Even though ‘AI’ is tagged to anything that halts its stride long enough, modern AI/ LLM/ GPTs and the like continue to be a staple of modern innovation. And while these advances steamroll along, it is easy to overlook the transformative potential of artificial intelligence within education. Despite ongoing debates (I’m a huge skeptic to the masses of money flowing into an ever-decreasing pool of technologial innovation. Bostrom, as below), there is a growing understanding that AI can support teachers, not only as a tool but also as a reflective partner in professional development. As Bostrom suggests in Superintelligence, “The fate of humanity may depend on the initial conditions (i.e. its use) in the intelligence explosion (its journey to the end point),” capturing a deep-seated urgency about directing AI's evolution with foresight. Yet, these lofty concerns can feel remote to educators managing the complexities of the classroom. A critical question remains: How can AI become an authentic partner in teacher development, student engagement and creativity for both? Because, this week I’ve heard several educators on podcasts talk about there being no real method for true support for teachers through PD except at a surface level. This is not true and below I’ll outline why.

The Power of Reflection and Customization

Educational technology too often remains in the realm of consumption rather than creation. In my experience, AI tools, particularly large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4, have the potential to guide educators through structured reflection. Through transcription of classroom interactions and AI-analyzed feedback, for instance, teachers can gain detailed insights into students’ language, engagement patterns, and learning progression. Using frameworks such as Tom Sherrington’s Walkthrus, educators can apply AI-generated data to practical improvements, bridging a gap between theoretical ideals and classroom realities. Heck, the reading comprehension data collection in Teams assignments is one of the never-mentioned outliers for teachers to dip a into ‘AI’ (even though its not really AI, but the output is pure pattern recognition). This kind of student-made, manipulation of reflective media should be prime time.

Marshall McLuhan July 21, 1911, December 31, 1980.

Here, McLuhan’s laws of media provide a framework to understand how such technology reshapes the teaching experience from the point of view rhat LLMs such as GPT-4o is a creative new media that offers bespoke messages unlike the prescribed rota of guides and channels. McLuhan’s tetrad—examining what a medium enhances, obsolesces, retrieves, and reverses into—reveals the nuanced impacts of AI. As AI enters mainstream educational practice (it’s taken two years to become a norm from the screams of horror that jobs are being lost), it enhances the immediacy of feedback and data-driven reflection, obsolesces traditional, more time-intensive forms of evaluation, retrieves aspects of individualized learning, and may, at its extreme, reverse into a detached or overly automated learning environment. This reversal poses a risk (as I am experiencing right now as I assess digital art from 87 children) if AI’s role in education becomes too prescriptive, moving away from supportive reflection towards rigid oversight (again, see the link above)

From Passive Consumption to Dynamic Creation

The AI-enhanced classroom should, above all, be a place of creative learning, where AI supports educators in customizing materials and strategies for diverse learning needs. Unlike traditional educational tools, custom GPT models (my most used Teacher Assessor is here) are capable of providing context-sensitive guidance across teaching scenarios, offering support as educators navigate the day-to-day dynamics of the classroom. This evolution challenges AI to move beyond a passive role into one that actively contributes to an educator’s growth.

Yet, critics of AI in education claim it cannot provide authentic guidance, doubting the adaptability of AI to unique classroom environments. My experience using ChatGPT as a coaching partner, however, counters this claim. It has guided me through complex pedagogical challenges, offering data-driven insights while adapting to new educational contexts. Unlike generic development workshops where it’s often the case to be presented with a regurgative flow of ‘this AI can do this, and this can do that’ ad nauseum, custom AI models enable personalized, professional growth - empowering teachers to create lesson pathways that meet student’s needs. More importantly, is that a teacher without AI will allow AI to supercede a teacher with AI as Harvard points out: “ With AI Will Replace Humans (teachers) Without AI.”

AI as a Lens for Data-Driven Professional Growth

Through data-backed assessment of teaching methods, AI allows educators to access a feedback loop that enhances self-evaluation and development. By analyzing classroom audio transcripts (say, via YoutTube/ Word etc), for example, AI can identify patterns in instructional delivery and student engagement, offering teachers insights that foster professional and learnered growth. This approach aligns with McLuhan’s emphasis on media as extensions of the human experience—tools that should support our capabilities without diminishing our personal agency. AI becomes a “new media” in education, not just for static consumption but for active, on-demand insight that continually adapts to its user. This is not a refined search anymore, this is: ‘I want Z, shaped by Y and initiated by X’ in that traditonal search is in reverse where Z is sifted when results are self-evaluated by X due to the collated (and sponsored) offerings of Y’. Try any AI image generator and create what is in your mind’s eye and you’ll understand how this new shift in media manipulaiton works.

The broader implications of AI’s role in professional development resonate with McLuhan’s observations on the homogenizing tendencies of technology. As he writes in Laws of Media, “The old barriers between physical spaces dissolve, creating a single, unified environment.” Similarly, AI in education could homogenize instructional practices if not thoughtfully implemented. To avoid this, AI tools should be deployed to encourage diverse approaches and adaptations, helping teachers make informed choices that reflect their unique classroom environments, rather than imposing a uniform, prescriptive standard.

Embracing AI for Long-Term Growth

By rethinking AI’s role in education, we can envision a model of professional development that is continuous and customized, supporting both novice and veteran teachers. While traditional PD models offer sporadic support (and wildly differing poignancy with cost being no descerning metric), AI’s round-the-clock availability provides teachers with immediate assistance, allowing them to refine techniques and experiment with new strategies. Custom GPTs, which can be tailored to specific needs, enable educators to engage with instructional resources in real-time, fostering a practice-oriented level of growth that, wherever you are on the skeptic scale, is worth kicking the tyre at least.

Modern technology: Screens, screens, screens.

Bostrom’s warnings on the governance of superintelligence apply here as well, as we contemplate the governance of AI within educational systems. As AI shapes teaching practices, educators should retain control, using an AI platform that complements rather than dictates pedagogy. The role of AI in education, then, is to enhance human insight, to enable dynamic growth, and to act as a companion in the ongoing journey of professional development, rather than a driver of homogenization or simplification. Think honestly here - what single pice of classroom technology has significantly changed over the last ten years? Cameras are still cameras, screens are still screens and robots are still robots. Yet all are suffering the same tiny incremental performance boosts each year. AI will inevitably follow suit, yet it has the unfortunate and irksome ability to overlay to any aspect of human life that holds a data point. Yes, Google, we’re looking squarely at you.

Rethinking AI as a Collaborative Force

The question, then, is not whether AI can be an authentic partner in education, but how it should be integrated to best support teachers and students alike? By treating AI as a collaborative force—one that augments rather than replaces human insight—educators can harness its strengths for reflection, data-driven assessment, and creative problem-solving. AI, in this sense, is not a substitute for human expertise but a catalyst for deepening it, providing educators with the tools to refine their practice in ways that are meaningful and relevant.

In this reimagined role, AI becomes part of a broader grassroots transformation in education, fostering a learning environment that is responsive, adaptable, and continually evolving. For educators willing to explore its potential, AI offers an unprecedented opportunity to redefine professional development as a journey of authentic growth, where the path forward is shaped not by top-down mandates but by the needs and insights of teachers and students alike. I just hope most of the better, and future models vow to keep Google’s old mantra and not its new one.