NEW technology is always heralded by two contradictory, yet both valid, views. Firstly, it will replace us and lead to mass job losses and secondly, it will free us, allowing us to pursue more leisurely pursuits while robots complete arduous tasks.

The same debate is currently being fought in the sphere of education. The rising popularity of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots such as ChatGTP has led to some denouncing AI and some heralding it as a labour-saving device.

The current Education Secretary Gillian Keegan told an international meeting of international education ministers — not teachers, she won’t talk to us — about her views on the role of AI in education.

She claimed that AI could “radically reduce the amount of time teachers spend marking” and “take much of the heavy lifting out of compiling lesson plans.”

This should be a reason to jump for joy: high teacher workload is one of the main causes of stress and the ongoing teacher retention crisis. Only I am a bit more sceptical.

Maybe I am a cynic, but whenever a Tory minister tells me that something is going to make my life better I automatically think “What’s the catch?” Recently the catch with government-proposed workload reduction strategies is that it also comes with a reduction in teacher autonomy and professionalism — for example, centralised lesson plans and scripted lessons.

There is always the worry that technology will simply replace us. If it can be used to ease workloads, where does this stop? In the ongoing pay dispute, it is easy to picture a scenario where the education secretary starts using AI as a threat: “If you don’t like the wages then we'll replace you with AI.”

This reminds me of the story of the union leader, Walter Reuther, being shown around a Ford car factory and the boss gestures to the robots and says: “How are you going to collect union dues from these guys?” Reuther obviously understands his dialectical materialism because he replies: “How are you going to get them to buy Fords?” Capitalism is, of course, its own gravedigger.

Technology has the ability to reduce workload and increase the productivity of labour. Historically though, under capitalism, the benefits of technological progress are often captured by the owners of capital, who use it to further increase their profits at the expense of workers. I have a sneaking suspicion that a form of this will happen in education.

We no longer have to provide detailed lesson plans nor do we have to mark every book every day as we did when I started (thank god). But, I do not feel like I suddenly have more free time — instead there are “deep dives,” and “curriculum intent documents,” etc.

The other question is, do we want AI marking pupil work? I hate marking as much as the next teacher but have to admit that there is a benefit to a human reading an essay and giving detailed feedback.

The key point is that we need to be given time and resources to ensure this is done well. A reduction in class size and an increase in planning, preparation and assessment allocation would solve this problem.

A few other problems with AI are often raised. Firstly, pupils will use it to cheat. Undoubtedly this is true. The same argument was had when Wikipedia was first introduced and I am sure when the first encyclopaedia was written.

Some pupils already plagiarise work and it is also usually pretty easy to spot. Teachers will learn to adapt to this new technology as they have done in the past. What is more important is to teach pupils how to use it effectively for research.

This leads me to the next issue with AI: it makes stuff up. I spent a good hour of my life trying to find the source for the quote “Rise with your class not out of it.” Using ChatGTP and Google Bard I managed to find that it was written by Eugene Debs, John Maclean, Jimmy Reid — and a number of others. Answers on a postcard who it was (but no using Google to look it up).

More concerning to me is the potential for AI to reinforce cultural hegemony. AIs are only as good as the texts they are trained on. By only training on mainstream texts, they risk simply reproducing the dominant culture and worldview. This in turn means we will see the reproduction of prejudice and bias.

To paraphrase Lenin, there can be no “impartial” AI in a society based on class struggle. This is before we consider the likelihood that AI will fall foul of the censors if people began to use it for revolutionary means — or even just to improve the lives of the working classes.

More likely it will be co-opted by capital. Many technologies today that are in the hands of billionaire tech “entrepreneurs” started life as the dreams of small, radically minded groups.

Of course, technology is, at its heart, not neutral but a product of class relations of the society that invents it. The same as the large machines in the cotton mills of the past. In the hands of a progressive society, they could be a tool for the emancipation of the working class.

We should not therefore simply write AI off as a threat to our livelihoods nor should we naively see it as a tool for the democratisation of society in and of itself — a step towards “fully automated luxury communism” perhaps — instead we should view it as a tool that will one day work for us but only if this new means of production is in the hands of those who create the wealth in society: the workers.

Robert Poole is the editor of Education for Tomorrow — @Education4Tomo1.