A few days ago, a mother came to me to inquire about her son’s enrollment in seventh grade. This woman, whom I’ll call Nadia for convenience, was looking for a private school that would support her son at least until five in the afternoon. The key was inclusion, understood as kindness among peers, teachers, and parents. From her words, I sensed possible moments of bullying within the class her son Luca was attending.
It was clear that Nadia was looking for a place where Luca could learn without fear of asking the teacher for a second explanation, where, in addition to the standard classroom activities, workshops were offered, in-depth language study, and the school day concluded with homework completed directly at school.
Toward the end of the conversation, Nadia confided to me: “I don’t know how much a private school costs in Italy. I’ve only been in Chieri for a short time… I looked on AI. The answer was that the average cost for a private school is €700 a month…” In that moment, I understood the power of artificial intelligence to misinform.
In Mrs. Nadia’s search, the artificial intelligence provided incorrect answers. The search was clearly superficial; it averaged the data it selected without delving deeper. When I mentioned that our school’s tuition, including afternoon activities, was €400 a month, I sensed a certain incredulity in my interlocutor.
We continued the conversation; I explained the afternoon robotics courses, the Cambridge curriculum, and the collaboration with the Confucius Institute for Chinese teaching. At the end of our meeting, Mrs. Nadia, relieved and smiling, agreed to the proposal to have Luca attend a morning class to meet his future classmates and teachers.
After saying goodbye to Mrs. Nadia, I thought back to the artificial intelligence’s answers. I, in turn, asked the question: how much does a private school cost? After a few seconds, a brief discussion appeared on the screen, listing costs that were completely inconsistent with our tuition.
I smiled. If artificial intelligence had been a colleague, I would have pointed out the huge mistake, but since it was simply an unreal and disembodied data collector, I forgave it and moved on!
Leaving aside artificial intelligence and all the rapidly developing data collection technologies, as I suggested to Mrs. Nadia, for transparency’s sake, our school is disclosing the costs on its website. Anyone interested can learn more by clicking this link without bothering artificial intelligence.
For more information on costs, follow the links:
