Artificial intelligence - a new educational paradigm

Artificial intelligence is changing the way we live, work and interact with technology. The impact of AI will be profound and long-lasting; it will bring on a series of positive changes that can help improve life quality but will also bring some challenges. Artificial intelligence can represent a great opportunity for human progress, provided that we understand better its implications and effects on our daily lives, so that it is managed carefully and in a fair and inclusive way. Thus, in the era of technological innovation, artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the digital school with innovative teaching methodologies, adapted to students, with autonomous teaching tools and teacher support systems, bringing with it an unprecedented transformation. This paper presents the challenges and opportunities of using this technology in the educational sector and analyses how AI is revolutionizing education, research, and academic management and is gradually becoming an indispensable tool to manage lessons and produce teaching materials in classrooms around the world. From everyday applications such as Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, ChatGPT, Amazon and Netflix, which have become a common presence in everyday life, to the use in the educational field of ChatGPT and DALL-E, the innovative character of these tools is obvious. The integration of artificial intelligence into education is revolutionizing STEM, evolving towards STE(A)M. This interdisciplinary approach promotes transversal competencies and addresses real challenges, improving learning. In order to adequately respond to global challenges and keep pace with technological innovations, education is forced to evolve continuously. Technology such as artificial intelligence, which has already had a significant impact on society for some time, cannot fail to be part of the educational experiences offered by educational institutions, more precisely proposed in the mission of integrating technologies into teaching activities as tools useful not only for promoting and developing digital competences and transversal competences, but also for improving the pedagogical approach, disciplinary and interdisciplinary learning. Therefore, to highlight the new educational paradigm we opted for a dichotomous synthesis of the presentation of the advantages of artificial intelligence in education, but also of the risks and limits of its use. Among the arguments that support the integration of AI in the educational system one could identify personalized learning, increased access to education, improved teaching process, the accelerated generation of knowledge and the various ways of accessing information, the automation of repetitive tasks and, last but not least, continuous learning and instant feedback. Among the arguments against AI in the teaching process can be listed dependence on technology, decreased human interaction, privacy and security problems, uncertain quality of the generated content, redefined roles of the teacher or the uniformity of thinking and the inhibition of creativity. In conclusion, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a powerful resource, capable of solving complex problems and to improve the quality of life, which profoundly transforms our society, bringing significant benefits, but also creating important ethical, economic and social problems. Today Ai is a key technology in modern life with a very high potential to propose - or impose? - a new paradigm in education and to qualitatively improve the educational experience. Its impact on teaching, the learning environment, evaluation and research but also on all administrative tasks is already beginning to be perceived and will be exponential in the coming years. However, the fast AI evolution requires critical reflection on its effects on society, both positive and negative.