it?
“This kind of jazz-hands immersion as an engagement tool doesn’t work.
“It negates the need to imagine, rendering the pupil a passive rather than an active learner.”
Elsewhere, as she criticised the rollout of educational technology, Winkleman said there was “no consensus” that interactive smartboards, used across in classrooms across the country, are “safe”.
As she signalled she wanted to see a return to analogue learning, she said smartboards are “simply not as effective as a teacher writing out what is in that second being explained on the black and whiteboard”.
“Yet we seem to be marching into a world where screens are replacing books,” she added.
