Chinese Experts Emphasize Human-Centered AI Approach in Education

Chinese education experts advocate for a human-centered approach to AI in education, emphasizing the importance of integrating technology to enhance educational quality, foster creativity, and support students' holistic development. They warn against treating AI as a replacement for teachers and instead urge educators to develop four core capabilities: aesthetic appreciation, cultural understanding, scientific reasoning, and value judgment.

Chinese education experts have emphasized the importance of a human-centered approach to AI in education, highlighting the need to integrate technology to enhance educational quality, foster creativity, and support students' holistic development. This approach was discussed during the recent Global Smart Education Conference 2025 in Beijing, organized by Beijing Normal University and the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education.

The conference, themed "Human-Machine Collaboration Fosters a New Ecology of Education," brought together specialists from education, technology, and enterprise sectors, along with frontline teachers. The event explored pathways for deeper integration of emerging technologies in education, with a focus on digital transformation and intelligent upgrading in school education.

Li Youyi, chairman of the School Alliance of Educational Digitalization, underscored that the deep integration of new technology and education has become a core issue in global digital transformation. She urged school leaders to proactively embrace technological opportunities while being mindful of technology's dual-edged nature, ensuring that it aligns with the fundamental values of education [1].

Xu Hui, principal of the No.1 Middle School affiliated to Central China Normal University in Hubei Province, shared practical experiences with AI-enhanced curricula, human-computer collaborative teaching, and data-driven personalized learning. She emphasized that AI is not a substitute for education but an amplifier, noting that human intelligence must remain central and work synergistically with machine intelligence [1].

Wu Yingming, principal of Hefei No. 1 High School in Anhui Province, proposed that teachers strengthen four core capabilities in the AI context: aesthetic appreciation, cultural understanding, scientific reasoning, and value judgment. These competencies will enable educators to better discern authentic information, integrate technology with teaching fundamentals, and foster students' core competencies through teacher-student-machine interaction [1].

Zhang Hua, vice dean of Changsha Normal University's primary education college in Hunan Province, emphasized three guiding principles in facing AI: use, use wisely, and do not abuse. The college combines national and project-based curricula, stimulates student interest through activities, and provides teacher training and incentives to improve digital competence [1].

Wang Xiao, principal of No. 3 Primary School in Yumin County, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, warned against treating AI as a panacea. She stressed the importance of guiding students to become creators of technology rather than passive users, emphasizing that AI should empower and not replace teachers [1].

Adding a corporate perspective, Nie Xiaolin, co-founder of China's leading AI company iFLYTEK, introduced the concept of "two-way empowerment" between AI and education. While AI empowers education, education also feeds back into AI, improving its capabilities in the educational domain [1].

Meanwhile, the OpenSearch Software Foundation, under the Linux Foundation, celebrated its first anniversary with significant advancements in AI innovation for search, observability, and analytics. The Foundation's project downloads increased by 78% year-over-year, reaching over 1 billion downloads. The OpenSearch project has made strides in its vector engine, hybrid search, and observability capabilities, enabling accelerated AI application development [2].

These developments underscore the growing importance of open-source technology in education and AI innovation, highlighting the need for a balanced approach that leverages technology while prioritizing human intelligence and creativity.

References:
[1] https://english.news.cn/20250825/ae107c2c069d4de7910f8d32e83200d8/c.html
[2] https://www.morningstar.com/news/pr-newswire/20250825dc57645/opensearch-software-foundation-marks-1-year-anniversary-with-community-growth-agentic-ai-and-hybrid-search-enhancements