THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE ETFO IN CONVERSATION WITH AI AND EDUCATION EXPERT PHIL MCRAE
W
herever you are online these days, it seems that AI is right there beside you, popping up on your screen. Tere are so many uses for this technology, but like every technol- ogy, it brings new challenges and consider-
ations. Tis is especially true in education. Phil McRae is a self- described ranch kid from Pincher Creek, Alberta. He is also the associate coordinator of government research at the Alberta Teachers’ Association, and he studies and speaks on the use of artificial intelligence in education.
Meagan Perry: I understand that AI is always evolving, but as we speak today, how do you define AI? What role is it playing in classrooms?
Phil McRae: Artificial intelligence is just that, artificial. It really just takes what human beings have done and repackages it in real time. I was recently named special adviser to the secretary general of
Education International on artificial intelligence and education, and I also hold an adjunct professorship at the University of Alberta. I’ve been doing research on the impact of AI on classrooms for the last nine years, working with scholars and researchers who can help us navigate this technology as it unfolds in classrooms. We’re seeing three things that artificial intelligence is being used
for. Te first is writing and editing support. Te second is lesson planning. We’re seeing lots of teachers using it to help shape or create a lesson plan. Te third thing that we’re seeing is the customization of learning resources, so using artificial intelligence as a mechanism to
24 ETFO VOICE | FALL 2025
help with differentiated instruction. For example, “Help me take this Grade 4 text and repackage it for a Grade 2 reading level.” Tat’s how we see it being used at this moment. Right now, artificial intelligence systems are still pretty primitive.
Classrooms are complex, teaching and learning is changing moment by moment. Tese systems don’t understand the barometric pressure in the room, or, you know, what happened in the hallway or at recess to a child; it’s just not that sophisticated. At this moment, AI is not moving in to interrupt that relational space, however, there are some examples where AI is creating tensions. In Alberta, there have been a lot of instances of plagiarism where AI is used, or there’s accusations of students not doing the writing. So, there’s a fundamental issue that’s starting to emerge.
MP: What other issues are important to consider when it comes to AI in education?
PM: I’ll give you two big ones. Te first is something we call moral passivity, which is giving up your moral decision making to an algorithm or an artificial intelligence system. I’ll give you an example. I know students in my class are struggling with literacy and yet I wait for an AI to do an analysis before I intervene. Tat’s giving up some of your intuitive decision-making. If you know what the right thing to do is, you should go ahead and do it. At a macro level, we see AI systems wanting to harvest mass
student data. Let’s say in a school jurisdiction, they take all of the Grade 3 students’ data points, literacy, numeracy, whatever has been put into a learning management system, and then somebody at the
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