AI – Friend, Foe or Frenemy?

Background

It’s hard to believe that Chat-GPT3 only arrived only four years ago in November 2020. This introduction to the general public of Generative Artificial Intelligence (G-AI) has been called the most important technological development since electricity. The use of Large Language Models (LLMs) to produce materials has exploded across all domains, including education, raising important technological, ethical, workload and curriculum questions.

Potential

The potential for G-AI is exciting, offering a reduction in workload, the removal of tedious or receptive tasks, the development of materials and exciting tools for research. When thinking about using G-AI the first question to ask is, “what can the technology do?”. The DfE (2025) suggests several possible uses: creating equational resources, lessons and curriculum planning, feedback and revision activities, administrative tasks, supporting personalised learning.
As you consider your own workload in this area the next question should be, “what would I like the technology do to?”. It might be time-consuming administrative tasks; it might be the construction of multiple-choice questions for formative assessment; it might be summarising documents or research papers for easier assess or one of the many other possibilities. These will only increase over the next few years.

Pitfalls

However, whilst there may be considerable benefits in education, and the wider world, in the use of AI, G-AI and even AGI (Artificial General Intelligence)* there are pitfalls. If the technology replaces even a percentage of existing jobs, then this will cause problems unless this is addressed in other ways. The use of G-AI does challenge the role of the teacher. Also, there are a growing number of lawsuits over the scraping of data to build LLMs and the issues this raises over copyright and intellectual property rights (IPR). Added to this is the question of truth and veracity that ‘deepfake’ AI is already causing and is likely to be hijacked for nefarious purposes. In education there is significant concern in the use of G-AI by pupils to cheat or sidestep the process of assignment production whilst current plagiarism tools are struggling to identify work produced in this way.

Is there a special place for RE?

The technology is moving very quickly, in only the first two months of 2025 we have DeepSeek (China) and le Chat (France). However, there are ‘big questions’ that need to be considered. Larry Page, founder of Google, has called for stronger regulation of AI even potentially building in a kill switch.

Religious Education has always been the subject in school that welcomes engagement with controversial issues and ‘big questions’ and the ethical and human questions thrown up by G-AI are ones where RE might have a unique place in the school curriculum to explore. In a survey in 2024 (Green et al.) 24% of teens and young adults were concerned about cheating or stealing and 22% about privacy – important ethical and human areas to explore.

Conclusion

We are only at the beginning of this process, but the technology is not going away – there is great potential and some serious concerns and questions but I do believe that the technology can be used to make teacher lives better and reduce working and also that RE is places to ‘reach the parts others disciples cannot’

For more on this area and some exemplars and application ideas, an implantation model and model policies see here.  Also on this page is a link to a survey for RE teachers – it would be great if you could complete this.

*Note: AGI is idea of a machine that can learn and understand any intellectual task a human can.

References

Green, A; Trench A and Weinstein (2024) Teens and young adult perspectives on generative-AI: Patterns of use, excitements and concerns. Common Sense Media. Bellwether.

DfE (2025) Generative-AI in education. HMSO. London.