  Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Education has been said to have the potential
for building more personalised curricula, as well as democratising education
worldwide and creating a Renaissance of new ways of teaching and learning.
Millions of students are already starting to benefit from the use of these
technologies, but millions more around the world are not. If this trend
continues, the first delivery of AI in Education could be greater educational
inequality, along with a global misallocation of educational resources
motivated by the current technological determinism narrative. In this paper, we
focus on speculating and posing questions around the future of AI in Education,
with the aim of starting the pressing conversation that would set the right
foundations for the new generation of education that is permeated by
technology. This paper starts by synthesising how AI might change how we learn
and teach, focusing specifically on the case of personalised learning
companions, and then move to discuss some socio-technical features that will be
crucial for avoiding the perils of these AI systems worldwide (and perhaps
ensuring their success). This paper also discusses the potential of using AI
together with free, participatory and democratic resources, such as Wikipedia,
Open Educational Resources and open-source tools. We also emphasise the need
for collectively designing human-centered, transparent, interactive and
collaborative AI-based algorithms that empower and give complete agency to
stakeholders, as well as support new emerging pedagogies. Finally, we ask what
would it take for this educational revolution to provide egalitarian and
empowering access to education, beyond any political, cultural, language,
geographical and learning ability barriers.
