The Application and Governance of Artificial Intelligence in Basic Education

General Secretary Xi Jinping has stressed that “China attaches great importance to the profound impact of artificial intelligence on education, actively promotes the deep integration of AI and education, and facilitates educational reform and innovation,” and that we must “advance AI education across all academic stages and universal AI literacy throughout society, so as to continuously cultivate high-quality talent.” Basic education, as the starting point of talent cultivation, brings both opportunities for advancing educational modernization through its deep integration with AI, and risks and challenges in ethics, responsibility, privacy, and security. How to take precautions, maximize benefits while minimizing harms, and ensure that AI technology better serves the development of equitable and high-quality basic education is of great significance.

习近平总书记强调，“中国高度重视人工智能对教育的深刻影响，积极推动人工智能和教育深度融合，促进教育变革创新”，“推进人工智能全学段教育和全社会通识教育，源源不断培养高素质人才”。基础教育作为人才培养的起点，其与人工智能的深度融合为推进教育现代化带来机遇的同时，也引发了伦理、责任、隐私和安全等方面的风险挑战。如何未雨绸缪、趋利避害，推动人工智能技术更好地服务于发展公平而有质量的基础教育，意义重大。

I. Changes Brought by AI-Empowered Basic Education

一、人工智能赋能基础教育带来的变化

General Secretary Xi Jinping has stressed that we must “fully leverage the advantages of AI to accelerate the development of education that accompanies everyone throughout life, is equally accessible to everyone, suits everyone, and is more open and flexible.” In recent years, the application of AI in basic education has deepened, reshaping various aspects of the educational ecosystem through technological means and further promoting the digital and intelligent transformation of education.

习近平总书记强调，“充分发挥人工智能优势，加快发展伴随每个人一生的教育、平等面向每个人的教育、适合每个人的教育、更加开放灵活的教育”。近年来，人工智能在基础教育领域的应用日益深入，通过技术手段重塑教育生态的各个环节，进一步促进了教育的数字化智能化转型。

Innovation in Educational Concepts and Models. From knowledge transmission to capacity cultivation, from standardized education to personalized education, from closed education to open education, from single-discipline education to interdisciplinary education… At present, AI empowers basic education primarily by using technological means to bring about significant changes in knowledge acquisition methods and teacher-student interaction models, thereby driving profound transformations in educational concepts, training objectives, and teaching models. For example, digital technology tools can provide learning content and acquisition pathways that better match students’ learning progress, interests, and abilities, promoting the personalized development of education. This new learning model helps break down traditional evaluation systems, shifting educational goals from mere knowledge transmission to the cultivation of students’ comprehensive qualities, enhancing their thinking and innovation abilities. At the same time, teachers can use technological means to design more engaging and interactive teaching content, employing new models such as digital scenario learning, virtual-real integrated scenario learning, and human-machine collaborative learning to improve the quality and efficiency of education and teaching.

教育观念与模式的革新。从知识传授到能力培养、从标准化教育到个性化教育、从封闭式教育到开放式教育，从单一性学科教育到跨学科教育……当前，人工智能赋能基础教育，主要通过技术手段使知识获取方式、师生互动模式等发生显著变化，从而推动教育观念、培养目标和教学模式的深刻变革。比如，数字技术工具能够根据学生的学习进度、兴趣和能力提供更相匹配的学习内容和获取路径，促进教育的个性化发展。这种新的学习模式有助于打破传统评价体系，推动教育目标从单纯的知识传授向培养学生综合素质拓展，提高学生思考能力、创新能力等。同时，教师可以利用技术手段设计更具趣味性和互动性的教学内容，通过数字场景学习、虚实融合场景学习、人机协同学习等新模式，促进教育教学提质增效。

Optimization of Educational Structure and Ecology. The application of AI in basic education provides substantive support for alleviating teachers’ teaching pressure and reducing parents’ tutoring burdens, promoting the optimization of the educational ecology through technological empowerment. Various intelligent education platforms, through multimodal data collection and deep learning algorithms, can precisely analyze learners’ cognitive characteristics, learning preferences, and growth trajectories, comprehensively assisting teaching, learning, research, management, and evaluation. They enable accurate diagnosis of learning conditions and real-time answers to basic questions, further enhancing teaching efficiency and quality. At the same time, they can resolve the professional difficulties parents face in tutoring, using visualized learning reports to eliminate information asymmetry and guide family education toward scientifically informed companionship. This technological intervention, to some extent, reconstructs the home-school collaborative education model.

教育结构与生态的优化。人工智能在基础教育领域的应用，为缓解教师教学压力、减轻家长辅导负担提供了实质性支持，通过技术赋能推动教育生态优化。各类智能教育平台通过多模态数据采集和深度学习算法，可精准分析学习者的认知特征、学习偏好、成长轨迹，全方位助教、助学、助研、助管、助评，实现精准诊断学情、实时解答基础疑问等，进一步提升教学效率和质量。同时，能够破解家长辅导中的专业性困境，以可视化学习报告消除信息不对称，引导家庭教育向科学性陪伴发展。这种技术介入一定程度上重构了家校协同育人模式。

Balanced Development of Educational Resources. At present, China’s basic education still faces practical challenges such as regional, urban-rural, and inter-school disparities, as well as school layout adjustments due to demographic changes. With the help of AI, geographical barriers and time-space constraints can be broken, allowing courses taught by teachers in first-tier cities to be delivered to remote mountainous areas, achieving educational inclusivity. Through digital technology, regional education quality can be analyzed, enrollment numbers and teacher demand can be accurately predicted, and educational resources can be allocated in a timely manner to ensure the stable operation of the education system. At the same time, its multimodal content generation and conversion capabilities can help special groups, such as deaf and mute students, achieve convenient teaching interactions, ensuring that more students gain opportunities for comprehensive and balanced development, thereby advancing educational equity.

教育资源的均衡发展。当前，我国基础教育还面临区域、城乡、校际差异，以及人口变动带来的学校布局调整等现实难题。借助人工智能，可以打破地域壁垒、时空限制，将一线城市名师课程输送到偏远山区，实现教育普惠。通过数字技术分析区域教育质量，精准预测入学人数、师资需求等，及时调配教育资源，保障教育系统平稳运行。同时，其多模态内容生成转换能力还能帮助特殊群体，如聋哑学生等，实现便捷的教学互动，保障更多学生获得全面均衡的发展机会，推动教育公平的实现。

II. Risks and Challenges in the Application of AI in Basic Education

二、人工智能在基础教育应用中的风险挑战

AI has injected new momentum into the reform and development of basic education. By empowering educational scenarios such as teaching, learning, evaluation, research, and management, it continuously drives innovation and reconstruction of the educational ecosystem, bringing unprecedented development opportunities. However, due to the dual-edged nature of technological development and application, it inevitably faces numerous risks and challenges.

人工智能为基础教育的改革与发展注入了新动力，通过赋能教、学、评、研、管等教育场景，持续推动教育生态的创新与重构，带来前所未有发展机遇，但由于科技发展应用的双刃性，也不可避免地面临诸多风险挑战。

The Risk of Over-Reliance on AI. With the widespread application of AI in basic education, AI literacy has become an important competency. However, excessive emphasis on this literacy may lead to the crowding out of other competency assessments by “technologism,” thereby weakening attention to minors’ mental maturity and comprehensive development in moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic, and labor education. Moreover, students’ over-reliance on AI for information and knowledge acquisition is detrimental to cultivating their independent thinking, critical thinking, and problem-solving abilities. It also easily breeds issues such as plagiarism and content copyright violations, fostering undesirable mindsets like “taking shortcuts” and “getting something for nothing,” which negatively impacts their growth and development.

过度依赖人工智能的风险。随着人工智能在基础教育中的广泛应用，人工智能素养成为重要的能力素质之一。然而，对这一素养的过度强调，可能导致其他能力素质的考评比重被“技术主义”挤压，进而削弱对未成年人心智成熟、德智体美劳全面发展的重视。此外，学生过度依赖人工智能获取信息和知识，不利于培养其独立思考、批判性思维与解决问题的能力，还容易滋生抄袭、内容版权等问题，产生“走捷径”、“不劳而获”等不良思想，对其成长成才产生一定的负面影响。

The Risk of Value Misguidance. Content generated by AI may contain false information and harmful value orientations, interfering with minors’ ideological, moral, and cultural education. The main hidden danger lies in the fact that algorithm design may embed the subjective value preferences of developers, forming “information cocoons” through personalized content推送, subtly influencing students’ historical cognition and cultural identity. Over-reliance on technological tools may lead to a lack of humanistic care, weakening teachers’ leading role in value guidance and causing a “value vacuum” in the educational process. Especially in key areas such as national conditions education and political identity, if the training data for algorithmic models contain biases, it may affect students’ rational understanding.

价值观误导风险。人工智能生成的内容可能包含虚假信息、不良价值观念等，对未成年人的思想、道德、文化等教育产生干扰。其主要隐患在于算法设计可能隐含开发者主观价值偏好，通过个性化内容推送形成“信息茧房”，潜移默化影响学生历史认知与文化认同；过度依赖技术工具可能导致人文关怀缺失，削弱教师价值引领主导权，使育人过程出现“价值空心化”。尤其在涉及国情教育、政治认同等关键领域，若算法模型训练数据存在偏差，可能影响学生的理性认识。

The Risk of Dissolving the Educational Community. The increased proportion of “human-machine” interactive education makes it easier for students to develop dependence on machines, using AI to quickly find answers during the learning process, thereby replacing “on-site learning” with “off-site learning.” This dependency not only leads to a lack of training in independent thinking and comprehensive analytical skills but also undermines the principal role of teachers as educational actors, dissolving the educational community built on the interaction and mutual construction between “teachers and students.” When using AI in basic education, a large amount of student-related data is generated. Due to the existence of algorithmic black boxes, this data may be stored, reviewed, and used for system improvement in unknown ways, harming students’ data autonomy and privacy rights. Once data is misused or leaked, it can cause serious harm to minors’ physical and mental health and future development.

教育共同体消解的风险。“人—机”互动教育比重的提高，容易使学生形成对机器的依赖，在学习过程中借助人工智能快速寻找答案，使得“离场学习”替代“现场学习”。这种依赖关系不仅导致学生缺乏独立思考和综合分析能力训练，还冲击教师作为教育行动者的主体地位，消解“教师—学生”互动互构下的教育共同体。在基础教育中使用人工智能时，还会产生大量与学生相关联的数据，由于算法黑箱的存在，这些数据可能被未知方式存储、审查和用于系统改进，损害学生的数据自主权和隐私权。一旦数据被滥用或泄露，将对未成年人的身心健康和未来发展造成严重损害。

III. Optimization Pathways and Governance Strategies for AI Application in Basic Education

三、人工智能应用于基础教育的优化路径与治理策略

General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out that “the cultivation of students’ intellectual development, spiritual growth, basic cognitive abilities, and problem-solving skills cannot be relaxed.” We must focus on solving the fundamental question of education: whom to cultivate, how to cultivate them, and for whom to cultivate them. We must fully leverage the advantages of AI technology, continuously innovate educational application scenarios, and optimize educational governance strategies to ensure that the application of AI in basic education is safer, more reliable, and more controllable, promoting positive interaction and coordinated development between AI and basic education.

习近平总书记指出，“对于学生的启智、心灵的培养和基本的认知能力、解决问题能力的培养，是不能放松的”。必须聚焦解决好培养什么人、怎样培养人、为谁培养人这个教育的根本问题，充分发挥人工智能技术优势，不断创新教育应用场景、优化教育治理策略，确保人工智能在基础教育领域的应用更加安全、可靠、可控，推动人工智能与基础教育的良性互动和协同发展。

Improve Laws and Regulations, Strengthen Ethical Guidance. It is necessary to properly grasp the direction and scope of the deep integration and development of AI technology and education, and continuously improve the legal, regulatory, and policy framework. On the one hand, accelerate the process of special legislation. On the basis of existing laws and regulations such as the *Interim Measures for the Management of Generative AI Services* and the *Regulations on the Protection of Minors in Cyberspace*, promptly formulate and introduce specific laws and regulations targeting the application of AI in basic education. Clarify the rights and responsibilities of different responsible entities—governments, schools, platform enterprises, and social organizations—in AI-empowered basic education. Standardize the entire process and all links of AI product design, development, application, management, maintenance, and technological updates, providing sufficient legal basis for data security, privacy protection, and content review, ensuring the healthy development of AI-assisted education. On the other hand, organize expert forces to study and formulate ethical guidelines for AI application in basic education. Clarify behavioral norms from multiple dimensions including teachers, students, schools, and families. Establish an evaluation system for AI education implementation and effectiveness, guiding the reasonable application of AI technology within the framework of educational laws and ethical principles, safeguarding educational equity and quality.

完善法律法规，加强伦理引导。必须妥善把握人工智能技术与教育深度融合发展的方向和尺度，不断完善法律法规与政策体系。一方面，加快专项立法进程，在现有《生成式人工智能服务管理暂行办法》、《未成年人网络保护条例》等法律法规基础上，尽快制定出台专门针对人工智能在基础教育应用的法律法规。明确政府、学校、平台企业、社会组织等不同责任主体在人工智能赋能基础教育中的权责，规范人工智能产品设计、开发、应用以及管理维护与技术更新的全流程各环节，为数据安全、隐私保护、内容审核等提供充分的法律依据，确保人工智能助力教育的良性发展。另一方面，组织专家力量研究制定人工智能在基础教育应用的伦理指南，从教师、学生、学校、家庭等多维度明确行为规范，建立人工智能教育实施与效果评价体系，引导人工智能技术在符合教育规律和伦理道德的前提下合理应用，保障教育公平与质量。

Strengthen content safety and improve oversight mechanisms. For educational content generated by artificial intelligence, strict content review standards should be formulated, explicitly prohibiting the appearance of harmful content such as false information, pornography, violence, and unhealthy values. A multi-level, multi-subject content review process involving families, schools, and society should be established, including internal review by platform enterprises, evaluation by third-party professional institutions, and oversight by education authorities, to ensure that the educational content provided by artificial intelligence is truthful, accurate, healthy, and aligned with educational objectives. Large-model AI platform enterprises should earnestly assume their social responsibilities, rely on advanced technical means to establish dynamic content monitoring mechanisms, monitor the compliance of educational content in real time, and promptly detect and handle potentially harmful information. Public participation in content oversight should be encouraged, reporting channels should be established, and any violations discovered should be dealt with promptly, forming a content regulatory system in which the whole society participates.

强化内容安全，健全监督机制。针对人工智能生成的教育内容，制定严格的内容审核标准，明确禁止出现虚假信息、色情暴力、不良价值观等有害内容。建立家庭、学校、社会联动的多层级、多主体参与的内容审核流程，包括平台企业内部审核、第三方专业机构评估以及教育主管部门监督等环节，确保人工智能提供的教育内容真实、准确、健康，符合教育目标。人工智能大模型平台企业应切实担起社会责任，依托先进技术手段，建立动态内容监测机制，实时监测教育内容的合规性，及时发现并处理潜在的有害信息。鼓励公众参与内容监督，设立举报渠道，对发现的违规内容及时处理，形成全社会共同参与的内容监管体系。

Strengthen education and training to enhance the digital literacy of teachers and students. In the era of artificial intelligence, the digital literacy of teachers and students is a key factor in ensuring the effective application of technology. On the one hand, teacher training and professional development should be strengthened, incorporating AI knowledge and skills training into the continuing education system for teachers; teachers should be regularly organized to participate in relevant training courses and seminars to improve their understanding and application capabilities of AI technology, continuously carry out teaching innovation, enhance teaching quality, and adapt to the new teaching model of "human-machine co-education." On the other hand, AI literacy education for students should be actively carried out. Based on the cognitive characteristics of students at different ages, corresponding course modules should be designed, covering knowledge of basic AI principles, usage methods, ethics, laws, and regulations; through various forms such as classroom teaching, practical activities, and popular science lectures, students should be cultivated to have a correct understanding and reasonable use of AI, enhance their ability to discern false information and unhealthy values, avoid over-reliance on AI, and promote students' comprehensive development.

加强教育培训，提升师生数字素养。人工智能时代，教师和学生的数字素养是确保技术有效应用的关键因素。一方面，应加强教师培训与专业发展，将人工智能知识与技能培训纳入教师继续教育体系；定期组织教师参加相关培训课程和研讨活动，提高教师对人工智能技术的理解和应用能力，不断开展教学创新，提升教学质量，适应“人机共育”的教学新模式。另一方面，积极开展学生人工智能素养教育，根据不同年龄段学生的认知特点，设计相应的课程模块，涵盖人工智能基本原理、使用方法、伦理道德、法律法规等方面知识；通过课堂教学、实践活动、科普讲座等多种形式，培养学生对人工智能的正确认知和合理使用能力，增强对虚假信息和不良价值观的甄别能力，避免过度依赖人工智能，促进学生全面发展。

Promote pilot demonstrations and encourage innovation in educational applications. Representative regions and schools should be selected nationwide to establish pilot demonstration projects for the application of artificial intelligence in basic education. In the pilot regions and schools, educators should be encouraged to actively explore deep integration models of AI and education and teaching, innovate teaching methods and evaluation approaches, and accumulate practical experience. At the same time, inclusive and prudent regulatory measures should be adopted in the pilot demonstration work, providing a relatively relaxed and controllable environment for innovation and experimentation in AI education applications, allowing enterprises to make innovative attempts with AI education products within the pilot areas, while regulatory authorities implement full-process supervision and dynamic evaluation to promptly identify and resolve potential problems.

推动试点示范，鼓励教育应用创新。在全国范围内选择一些具有代表性的地区和学校，建立人工智能基础教育应用试点示范项目。在试点地区和学校，鼓励教育工作者积极探索人工智能与教育教学的深度融合模式，创新教学方法和评价方式，积累实践经验。同时，在试点示范工作中采用包容审慎的监管措施，为人工智能教育应用提供一个相对宽松、可控的创新试验环境，允许企业在试点区域内对人工智能教育产品进行创新尝试，同时由监管部门对其实施全程监督和动态评估，及时发现和解决可能出现的问题。

Strengthen international exchanges and enhance discourse power and influence. Against the backdrop of rapid economic globalization and informatization, competition among countries worldwide has become increasingly fierce. Scientific and technological strength and talent quality have become key indicators for measuring a country's competitiveness. The consensus in the industry is that AI education should "start from childhood." China should actively participate in the formulation of international rules and standards related to the application of AI in education, actively carry out cross-border educational cooperation projects, share educational resources, exchange teaching experiences, provide Chinese solutions and contribute Chinese wisdom, promote the formation of a fair, reasonable, and inclusive international environment for the development of AI in education, and enhance China's discourse power and influence in the field of AI in basic education.

加强国际交流，提升话语权影响力。在经济全球化和信息化快速发展的大背景下，世界各国之间的竞争愈发激烈，科技实力和人才素质已成为衡量一个国家竞争力的关键指标，人工智能教育要“从娃娃抓起”成为业界共识。我国应积极参与国际人工智能教育应用相关规则和标准的制定，积极开展跨境教育合作项目，共享教育资源、交流教学经验，提供中国方案、贡献中国智慧，推动形成公平、合理、包容的国际人工智能教育发展环境，提升我国在人工智能基础教育领域的话语权和影响力。

(Author: Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and Law Teaching and Research, Party School of the Central Committee of the CPC [National Academy of Governance])

（作者：中共中央党校﹝国家行政学院﹞政法教研部副教授）

Online Editor: Tongxin

网络编辑：同心