In Depth: AI Enters the Classroom, Sparking a Debate Over the Soul of Education

(Doha, Qatar) ― For years, artificial intelligence was a fringe topic at the World Education Innovation Summit. Today, it’s the only one that seems to matter.

“If you go back before 2023, AI wasn’t really a hot topic,” said Evren Tok, an associate dean at Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s College of Public Policy and a five-time attendee of the summit, known as WISE. Now, he said, it’s a different world. “I always think of it as a negotiation going on. How much do we negotiate in terms of the use of AI? Is it just taking it right away and then plugging it into our systems, or looking at what kind of the humanity needs at this critical juncture? We are experiencing an unprecedented, very unknown situation.”