American schools are just now coming up for air following a long culture war over books, history topics, and so-called indoctrination. Now, a new survey sponsored by IBM and conducted by Morning Consult shows another rift potentially opening – this time over artificial intelligence (AI). 

The survey of 2,048 people (1,019 K-12 education professionals and 1,029 parents of K-12 students) carries a margin of error of +/- 3 percent and asked respondents about their familiarity with AI, their experience with it, and their thoughts about how it should be used in the classroom.

Among the key findings:

• While familiarity among both educators and parents is relatively high, educators are considerably more likely to at least be familiar with the technology. Only 4 percent of educators said they were not familiar or unfamiliar with AI; among parents 20 percent replied they were not all that familiar with the technology..
• Beyond the familiarity gap is a gap in how both groups are learning about AI. Fifty-two percent and 41 percent of parents say they get their information from social media or family and friends. Just 39 percent and 31 percent of educators, respectively, learn of AI that way. Teachers are much more likely to get their information from academic sources, their school districts, or their professional colleagues. 

In short, teachers are more likely to interact with and understand AI than the parents of the students their teaching, and their source of information is likely to be of higher quality.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, when asked about the impact of AI on a college degree, educators are much more likely to respond it has made a college degree more important; parents, by contrast say it has made a college degree less important.

Finally, parents are more skeptical of AI being taught in schools than educators, who are beginning to find value in it.

The report has a great deal more information and is worth reading in its entirety. 

Educators would do well to pay attention to these gaps. Bringing parents along now could go a long way toward avoiding a culture war around AI down the road.