Show Notes
What does AI mean for the way young people relate to each other and to technology itself? That's the focus of the conversation in this episode when Daniel speaks with Jonathan Baggaley, CEO of the PSHE Association and former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. It begins, perhaps unexpectedly, with a Sun Ra poster. Jono uses it to make a point that runs through everything that follows. That is, many of the narratives about AI are being presented as inevitable, and educators have both the right and the responsibility to push back on that. PSHE has been on a long road to statutory recognition in England. Jono maps that journey from the near-miss of the 2010 election wash-up to the introduction of compulsory Relationships, Sex and Health Education in 2019. The results are becoming visible. Between 2022 and last year, the share of young people rating their RSE as good or very good roughly doubled. Yet the subject now faces a technology landscape that changes faster than any curriculum can follow, and it was never designed for that. Much of the conversation focuses on something schools have been slow to address, which is the emotional attachment to AI chatbots. Evidence from a Reddit study found that 60–70% of people who had developed an AI relationship hadn't gone looking for one. They'd simply been chatting. Jono explains this isn't surprising as humans are neurologically primed to anthropomorphise from infancy, attributing intention and agency to moving shapes before they can speak. Even Jono, who understands exactly what large language models are, has caught himself feeling the presence of something in a chatbot conversation. The question is how schools can build resilience to that instinct by giving young people the understanding they need to use them critically. Language, Jono argues, is part of the problem. The word "chatbot" suggests conversation, when what's actually happening is an engagement with a probabilistic automation system. Shifting that framing is one starting point. Another is cross-curricular. Computing can explain the move from rule-based to data-driven AI, citizenship can explore the environmental and geopolitical implications, and PSHE can build on its existing relationships curriculum to examine what young people are and aren't getting from these interactions. The episode sits with a harder question too. Consumer AI is designed for frictionless ease, age verification is often a checkbox, and young people will encounter these tools whether schools introduce them or not. But Jono is clear-eyed about what the evidence shows. When young people genuinely understand what they're dealing with and what they're trading away, they are willing to increase their own friction.
None of this requires a new policy or a perfect tool. The conversation is the intervention, and any curriculum that starts with the human already has what it needs.
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Foundational Impact is a Good Future Foundation podcast exploring how artificial intelligence is changing education. Through conversations with people whose work is shaping the direction education takes next, we examine the evidence, the challenges facing schools and the decisions being made across the sector. Hosted by Daniel Emmerson. Follow Foundational Impact on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Website: www.goodfuture.foundation
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