A whole new world

The AI tools that have spread through every sector of the economy have permeated education, too. Used by students and teachers alike, they have landed with a seismic impact in classrooms across the country. And in too many cases, for the worse. In STEM classrooms, teachers report students leaning on AI for homework, misunderstanding its outputs, and skipping the struggle that builds lasting skills. The AI genie has clearly escaped the bottle for good, so the job now is transform it from a destabilizing risk to learning into a pillar of support for teachers and students. Here are some ideas for how to support this effort.

The upside of AI

AI’s promise for STEM education is real. Advocates highlight several benefits that, if realized, could transform how students learn and how teachers teach.

Personalized support. AI tutors can provide instant feedback, adapt explanations to a student’s level, and allow practice at an individualized pace. This kind of customization has long been out of reach in crowded classrooms.
Teacher relief. Grading, quiz generation, and lesson planning all take time that could be spent working directly with students. AI can ease this burden, freeing teachers for high-value interactions.
Enhanced visualization. AI-driven simulations and models can help students see molecular structures, manipulate data sets, or test engineering designs virtually, making abstract concepts more accessible.
Preparation for the workforce. Perhaps most important, AI literacy is rapidly becoming a core skill across all professions. Future engineers, doctors, business leaders, and data scientists alike will need to understand how AI works, what it can do, and where it fails.

Some real-world AI success stories

In short, AI holds out the promise of more personalized, engaging, and relevant STEM education. Some examples of how it can happen:

AI as a Teaching Tool
In a fifth-grade classroom in Lexington, teacher Donnie Piercey asked students to “compete” with ChatGPT. Students wrote text alongside AI-generated passages, then edited and compared both versions. The activity turned AI into a teaching tool, encouraging critical thinking and sharpening students’ ability to critique and improve written work. Here, AI became a scaffold for learning, not a replacement.
Pre-Service Teachers and Lesson Planning
Studies of pre-service teachers in science education courses found AI tools helped reduce cognitive load and streamline lesson planning. These future STEM teachers used AI to brainstorm examples, generate problem scenarios, and test teaching strategies. Rather than doing the thinking for them, AI provided a support structure that allowed them to focus on pedagogy.
Collaboration with AI “Classmates”
In an experimental course, pre-service science teachers worked with AI “speakers” as part of group learning activities. Acting as a peer participant, the AI sparked discussion, surfaced misconceptions, and supported more interactive dialogue. The outcome: better pedagogical knowledge and more robust collaboration skills.

What’s not so great

The flip side is that these benefits remain mostly conditional or just isolated breakthroughs. The risks, by contrast, are already showing up in classrooms every day.

Erosion of foundational skills. College students report using AI to complete STEM problem sets without attempting them independently. While this produces the right answers, it eliminates the productive struggle essential for mastering complex problem-solving in math, physics, and engineering. AI here becomes a crutch, not a tool.
Academic integrity challenges. Surveys show many teachers view AI more as a liability than an asset. They report struggling to know whether students’ work represents their own thinking or simply AI output. Traditional homework assignments, once reliable indicators of understanding, no longer serve that role. In another study, teachers describe a sense of distrust—unsure whether student work is authentic, uncertain how to evaluate understanding, and struggling to keep pace with technology that undermines existing practices.
Misinformation and bias. In another study, students leaned on ChatGPT as a virtual physics tutor. While often correct, the AI sometimes introduced subtle errors—and, when pressed, turned accurate answers into incorrect ones. Students who trusted AI blindly left with misconceptions, weakening rather than strengthening their skills.
Teacher readiness gaps. Most teachers haven’t been trained to use AI effectively in STEM classrooms. Without guidance, they’re left to experiment—or to ignore the technology altogether.
Equity issues. Access to high-quality AI tools varies widely between schools. Well-resourced districts experiment with new technologies, while underfunded schools risk falling further behind.

These risks are not speculative. They are here, reshaping classroom practice before schools have had time to adapt.

Context Is Everything

What emerges from these examples is a simple truth: context determines outcomes.

In classrooms where teachers structure AI use—asking students to critique its outputs, using it for brainstorming, or guiding its role in group learning—AI becomes a powerful scaffold. It amplifies creativity, personalization, and engagement.

In classrooms where AI use is unmonitored, unstructured, or treated as a shortcut, it becomes a crutch. Students bypass the very work STEM education is designed to cultivate, and teachers lose confidence in their assessments.

The difference between AI as a positive force and AI as a destabilizing risk isn’t the technology itself. It’s how it’s introduced, framed, and supervised.

AI & Your Career helps students prepare for the future

The fact is that every field students might enter—engineering, medicine, law, business, public service—will be shaped by artificial intelligence. AI literacy is a ground-level requirement for any new entrant to the workforce. Students need to learn how AI works, how to question its accuracy, how to recognize bias, and how to use it as an aid rather than a substitute. Furthermore, students need help to connect this kind of learning to the broader world of work.

Our career guide, AI & Your Career, can support educators in this work. It shows high school students how AI is transforming career paths in engineering, data science, healthcare, cybersecurity, and more, all the while highlighting opportunities where human skills remain essential. Sharing this guide with students not only builds awareness of future opportunities but also reinforces the very adaptations schools need to make: teaching AI literacy, emphasizing critical thinking over rote answers, and preparing students to thrive in an AI-rich workforce.

Please be in touch if you’d like to learn more about the guide or receive a digital review copy. You can also find it on our website, along with the free student workbook that goes along with it.

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Eric Iversen is VP for Learning and Communications at Start Engineering. Comments and feedback are always welcome.

Our goal at Start Engineering is to help make STEM careers imaginable and accessible to kids of all backgrounds and interests. We publish educational and career outreach books in STEM fields like AI, data science, cybersecurity, biotechnology, and engineering. Check out our newest releases here!

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