Lee Gaines

Nearly three in four educators say they believe AI has bigger implications for education than past technological innovations like the Internet or computers.

Mallory Newell is a senior vice president with Ipsos.

We're in an environment where teachers feel like this is going to fundamentally reshape the future of education moving forward.

The poll shows students aren't widely using AI in the classroom, at least not yet.

Meanwhile, a majority of teachers say they've used AI to help with their own work tasks.

But more than half say AI makes it harder for students to learn critical thinking skills.

And the majority also think AI is mostly just a shortcut for students to avoid doing more work.

For NPR News, I'm Leigh Gaines.

They are constantly and consistently doing everything with a pen or a pencil.

It's less harmful to me to make sure that they can do the things without the AI than to try and push the AI into my classroom.

The longer that this lasts...

it's going to place a continued strain on air traffic controllers, the stress, the pressure.

Anthropic used an automated tool to analyze 74,000 conversations professors had with its AI chatbot, Claude.

The findings show they used it for things like lesson planning and administrative tasks, and some of the conversations were about grading student work.

Mark Watkins at the University of Mississippi studies the impact of AI on higher education.

Anthropic also surveyed professors who said grading was the task that AI was least effective at.

For NPR News, I'm Leigh Gaines.