Empowering India & the Global South Through AI Literacy

20 Feb 2026 14:00h - 15:00h

Empowering India & the Global South Through AI Literacy

Session at a glance

Summary

This discussion focused on building AI literacy for students and educators in India and the Global South, featuring a panel of four women experts in education technology moderated by Bhanu Potta. The conversation was part of an NDIA summit and centered around the Central Square Foundation’s AI Samarth program, developed in partnership with the Wadwani School of AI to provide AI literacy curriculum.


Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya from IIT Madras outlined how AI can transform education by enabling personalized learning for students, improving teacher productivity through better lesson planning and assessment tools, and making quality education more accessible through multilingual capabilities. She emphasized that AI literacy is essential for all stakeholders – students, teachers, parents, and educational organizations – to use these tools responsibly.


Tanushree Narain Sharma from Transform Schools shared field experiences from government schools in Odisha, highlighting how students like Shraddha and Poonam transformed from viewing AI as entertainment to using it as a learning companion. She noted three key patterns: curiosity converting to confidence, language learning support, and responsible engagement through ethics education. The AI Samarth program has reached 0.9 million students across government schools.


Chitra Ravi from Chrysalis discussed teacher preparedness, describing how educators initially existed on a spectrum between hope and fear regarding AI. Through proper training, teachers gained confidence and learned to use AI purposefully rather than simply generating content without validation. She noted that the program serves as an equalizer, helping teachers find balance and agency in integrating AI into their classrooms.


The curriculum design focuses on four pillars: understanding AI applications, grasping technical concepts like data’s role in AI systems, recognizing societal and environmental impacts, and learning practical interaction skills like effective prompting. Critical thinking is safeguarded by teaching users to validate AI outputs and avoid over-reliance on automated results.


Secretary S. Krishnan from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology concluded by emphasizing the historic nature of democratizing AI education and the government’s commitment to teaching AI from grade three onwards. The discussion underscored the importance of ensuring no one is left behind as AI transforms education across diverse socioeconomic contexts.


Keypoints

Major Discussion Points:

AI’s transformative potential in education across key stakeholders – The discussion explored how AI can personalize learning for students, enhance teacher productivity and pedagogy, enable greater parent engagement, and provide actionable insights for educational organizations through data analysis.


Ground-level implementation and student responses to AI literacy programs – Panelists shared real examples from the AI Samarth program, highlighting how students like Shraddha and Poonam transformed from viewing AI as entertainment to using it as a learning companion, demonstrating a journey from curiosity to confidence.


Teacher preparedness and the hope-fear spectrum – The conversation addressed how teachers are navigating AI integration, moving from initial resistance or over-enthusiasm to finding a balanced approach through proper AI literacy training that builds confidence and agency.


Critical thinking and ethical AI use in curriculum design – Emphasis was placed on the four pillars of AI literacy: understanding AI applications, grasping technical concepts, recognizing societal impacts, and learning practical interaction skills, with particular focus on developing critical evaluation skills rather than blind reliance on AI outputs.


Democratization and inclusion in AI education – The discussion emphasized making AI literacy accessible to underserved populations, government schools, and the Global South, ensuring no one is left behind as AI becomes ubiquitous in education and society.


Overall Purpose:

The discussion aimed to explore strategies for building AI literacy across India and the Global South, focusing on how to effectively integrate AI education into existing school systems while ensuring equitable access and responsible use. The conversation centered around the AI Samarth program as a case study for large-scale AI literacy implementation.


Overall Tone:

The discussion maintained an optimistic and collaborative tone throughout, with panelists sharing positive field experiences and success stories. The tone was professional yet conversational, with speakers building on each other’s points constructively. The arrival of Secretary Krishnan added a more formal governmental perspective while maintaining the overall hopeful and inclusive atmosphere. The conversation consistently emphasized empowerment, agency, and the transformative potential of AI when properly implemented in educational contexts.


Speakers

Speakers from the provided list:


Speaker 1: Representative from Central Square Foundation, a philanthropy working in school education in India with focus on edtech and AI literacy


Bhanu Potta: Moderator of the panel discussion


Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya: Senior project scientist from the Wadwani School of Data Science and AI, IIT Madras; post-PhD fellow working in edtech space with expertise in AI usage, design, and regulatory aspects


Tanushree Narain Sharma: Co-founder and CEO of Transform Schools; works on improving learning and life outcomes in government schools, involved with AI Samarth program


Chitra Ravi: Founder of Chrysalis (founded 25+ years ago); started as full stack ICT curriculum provider from grade 1 to grade 12 for CBSE, now working on AI literacy initiatives


Ramya Venkataraman: Associated with CENTA; previously worked at McKinsey where she bootstrapped the education practice for the region; has experience with teachers across 100+ countries


Shri S. Krishnan: Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India


Additional speakers:


None identified beyond the provided speakers names list.


Full session report

This panel discussion on building AI literacy for India and the Global South took place as the final session of an NDIA summit, featuring four women education experts moderated by Bhanu Potta. The conversation focused on the Central Square Foundation’s AI Samarth programme, developed in partnership with the Wadwani School of AI, representing a significant AI literacy initiative for underserved educational contexts.


Note: The transcript contains several sections with audio quality issues and repeated phrases, particularly in some panelist responses. This summary presents the clearest information available while acknowledging these limitations.


Setting the Context

Gauri from Central Square Foundation opened by explaining their organization’s mission to improve learning outcomes for children from low-income families. She described how their partnership with the Wadwani School of AI led to the development of AI literacy curriculum, emphasizing their commitment to ensuring equitable access to AI education. The AI Samarth programme emerged from recognizing that AI literacy should not remain confined to elite institutions but must reach government schools and underserved communities.


AI’s Transformative Potential in Education

Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya from IIT Madras outlined AI’s impact across different educational stakeholders. She emphasized that AI’s primary value lies in addressing personalization challenges in education systems with large student-teacher ratios. According to Dr. Shabana, AI can provide customized lessons, personalized learning pathways, and individualized assessments that were previously impossible at scale in India’s educational context.


For teachers, she positioned AI as an intelligent assistant rather than a replacement, helping with lesson planning, diagnostic testing, and assessment creation. She highlighted AI’s democratizing potential through voice-based and multilingual capabilities, making quality educational content accessible in regional languages and enabling greater parental engagement.


At the institutional level, Dr. Shabana noted AI’s capacity to synthesize data from multiple sources—assessments, attendance, and programme implementations—providing insights for identifying at-risk students and optimizing resource allocation.


Student Impact and Transformation

Tanushree Narain Sharma from Transform Schools shared examples from the AI Samarth programme’s implementation in government schools. Despite some audio quality challenges in her responses, she clearly described two students from Odisha: Shraddha, who evolved from using AI for entertainment to employing it as a learning companion for difficult subjects, and Poonam, who discovered AI’s potential for generating project ideas and exam preparation.


Tanushree emphasized the programme’s success in converting student curiosity into confidence, helping with language learning support, and cultivating responsible engagement through ethics education. She noted the particular significance for first-generation learners in government schools who are gaining access to educational resources previously unavailable to them.


Teacher Preparedness and Training Approaches

Chitra Ravi from Chrysalis, drawing on her extensive experience in educational technology implementation, introduced the concept of a “hope-fear spectrum” that characterizes teachers’ initial responses to AI. She explained that teachers often experience either fear-driven resistance, worried about being replaced, or over-enthusiasm leading to uncritical adoption.


The AI Samarth programme serves as what Chitra called an “equalizer,” helping teachers find balance through structured training in emotionally safe learning environments. The cascading training model, where teachers learn AI literacy and then teach it to students, proves effective because it positions educators as active knowledge creators rather than passive recipients.


Chitra noted an unexpected positive outcome: the politeness and encouragement programmed into AI systems began influencing teachers’ own classroom communication styles, creating more supportive learning environments.


Curriculum Development and Implementation

The discussion revealed that the AI literacy curriculum focuses on several key areas, though the specific details were sometimes unclear due to transcript quality. The curriculum addresses understanding AI applications in everyday life, technical concepts including the role of data in AI systems, societal and environmental impacts, and practical interaction skills.


Emphasis is placed on teaching students to validate AI outputs, cross-reference results with verified sources, and maintain critical thinking about AI-generated content. The approach deliberately focuses on using AI for review and improvement of human-generated work rather than as a direct source of answers.


Policy Perspective and Government Support

Secretary S. Krishnan from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology provided brief remarks about the government’s commitment to AI education. He mentioned initiatives to teach AI from class three onwards across disciplines, representing a departure from confining AI education to computer science programmes alone.


The governmental approach emphasizes democratization and inclusion, ensuring AI education reaches all segments of society rather than remaining in elite institutions. Secretary Krishnan also acknowledged the summit’s expo component and the collaborative efforts between various organizations.


Implementation Challenges

The discussion acknowledged several ongoing challenges. The scale required to reach India’s vast educational system presents significant logistical challenges. Infrastructure gaps remain substantial, with many classrooms still lacking basic computer facilities.


Quality assurance becomes increasingly complex as programmes scale up, and the cascading training model requires careful monitoring to ensure accurate transmission of concepts. Developing appropriate assessment methodologies for AI literacy programmes remains an ongoing challenge.


Regional Context and Reach

The programme has been implemented across multiple states, with specific mentions of Odisha, Kerala, and Jharkhand. The emphasis on multilingual capabilities and culturally appropriate content development reflects the diverse linguistic communities served by the initiative.


The success in government schools demonstrates that AI literacy can be effectively implemented in resource-constrained environments, challenging assumptions about the infrastructure requirements for advanced technology education.


Collaborative Approach

Throughout the discussion, speakers emphasized the collaborative nature of the initiative, involving partnerships between Central Square Foundation, Wadwani School of AI, Transform Schools, and other organizations. This collaborative model appears central to the programme’s ability to reach scale while maintaining quality.


The conversation revealed strong alignment among practitioners, researchers, and policymakers regarding fundamental approaches to AI literacy in education, suggesting mature understanding of both opportunities and challenges.


Conclusion

The panel demonstrated that well-designed AI literacy initiatives can successfully transform student engagement and teacher confidence even in challenging contexts. The discussion moved beyond theoretical debates about whether AI belongs in classrooms to practical considerations of effective and responsible implementation.


The evidence presented suggests that successful AI literacy implementation requires careful attention to human factors—teacher psychology, student agency, and community engagement—alongside technical considerations. The hope-fear spectrum framework and the curiosity-to-confidence transformation model provide valuable approaches for managing the human dimensions of AI adoption in education.


As the conversation concluded, it was clear that AI literacy represents not merely technical education but fundamental preparation for participation in an increasingly AI-enabled society, with particular emphasis on ensuring equitable access regardless of socioeconomic background.


Session transcript

Speaker 1

Good evening everyone it is indeed a pleasure to be here and thank you to the NDIA mission and the NDIA summit for acknowledging this as an important topic to include within the panel discussions scheduled during the NDIA summit I also would like to thank the panel for the summit, so maybe we should just close with a bang, and I see Bhanu sitting with five women, so good luck to them. But I am here on behalf of the Central Square Foundation. Central Square Foundation is a philanthropy working in school education in India, and one of the focus areas for us is edtech. And now that edtech is getting powered with AI, it becomes very important for us to ensure that we impart AI literacy to every student, parent, and child in India, so they are able to become active contributors to AI rather than just being passive recipients.

And that is the fundamental premise of this discussion. CSF has been working on a program, a large -scale program on AI literacy called AI Summit, and this is the first program with a curriculum for AI literacy that has been built in partnership with the Wadwan, the Wadwani School of AI, which is also represented on this panel. So with that I will hand over to Bhanu to take the proceedings forward. Thank you.

Bhanu Potta

Thank you Gauri. Good evening everybody. Like Gauri said we are in the last few panels of the summit and I have the distinguished privilege of moderating four stalwart women in the education space. I don’t think there’s any other, all other panels were the other way around where there were a lot of men and very few women. So it’s my privilege to moderate all of you. I will try to keep it as collogical as possible but you can also trouble yourself between with questions and stuff. So today’s dialogue is really about building futures through AI literacy for India and the Global South. AI is already in our hands. It’s in our phones, it is in our homes, it is in our classrooms whether we like it or not.

The conversation today is really about what features, futures do we want to build of the… tool which is coming into our hands, right? I think the discussion about should AI be in the classroom or should AI be a learning tool is already passed. It is going to be there and it is for us to figure out how to use it productively, right? So with that as a backdrop, we will move forward into the conversation and quickly talk about each one of you here. Shabana, senior project scientist from the Vardhani School of Data Science and AI, IIT Madras. Ramya, we all know Ramya, CENTA and a lot of other things as well before that. Tanushree, co -founder and CEO of Transform Schools and Chitra, founder of Chrysalis, right?

I would actually start the conversation with Shabana putting you on the spot, right? So your journey really in computer science really started with the trigger with your 11th grade computer science teacher. part in you in the classroom, right? In a rural school in the backwaters of Kerala, right? Nice place to be there. But from that time to now the role which you play as a post -PhD fellow in IT Madras, working in the ed tech space with all the things you do in AI, both on the usage side, design side, and the regulatory side, I would really like to ask you what, according to you, are the transformative bets AI can bring in

Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya

Okay. So if you want to analyze the transformative bets, the major transformation that AI can bring into the classroom, I feel that we should look at the impact that AI has on the key stakeholders in education, namely the students, the teachers, parents, and the education bodies and organizations at large. So if you look at learners, I think the biggest value add is in terms of personalization, right? Because research has already shown that one -on -one human tutoring results in better learning gains as compared to a traditional classroom -based learning. But we know that in India and also across the global south, the student -teacher ratios are quite large, which actually prevents personalization from happening. So this was the case before, but with AI in picture, this can change, and in fact this is changing.

Because AI can help students with personalized learning in terms of customized lessons that is tailored according to the student’s specific conceptual gaps or misconceptions. Or AI can also suggest tailored learning pathways. It can also provide individualized assessments and also tailored feedback pertaining to the performance of the students in the assessments. So that way AI can play a big role in adding quality to the learning process of the students, which definitely helps in bettering. So this was the case before, but with AI in picture, So this was the case before, but with AI in picture, this can change, and in fact this is changing. this can change, and in fact this is changing. this can change, and in fact this is changing.

Now coming to teachers, again, so we always say that, you know, AI is not going to replace teachers, but it is going to be a better assistant. Its role is going to be an assistant, which can help in better productivity, teaching productivity, as well as the quality of pedagogy is what it brings onto the table. So, for example, teachers can use AI -based tools to create better lesson plans, to run diagnostic tests that can help inform the misconceptions or learning gaps for students in the class and tailor instructions based on that. It can help in, you know, kind of producing required kind of assessments and also even evaluating them. So that way, the value add is in terms of improved productivity and also informed pedagogy.

And so another significant transformation that AI brings is that it lowers the barrier to quality education, especially for the underserved classes. So with the voice -based capabilities and the multilingual. capabilities of AI. Now, quality learning content is available in regional languages to learners, which in fact, you know, not only affects the teachers and learners, but it also affects the parents, in the sense that now parents can have a more engaged contribution to their child’s learning. So that way, it opens a lot of opportunities. And now coming to educational bodies or organizations at large, so we know that data is collected across multiple points. Including assessments, attendance systems, and program implementations, etc. Now with AI, it is possible to collect all of these data points, combine and analyze them to give actionable insights, such as, you know, identifying risks of dropouts, identifying high risk students, perform better resource planning, etc.

So that way, AI is already transforming education in a big way. And it is going to be, it has a lot of potential to, you know, play a greater role in education as a whole. now so this kind of emphasizes the need for AI literacy because you know AI is already a part of classroom and all the stakeholders are kind of already interacting with AI so there is the need for the for everybody right not just the students or teachers but even parents and generally for people to have a better understanding of the AI concepts how these tools work in order to use them responsibly

Bhanu Potta

thank you so I hear three things you said stakeholders student teacher and maybe even the parent like a teacher and the second thing you said is that getting AI to the last child in our population which is equity and accessibility the third thing which you said is for all the use cases which you talked about to be utilized there has to be AI education in the form of where it is right that brings us to the stakeholders, right? So Tanushree, you across the last seven plus years have impacted over 30 million students, right? So my question to you is, from the government school systems point of view, and when you go on the ground to students, right, especially the government schools primarily, right?

How are they responding to AI in and around them in the classrooms, be it at homes or wherever they’re interacting? What are you seeing on the ground?

Tanushree Narain Sharma

Thanks. Thanks for that question. And thank you for inviting transfer schools on this panel. So I think in past seven years, with our experience of working with the government schools, and as an organization, we work on improving learning and life outcomes. But with the program, which is AI Samarth, we have seen one emerging thing, that a child is able to learn and learn. And that is, we have seen that a child is able to learn and learn. And that is, we have seen that a child is able to learn and learn. And that is, we have seen that a child is able to learn and learn. And that is, we have seen that a child and learn.

And that is, we have seen that a child is able to learn and learn. And that is, we have seen that a child is able to learn and learn. And that is, we have seen that a child is able to learn and learn. And that is, we have seen that a child is able to learn and learn. And that is, we have seen that a child is able to learn and learn. And that is, we have seen that a child is able to learn and learn. And that is, we have And I have two great examples to share from our home state, which is Odisha. It’s from the class nine. They’re both from the class nine grades.

One, there’s a girl whose name is Shraddha. And so she, when we asked her that, you know, how’s her experience in a class where she’s getting these lessons from AI, Samarth. So she said that I used to use AI tool as something, you know, just in a fun way. But now I’m able to cross check my difficult subjects or the topics. And if I’m still facing any difficulties, I’m able to go back to my teachers and cross check again. So she’s using AI as a companion as well. So what I see here is that curiosity is converging. Converted into confidence. That is one big thing. There’s another child whose name is Poonam. she said that for us when we saw AI around us everybody was the AI was a buzzword you know we were everybody was talking about it but it was for all entertainment because we were saying that okay you can you can gamify it you can make a cartoon movie about it all of that but when I see AI now is that I can get my project ideas from it I can actually you know do my preparation from it so and it is very useful to see that because they are the first generation learners in a government school so it’s it’s a great I would say pleasure to see that happening in a government school and I mean AI with AI Samarth we are reaching the end of the world and we are reaching the end of the world and we are reaching the end of the world and we are reaching the end of the world and we are reaching the end of the world and we are reaching the end of the world and we are reaching the end of the world and we are talking about point talking about point talking about point nine million students in all and what we nine million students in all and what we nine million students in all and what we have seen as a pattern overall is three things.

One, which I mentioned earlier, is curiosity converting into confidence. Second, that AI is able to support learning, sorry, language, improving into languages. And second, reducing the learning gaps students have. And third is, which is the most important thing which AI Samarth does, is that teaching them about the ethics, the biases, and therefore it’s a responsible engagement. So that’s the

Bhanu Potta

Thanks, Tanushree. It’s lovely that you talk about the story of Shraddha and Poonam.

Tanushree Narain Sharma

Thank you.

Bhanu Potta

the journey from curiosity to confidence. And along the journey, being able to use digital tools in the form of AI and exercise their agency as a learner and not lose it.

Tanushree Narain Sharma

That’s correct.

Bhanu Potta

So that’s a beautiful story. And I think, you know, 0 .9 million Shraddhas and Poonams.

Tanushree Narain Sharma

Yes.

Bhanu Potta

Thank you. And onward, upward and onward. And more than that, right? So that moves me to another dimension, right? So, Chitra, you’ve been, you founded Chrysalis over 25 years back. And you founded it out of the pain of being a mother of two daughters and their disillusionment in the school system at that point in time.

Chitra Ravi

My disillusionment.

Bhanu Potta

Your disillusionment. They were too young to be disillusioned. And the interesting connection here is that you actually started off as a full stack ICT curriculum embed provider from grade 1 to grade 12 for CBN. and you have seen that whole wave, right? And we still have over 40 % of our classrooms which still don’t have computer labs. And now you’re at the start of another wave with AI, right? So I think you’re looking at the second wave in your own journey, Chrysalis, you and your team and other people working with you, right? So my question to you is how are teachers in the government schools and the low -fee private schools in particular, not the middle and upper, but the low -fee private schools, today, you know, transacting around integrating AI into their life, work, and fun?

Chitra Ravi

Yeah, thank you, Bhanu. That is a very important question to be thinking about. And I can speak from a pre -AI Samarth and a post -AI Samarth point of view. So very grateful to CSF and everybody who’s, you know, really pushed us into this wave with a very… Very, very… purposeful and meaningful work, and it’s giving us a lot of insights into this community of teachers and students. So if you look at preparedness when we entered, and I think we are now close to 200 ,000 students that we will be, you know, who would have been exposed to AI literacy, we are talking about the preparedness being, I look at preparedness from two points of view.

One is awareness about AI, the skill sets, or whatever it means to handle a tool. And the other is, I think, the sentiment and mindset that every teacher or every student has, right? So from an awareness point of view, again, the spectrum is, I don’t even, I just hear this buzzword, and I don’t even want to go near it on one side. And on the other side, yeah, I’m dabbling with it all the time on my WhatsApp. I know it. And then there’s always this confusion between the thin line that AI and, you know, an algorithmic. provides. So I think AI Samad has really empowered them on certain skill sets that has gotten them to understand what is AI and how I can be putting that to use.

That’s from a skill set point of view. But for me, I think more interesting is the sentiment and mindset point of view. If you look at that, it’s a spectrum between hope and fear. And hope leading to over, you know, stimulation, right? And fear, resistance and not really getting there. So I think that’s a very important spectrum. And I think a program like AI literacy and Samad kind of brings in an equilibrium. I think that’s very important because, and I completely, you know, I can relate to what Tanushree was saying, we see so many children and so many teachers who are now us, hey, you know what? I thought everything was bad about AI. Like I was so fearful.

I thought it’s going to replace me as a teacher. I now understand that if I hold the agency and I know what is what, and it’s not rocket science. I think that’s the first demystifying thing, right? I mean, it’s not anything that I cannot be conversant with. And we are talking about government teachers, affordable private school teachers who have found a confidence like she was mentioning. And that has made them approach AI in a very purposeful way, right? They are integrating it. I think the way we built the curriculum, thanks to the Wadwani school and CSF, and we’ve also made some meaningful contribution to that curriculum and content development. We are seeing that the use cases we build in, there is a very, very high relevance to what the teacher is doing, which is very important.

It’s not just literacy about what is what. but how it can be purposefully used by the teacher. So that’s a big winner for us. The second, when it comes to sentiments, we’ve heard children, actually children and teachers in particular, tell us that, you know, I had a negative approach and today I walk in with so much positivity. I know this can be engaging. This can be purposefully done. And even that over, I don’t know what to call it, but I think over -utilization, you know, where they would just generate lesson plans because somebody asked the coordinator or the, you know, educational officer asked them. They just go and dabble with the LLM, CHAP, GPTA and then churn out lesson plans, not even knowing what to validate, how to validate.

And that has also been kind of equalized. So I think it’s a beautiful, in my opinion, an equalizer. And of course, over a period of time, it will become a leveler. I look at it from that point of view. And there’s much more. work to be done, but I think it’s a beautiful start where there are so many positive stories in the field that’s giving us a lot of hope. I think even for players like us, you know, organizations like us, I wouldn’t say we were not in that spectrum between hope and fear. It’s not only about the teachers. We are all in this phase of, you know, is it going to be the thing tomorrow or is it going to be, you know, what is our position in this world?

And I think this is kind of now getting to some equilibrium. That’s what I would say.

Bhanu Potta

What I hear you say is that, you know, tens of thousands of teachers are finding their balance in the classroom with confidence and agency, right? And I think that’s a good state to be in. And we have a lot more work to do. India is a big country and Global South is even bigger, right? That brings me to Tanushree. Sorry, Ramya. So Ramya, your journey really started off with the time you spent in McKinsey and you are actually kind of bootstrap the education practice for this region in McKinsey. And then from that horizontal view, you actually became a falcon and then you dove into teachers and the problem of teachers and there comes CENTA, right?

So over the past few years, like 11 years in CENTA, from across 100 countries, 100 plus countries, teachers have engaged with you. And now you’re at a place where you’re seeing AI come into the mix, right? So I would ask you to kind of be that falcon, fly back out of India and look at the global south and kind of talk about what are you seeing, what are you hearing from teachers in AI, not just from India and what you’re doing with AI but also in other countries where there isn’t any such thing happening.

Ramya Venkataraman

I mean like in a remote part of Jharkhand we’ve had a teacher saying that I was worried that my students are getting into this world faster than I am and now with this literacy I’m able to catch up with my students which is a very nice thing of her to say but those are some of the perspectives to start with I don’t know if I answered because I was not sure what I was supposed to do as a falcon coming out

Bhanu Potta

Thank you, thank you Ramya I think good conversations, three things to pick right, one is the stakeholders being touched and their journey from curiosity to confidence for some actors and then for a lot of other actors finding the balance between the hope and fear spectrum, right, so I would like to kind of take the conversation a little bit down into the implementation and design of all of what we’re working, right, I mean that’s where the rubber really meets the road right, so I would go back to Dr. Shabana and Shabana you have been a part of the curriculum design and the curriculum review and the endless debates of how should we help a rural school student in Orissa understand computer vision and what metaphor would we use that and those are fascinating conversations we had in those times.

But now looking back at the journey and looking back at what we’re hearing from the field, not just ASM, but there are a lot of other literacy programs happening. But I would really like you to kind of, you know, focus a little bit on moving towards what is it that you would like to see in the design, which kind of ensures ethical judgment and critical thinking among all the stakeholders, the child as well as the teacher.

Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya

Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya Okay. So first, I think we should start with the child. Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya Yes. so when we look at the available AI literacy curriculums around the world we see that many of them deal with foundational AI literacy along with AI skilling but AI skilling is more about how to practically use AI which is more role or context dependent so for example AI skill for a software engineer could be different from what AI skilling would be for a teacher but AI literacy refers to the foundational set of AI concepts that is kind of universal that is something that everybody should know about so as a part of the AI Samad curriculum so we collaborated together the Badwani school and CSF collaborated together to come up with a wonderful curriculum which I feel is like very grounded and it kind of focuses on the key AI foundational concepts that everybody should be aware of and later you could build on top of it to do further skilling which is more tailored towards each role So to talk about the AI Samarth curriculum, we have four key pillars.

The first being understanding what is AI and what are the applications of AI, like looking at, you know, the everyday applications and identifying the AI component, because we all interact with AI in some form or the other without realizing that, you know, it is a form of intelligence that we are interacting with. So understanding that is very important. Understanding what is AI is important. And, you know, also, you know, kind of having an awareness about some of the key technical aspects, like what is data? What is the role of data in training an AI system? And, you know, about vision, about NLP. So these are the basic AI concepts, the technical concepts that, you know, students and teachers and universally everybody should be aware of.

And then once we have an idea about the software. The role of data in training AI systems, that naturally leads us to understand about the societal impacts, the environmental impacts, et cetera. So, for example, so we. we know about the issues of bias and fairness in AI systems, right? So we know that, okay, an AI system is trained based on the data. So depending upon the kind of data that was used to train the systems, we can have, you know, these issues. And these arise whenever the systems are used in practice. So the third pillar is definitely about the societal impact, the environmental impacts, what happens when we require the computations at scale. And finally, about how to practically interact with these systems, right?

How to write effective prompts, because we all interact with, almost all of us interact with generative AI tools such as the chat GPT, right? So then how to actually frame an effective prompt to get the desired result. So that is also very important. So I feel that these kind of cover the basic fundamental AI concepts that is universal, that everybody should be aware of,

Bhanu Potta

So just one more. One minute on. how do we in all of this safeguard critical thinking

Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya

okay so coming to critical thinking so so when we know that an AI system is trained using data we know that you know the kind of research that we would get on a query would depend on the kind of data that the system has seen so which would make a student or a teacher or any user you know be vigilant about using the AI the the results from the AI tools directly so we have to be careful about double -checking cross -checking with valid sources and not trusting the result you know directly and also coming to the critical thinking part it is more about you know not over relying on AI tools and using your judgment to kind of validate the results to verify like I said with verified sources whether the results are you know valid or not so which is also important

Bhanu Potta

I think just correcting all the results is a very important thing to do and I think on that there was also a lot of exercise which was done across the curriculum to sprinkle various good ways of using AI where we basically kind of said it’s not about asking the AI for the answer but actually doing your own exercise and submitting your answer and then asking AI to review and improve which is that critical thinking loop which we reinforced across multiple places. So I’d move forward a little bit to Chitra now. So Chitra, I would like to take you down into a teacher training scenario where your team has trained a lot of teachers on AI literacy via the curriculum and then they were cascading forward, right?

So at that level, right, what is it that you and your team have done in terms of building confidence for the teachers who are in the training program to carry that back into their classrooms and deliver it to the children?

Chitra Ravi

I think we… always believed that teacher training is more about building an emotionally safe environment whatever topic we are training teachers on and with AI the hope and fear spectrum, this becomes even more relevant. So I think both in the curriculum the way we’ve done it and in the way we facilitate and train the teachers

Bhanu Potta

Namaste Krishnan ji Pleasure to have you here We welcome Shri Krishnan ji from MIT Thank you for joining us today sir

Chitra Ravi

Chitra So I think we definitely need to look at how the confidence is built. In a light hearted way I also want to say a lot of teachers have now started saying we are becoming more polite and classroom Any other questions? idea why? It’s nothing to do with the training but to do with LLMs. Because chat GPT always tells them, hey, you’ve asked a brilliant question. So that is becoming contagious. And the teachers are today like, you know, we’ve seen that happen. So that is why I wanted to bring that was there is a lot of role modeling that happens when there is a cascading, right? And I’m simply saying an LLM cascading also is bringing that politeness.

I hope we don’t become artificially polite, but then I’m hoping that some of these things rubs off in the language of teachers. So I think that hope and confidence is what trainers are modeling. And that I think is being carried on by the teachers when they do the cascading to those students. And one other thing in the literacy, I mean the Samarth model, I feel is the capacity we are building in the teachers is actually strong because there is the responsibility of the teacher to go back and train the teacher. And see, they are all teachers. You know, when we analyze why teachers resist training, it’s because they think that they are the deliverers and then to receive becomes difficult for us.

So I think I love this AI Samarth model, the literacy model we have built, thanks to CSF and, you know, the whole think tank there, is that yes, I’m going to learn and some of us are actually going to translate it to the students. And so that rub off is really, really working well. So I think the preparedness or I would say the teachers are very gently handling this whole thing because for them it is a new topic. It’s not like I’ve done math teaching for 25 years and I’ve found all my children getting into IIT and all of that. This is a new topic, this is a new skill, and they are very, very careful when they are doing it.

So there’s a lot of deep respect that they have in terms of translating this into their own training, Banu. So I think in many ways this has been an eye -opener into how usual teacher training and how this AI literacy teacher training is bringing very new insights into how teacher training can happen. So I think that’s very, very critical.

Bhanu Potta

Thank you, Chitra. We would now request Shri Krishnanji to kind of address us, Secretary Mighty.

Shri S. Krishnan

I’m sorry to literally photobomb this session. It was not my intention. Ram is a very old friend. And when she asked if I could stop by, I just thought I would. Primarily, more than anything else, to thank all of you for participating. in probably a historic summit, one that finally democratized AI. In that sense, I think what we have managed to do is to actually bring people into the room. And more than even people, we have managed to bring people’s concerns into the room. And I think it’s very fitting that we are talking about education today, which is so critical in every sense of the word. Partly because I think if we have to achieve anything we need to achieve, we need people to do it and people who have the skills and who have the abilities and who have the competencies to actually do what needs to be done with technology and make sure that it works for them and make sure also that they’re able to participate and they’re able to actually take advantage of it.

The other part of it is, of course, while we are making them capable, to what extent can we use technology? I think it’s nobody’s case that we have enough teachers or teachers’ assistants or we have the kind of technology that we need. We need the kind of resources. we want for education. If technology helps us to multiply that rather than substitute it and if technology helps us to actually enable our teachers to deliver better, nothing like it. And I think those are the kind of applications that we seriously need to look for. The Expo is replete with those examples. Incidentally it’s open tomorrow and it’s extended up to 8pm today so if you haven’t gone and taken a look at it, let me make a pitch.

Please do go take a look. I think a huge number of social applications of what technology can do and how it can work for people. I think all of that is something which would interest many of you but more than anything else I’m not an expert on education and I would be the last one to suggest that we should, I mean this is a silver bullet and it will solve all the problems. It may, it may not. But I think we need to sort of experiment. with it but more than anything else I think one thing I do know that students of all ages and students in all disciplines need to be aware of the potential of the technology and see what it can do for them and I that in itself I think would be significant the government of India has already made a policy call that they would teach about AI from class three onwards and I’m sure that many states would also do the same thing and that would form part of the curriculum and likewise in practically every institute or every university I think AI needs to be taught across all disciplines I mean not necessarily only to the computer science people in the IITs but to just about everybody because again the jobs in AI are not just of the guys who build the models I mean those are the nerdy PhDs there are probably about 300 of them across the world who’ll do it the rest of us are not going to do that the rest of us are not going to be Sam Altman or Peria Amadei or Dennis none of those I mean, all of them we saw yesterday.

The rest of us are going to be more journeymen, more people who will actually figure out ways in which this technology will affect us so that people need to know, people need to understand, even in an area like art history, what is it that the technology can do to their own discipline and how they can sort of leverage it. So if the Central Scale Foundation and educationists and everybody focuses on this area and is able to actually train the next generation to do this, train the next generation to figure out what jobs can work for them, that’s going to make all the difference. I or none of us are in an age group where, I mean, Rom and I are probably about, we are contemporaries, so we are too gray and too old now for this to make a huge difference for us.

But this is a technology for the next generation, and they should not be lost in this. And that is something which, I think we need to keep a sense of what is going on. to the message and the whole message of this summit is inclusion and bringing everyone in and we have to also ensure through the education process that no one is left behind so thank you very much for having me and i wish you all the best again a plug for the expo try and take a look and thank you all for joining us here today thanks thank you you you

S

Speaker 1

Speech speed

28 words per minute

Speech length

227 words

Speech time

479 seconds

Universal AI Literacy

Explanation

AI literacy must reach every student, parent, and child so they become active contributors rather than passive recipients of AI. Broad inclusion ensures equitable participation in the AI-driven future.


Evidence

“And now that edtech is getting powered with AI, it becomes very important for us to ensure that we impart AI literacy to every student, parent, and child in India, so they are able to become active contributors to AI rather than just being passive recipients.” [1]


Major discussion point

Need for AI Literacy and Inclusive Education


Topics

Capacity development | Artificial intelligence | Closing all digital divides


B

Bhanu Potta

Speech speed

156 words per minute

Speech length

1470 words

Speech time

564 seconds

AI Is Already Embedded

Explanation

AI is present in everyday devices and environments, making the question of its placement in classrooms moot. The focus should shift to designing future‑focused AI tools and experiences.


Evidence

“AI is already in our hands.” [15] “It’s in our phones, it is in our homes, it is in our classrooms whether we like it or not.” [16] “I think the discussion about should AI be in the classroom or should AI be a learning tool is already passed.” [17]


Major discussion point

Need for AI Literacy and Inclusive Education


Topics

Artificial intelligence | Closing all digital divides | Capacity development


Building Confidence Through Curiosity

Explanation

Learners move from curiosity to confidence by using AI tools, exercising agency, and not losing it as they progress. This journey underpins the broader goal of empowering students with digital agency.


Evidence

“the journey from curiosity to confidence.” [56] “And along the journey, being able to use digital tools in the form of AI and exercise their agency as a learner and not lose it.” [57]


Major discussion point

Building Confidence and Managing the Hope/Fear Spectrum


Topics

Building confidence and security in the use of ICTs | Capacity development


D

Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya

Speech speed

169 words per minute

Speech length

1327 words

Speech time

470 seconds

Personalized Learning

Explanation

AI can create customized lessons, suggest tailored learning pathways, and give individualized feedback, addressing large student‑teacher ratios and specific conceptual gaps.


Evidence

“Because AI can help students with personalized learning in terms of customized lessons that is tailored according to the student’s specific conceptual gaps or misconceptions.” [27] “Or AI can also suggest tailored learning pathways.” [28] “It can also provide individualized assessments and also tailored feedback pertaining to the performance of the students in the assessments.” [29]


Major discussion point

Transformative Potential of AI in Education


Topics

Artificial intelligence | Capacity development | Social and economic development


AI as Teacher Assistant

Explanation

AI supports teachers by generating better lesson plans, running diagnostics, and improving pedagogical quality, acting as an assistant rather than a replacement.


Evidence

“for example, teachers can use AI‑based tools to create better lesson plans, to run diagnostic tests that can help inform the misconceptions or learning gaps for students in the class and tailor instructions based on that.” [30] “Now coming to teachers, again, so we always say that, you know, AI is not going to replace teachers, but it is going to be a better assistant.” [37] “Its role is going to be an assistant, which can help in better productivity, teaching productivity, as well as the quality of pedagogy is what it brings onto the table.” [38]


Major discussion point

Transformative Potential of AI in Education


Topics

Artificial intelligence | Capacity development | Social and economic development


AI Samarth Curriculum Pillars

Explanation

The AI Samarth curriculum is built on four pillars: understanding AI and its applications, technical basics, societal/environmental impacts, and effective prompting, providing a structured foundation for AI literacy.


Evidence

“So to talk about the AI Samarth curriculum, we have four key pillars.” [10] “The first being understanding what is AI and what are the applications of AI, like looking at, you know, the everyday applications and identifying the AI component, because we all interact with AI in some form or the other without realizing that, you know, it is a form of intelligence that we are interacting with.” [77]


Major discussion point

Curriculum Design and Critical Thinking for AI Literacy


Topics

Capacity development | Artificial intelligence


Data‑Driven Insights for Education Bodies

Explanation

AI aggregates and analyses education data to produce actionable insights such as dropout risk detection and resource planning, enhancing decision‑making for education authorities.


Evidence

“Now with AI, it is possible to collect all of these data points, combine and analyze them to give actionable insights, such as, you know, identifying risks of dropouts, identifying high risk students, perform better resource planning, etc.” [31]


Major discussion point

Transformative Potential of AI in Education


Topics

Data governance | Artificial intelligence | Capacity development


T

Tanushree Narain Sharma

Speech speed

209 words per minute

Speech length

661 words

Speech time

189 seconds

AI as Learning Companion for Students

Explanation

Students like Shraddha and Poonam use AI as a companion, turning curiosity into confidence and improving project work, demonstrating AI’s practical impact in government schools.


Evidence

“One, there’s a girl whose name is Shraddha.” [55] “So she’s using AI as a companion as well.” [54] “There’s another child whose name is Poonam.” [59] “But with the program, which is AI Samarth, we have seen one emerging thing, that a child is able to learn and learn.” [60]


Major discussion point

Implementation Experiences in Government and Low‑Fee Schools


Topics

Capacity development | Artificial intelligence | Social and economic development


Ethics, Bias, and Responsible AI Engagement

Explanation

AI Samarth explicitly teaches learners about ethics and biases, fostering responsible engagement with AI tools among first‑generation government‑school learners.


Evidence

“And third is, which is the most important thing which AI Samarth does, is that teaching them about the ethics, the biases, and therefore it’s a responsible engagement.” [49]


Major discussion point

Implementation Experiences in Government and Low‑Fee Schools


Topics

Human rights and the ethical dimensions of the information society | Artificial intelligence | Capacity development


Language Support and Gap Reduction

Explanation

Multilingual, voice‑based AI lowers barriers for underserved learners, supports language learning, and helps reduce learning gaps.


Evidence

“Second, that AI is able to support learning, sorry, language, improving into languages.” [34] “And second, reducing the learning gaps students have.” [42]


Major discussion point

Transformative Potential of AI in Education


Topics

Closing all digital divides | Artificial intelligence | Capacity development


C

Chitra Ravi

Speech speed

158 words per minute

Speech length

1304 words

Speech time

495 seconds

Teacher Confidence and Hope/Fear Spectrum

Explanation

Teacher training creates an emotionally safe environment and explicitly addresses the hope‑and‑fear spectrum, helping teachers move from anxiety to confidence and purposeful AI use.


Evidence

“I think we… always believed that teacher training is more about building an emotionally safe environment whatever topic we are training teachers on and with AI the hope and fear spectrum, this becomes even more relevant.” [62] “If you look at that, it’s a spectrum between hope and fear.” [63] “So I think that hope and confidence is what trainers are modeling.” [64]


Major discussion point

Building Confidence and Managing the Hope/Fear Spectrum


Topics

Building confidence and security in the use of ICTs | Capacity development | Artificial intelligence


Purposeful Curriculum Use and Relevance

Explanation

The AI Samarth curriculum is delivered with a focus on purposeful, high‑relevance use‑cases, ensuring teachers can apply AI tools meaningfully in their classrooms.


Evidence

“but how it can be purposefully used by the teacher.” [84] “We are seeing that the use cases we build in, there is a very, very high relevance to what the teacher is doing, which is very important.” [85] “And we are talking about government teachers, affordable private school teachers who have found a confidence like she was mentioning.” [71]


Major discussion point

Curriculum Design and Critical Thinking for AI Literacy


Topics

Capacity development | Artificial intelligence | Social and economic development


R

Ramya Venkataraman

Speech speed

175 words per minute

Speech length

85 words

Speech time

29 seconds

AI Literacy Helps Teachers Keep Pace

Explanation

In remote Jharkhand, a teacher felt she was falling behind her students’ AI adoption, but AI literacy enabled her to catch up, illustrating the value of teacher‑focused AI training.


Evidence

“I was worried that my students are getting into this world faster than I am and now with this literacy I’m able to catch up with my students which is a very nice thing of her to say.” [73]


Major discussion point

Implementation Experiences in Government and Low‑Fee Schools


Topics

Capacity development | Artificial intelligence | Closing all digital divides


S

Shri S. Krishnan

Speech speed

162 words per minute

Speech length

861 words

Speech time

317 seconds

National Policy for AI Education

Explanation

The Indian government has mandated AI teaching from Class 3 and advocates embedding AI across all disciplines, ensuring no learner is left behind and aligning education with future AI job markets.


Evidence

“the government of India has already made a policy call that they would teach about AI from class three onwards and I’m sure that many states would also do the same thing and that would form part of the curriculum and likewise in practically every institute or every university I think AI needs to be taught across all disciplines” [4]


Major discussion point

Need for AI Literacy and Inclusive Education


Topics

The enabling environment for digital development | Capacity development | Artificial intelligence


Agreements

Agreement points

AI is already integrated into educational environments and the focus should be on productive use rather than debating its presence

Speakers

– Bhanu Potta
– Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya

Arguments

AI is already in our phones, homes, and classrooms; the conversation about should AI be in the classroom or should AI be a learning tool is already passed


AI is already transforming education in a big way. And it is going to be, it has a lot of potential to, you know, play a greater role in education as a whole


Summary

Both speakers acknowledge that AI integration in education is inevitable and already happening, shifting the discussion from whether to adopt AI to how to use it effectively


Topics

Artificial intelligence | Social and economic development


AI should serve as a teaching assistant rather than replace teachers

Speakers

– Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya
– Chitra Ravi

Arguments

AI is not going to replace teachers, but it is going to be a better assistant. Its role is going to be an assistant, which can help in better productivity, teaching productivity, as well as the quality of pedagogy


Many initially feared AI would replace them but now understand they can hold agency and integrate it purposefully


Summary

Both speakers emphasize that AI’s role is to augment and support teachers rather than substitute them, helping teachers maintain agency while improving their effectiveness


Topics

Artificial intelligence | Capacity development | Social and economic development


AI literacy must include ethical considerations and responsible use

Speakers

– Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya
– Tanushree Narain Sharma
– Bhanu Potta

Arguments

Understanding that AI system results depend on training data makes users vigilant about using AI results directly, requiring double-checking and cross-checking with valid sources rather than trusting results directly


Teaching ethics, biases, and responsible engagement


Focus on moving towards what is it that you would like to see in the design, which ensures ethical judgment and critical thinking among all the stakeholders, the child as well as the teacher


Summary

All three speakers agree that AI literacy programs must incorporate ethical dimensions, critical thinking, and responsible use to prevent over-reliance and misuse of AI tools


Topics

Artificial intelligence | Human rights and the ethical dimensions of the information society | Capacity development


AI can help address educational equity and accessibility challenges

Speakers

– Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya
– Tanushree Narain Sharma

Arguments

AI lowers barriers to quality education for underserved classes through voice-based and multilingual capabilities


AI supports language improvement and reduces learning gaps while teaching ethics and responsible engagement


Summary

Both speakers highlight AI’s potential to democratize access to quality education, particularly for underserved populations through multilingual capabilities and personalized support


Topics

Artificial intelligence | Closing all digital divides | Social and economic development


Students gain confidence and agency through proper AI literacy training

Speakers

– Tanushree Narain Sharma
– Bhanu Potta

Arguments

Students show curiosity converting to confidence, using AI as a companion for cross-checking difficult subjects and generating project ideas


Being able to use digital tools in the form of AI and exercise their agency as a learner and not lose it


Summary

Both speakers observe that when students receive proper AI literacy education, they develop confidence and maintain their active role as learners while effectively using AI tools


Topics

Artificial intelligence | Capacity development | Social and economic development


Similar viewpoints

All three speakers recognize that teachers initially experience anxiety about AI but gain confidence and see practical benefits through proper training and support

Speakers

– Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya
– Chitra Ravi
– Ramya Venkataraman

Arguments

Teachers can use AI-based tools to create better lesson plans, run diagnostic tests that help inform misconceptions or learning gaps for students, and produce and evaluate assessments


Teachers show spectrum from ‘I don’t want to go near it’ to ‘I’m dabbling with it all the time’; many initially feared AI would replace them but now understand they can hold agency and integrate it purposefully


A teacher in remote Jharkhand said ‘I was worried that my students are getting into this world faster than I am and now with this literacy I’m able to catch up with my students’


Topics

Artificial intelligence | Capacity development | Social and economic development


Both speakers advocate for universal AI literacy that extends beyond technical specialists to include all disciplines and stakeholders

Speakers

– Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya
– Shri S. Krishnan

Arguments

AI literacy refers to the foundational set of AI concepts that is kind of universal that is something that everybody should know about


AI needs to be taught across all disciplines in universities, not just to computer science students, because most AI jobs are for people who figure out applications rather than build models


Topics

Artificial intelligence | Capacity development | Social and economic development


Both speakers emphasize the importance of inclusive AI education that enables active participation rather than passive consumption of AI technologies

Speakers

– Speaker 1
– Shri S. Krishnan

Arguments

AI literacy is essential for all stakeholders – students, teachers, and parents – to become active contributors rather than passive recipients


The summit ‘democratized AI’ by bringing people into the room and their concerns into discussions; need to ensure people can participate and take advantage of technology through education


Topics

Artificial intelligence | Closing all digital divides | Capacity development


Unexpected consensus

Government policy support for early AI education

Speakers

– Shri S. Krishnan
– All panel participants

Arguments

Government of India policy call to teach AI from class three onwards; AI needs to be taught across all disciplines in universities, not just to computer science students


All speakers’ arguments about comprehensive AI literacy


Explanation

The unexpected consensus emerges around the government’s commitment to introduce AI education from class three onwards across all disciplines, which aligns perfectly with the practitioners’ field experiences and recommendations. This represents unusual alignment between policy and practice


Topics

Artificial intelligence | Capacity development | Social and economic development


AI making teachers more polite and improving classroom interactions

Speakers

– Chitra Ravi
– Implicitly supported by other speakers

Arguments

Teachers become more polite in classrooms after interacting with LLMs; the cascading model works well because teachers have responsibility to train students


Explanation

An unexpected positive side effect where teachers’ interactions with AI systems (which are programmed to be polite and encouraging) influences their own classroom behavior, making them more encouraging and positive with students


Topics

Artificial intelligence | Capacity development | Social and economic development


Overall assessment

Summary

The speakers demonstrate remarkable consensus on key aspects of AI in education: the inevitability of AI integration, the need for comprehensive literacy programs that include ethical considerations, AI’s role as a teacher assistant rather than replacement, and the importance of maintaining human agency and critical thinking. There is also strong agreement on AI’s potential to address educational equity through personalization and multilingual capabilities.


Consensus level

Very high level of consensus with no significant disagreements identified. This strong alignment between practitioners, researchers, and policymakers suggests a mature understanding of AI’s role in education and clear direction for implementation. The consensus spans technical, pedagogical, and policy dimensions, indicating readiness for scaled implementation of AI literacy programs.


Differences

Different viewpoints

Unexpected differences

Overall assessment

Summary

The discussion showed remarkable consensus among all speakers on the fundamental goals, approaches, and implementation strategies for AI literacy in education. There were no significant disagreements identified.


Disagreement level

Very low disagreement level – this was a collaborative, consensus-building discussion rather than a debate. All speakers shared aligned visions for AI literacy implementation, with differences only in emphasis and specific focus areas rather than fundamental disagreements. This high level of agreement suggests strong professional consensus in the field about AI literacy approaches, which could facilitate coordinated implementation efforts but might also indicate a need for more diverse perspectives to challenge assumptions and explore alternative approaches.


Partial agreements

Partial agreements

Both speakers agree on the need for comprehensive AI literacy training but emphasize different aspects of implementation – Dr. Shabana focuses on curriculum content structure while Chitra emphasizes the emotional and methodological aspects of teacher training delivery

Speakers

– Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya
– Chitra Ravi

Arguments

AI literacy curriculum should focus on four pillars: understanding AI applications, technical concepts like data and training, societal and environmental impacts, and practical interaction skills


Teacher training requires building emotionally safe environments and confidence through cascading models where teachers learn and then teach students


Topics

Artificial intelligence | Capacity development


Both agree on the critical importance of maintaining critical thinking in AI education, but Dr. Shabana focuses on specific validation techniques while Bhanu emphasizes broader design principles for ethical judgment across all stakeholders

Speakers

– Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya
– Bhanu Potta

Arguments

Critical thinking is safeguarded by teaching students to validate AI results, cross-check with verified sources, and not over-rely on AI tools


Implementation design should focus on ensuring ethical judgment and critical thinking among all stakeholders including children and teachers


Topics

Artificial intelligence | Human rights and the ethical dimensions of the information society | Capacity development


Similar viewpoints

All three speakers recognize that teachers initially experience anxiety about AI but gain confidence and see practical benefits through proper training and support

Speakers

– Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya
– Chitra Ravi
– Ramya Venkataraman

Arguments

Teachers can use AI-based tools to create better lesson plans, run diagnostic tests that help inform misconceptions or learning gaps for students, and produce and evaluate assessments


Teachers show spectrum from ‘I don’t want to go near it’ to ‘I’m dabbling with it all the time’; many initially feared AI would replace them but now understand they can hold agency and integrate it purposefully


A teacher in remote Jharkhand said ‘I was worried that my students are getting into this world faster than I am and now with this literacy I’m able to catch up with my students’


Topics

Artificial intelligence | Capacity development | Social and economic development


Both speakers advocate for universal AI literacy that extends beyond technical specialists to include all disciplines and stakeholders

Speakers

– Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya
– Shri S. Krishnan

Arguments

AI literacy refers to the foundational set of AI concepts that is kind of universal that is something that everybody should know about


AI needs to be taught across all disciplines in universities, not just to computer science students, because most AI jobs are for people who figure out applications rather than build models


Topics

Artificial intelligence | Capacity development | Social and economic development


Both speakers emphasize the importance of inclusive AI education that enables active participation rather than passive consumption of AI technologies

Speakers

– Speaker 1
– Shri S. Krishnan

Arguments

AI literacy is essential for all stakeholders – students, teachers, and parents – to become active contributors rather than passive recipients


The summit ‘democratized AI’ by bringing people into the room and their concerns into discussions; need to ensure people can participate and take advantage of technology through education


Topics

Artificial intelligence | Closing all digital divides | Capacity development


Takeaways

Key takeaways

AI is already integrated into classrooms and the focus should shift from whether to use AI to how to use it productively and responsibly


AI literacy is essential for all stakeholders (students, teachers, parents, educational organizations) to become active contributors rather than passive recipients of AI technology


Successful AI integration in education requires a four-pillar approach: understanding AI applications, technical concepts, societal impacts, and practical interaction skills


Students in government schools show positive responses to AI, with curiosity converting to confidence and AI serving as a learning companion


Teachers experience a spectrum between hope and fear regarding AI, but proper training helps them find balance and integrate AI purposefully


Critical thinking must be safeguarded by teaching validation of AI results, cross-checking with verified sources, and avoiding over-reliance on AI tools


The AI Samarth program has successfully reached 0.9 million students, demonstrating scalable implementation of AI literacy in underserved communities


Government policy supports teaching AI from class three onwards across all disciplines, emphasizing inclusion and ensuring no one is left behind


Resolutions and action items

Continue expanding the AI Samarth program to reach more students beyond the current 0.9 million


Implement the four-pillar AI literacy curriculum (understanding AI, technical concepts, societal impacts, practical skills) across educational systems


Focus on teacher training that builds emotionally safe environments and uses cascading models where teachers learn and then teach students


Ensure AI education emphasizes responsible engagement, ethics, and bias awareness


Prepare the next generation for AI-enabled jobs through comprehensive AI literacy programs


Unresolved issues

How to scale AI literacy programs effectively across India’s vast educational system and the broader Global South


Addressing the challenge that over 40% of classrooms still lack basic computer labs while introducing AI education


Ensuring quality and consistency in AI literacy delivery as programs scale up


Balancing the hope and fear spectrum among teachers and ensuring sustained confidence in AI integration


Developing appropriate assessment methods to measure the effectiveness of AI literacy programs


Creating sustainable funding and resource allocation models for widespread AI education implementation


Suggested compromises

Using AI as an assistant to teachers rather than a replacement, maintaining the human element in education while leveraging AI’s capabilities


Implementing gradual AI integration that allows both teachers and students to build confidence progressively


Focusing on foundational AI literacy that is universal rather than role-specific AI skilling, which can be built upon later


Balancing technical AI education with strong emphasis on ethics, critical thinking, and responsible use


Thought provoking comments

AI is not going to replace teachers, but it is going to be a better assistant… So that way, the value add is in terms of improved productivity and also informed pedagogy.

Speaker

Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya


Reason

This comment reframes the entire AI-in-education debate by shifting from a replacement paradigm to an augmentation paradigm. It addresses the fundamental fear that teachers have about AI while positioning it as an empowering tool rather than a threat.


Impact

This perspective became a foundational theme that other speakers built upon throughout the discussion. It set the tone for viewing AI as collaborative rather than competitive with human educators, influencing how subsequent speakers discussed teacher experiences and training approaches.


Curiosity is converging. Converted into confidence… I can get my project ideas from it I can actually you know do my preparation from it so and it is very useful to see that because they are the first generation learners in a government school

Speaker

Tanushree Narain Sharma


Reason

This insight captures a profound transformation in how students relate to AI – moving from passive entertainment to active learning partnership. The emphasis on ‘first generation learners’ highlights how AI can democratize access to educational resources for underserved populations.


Impact

This comment introduced the ‘curiosity to confidence’ framework that became a recurring theme. It shifted the discussion from theoretical benefits to concrete evidence of AI’s transformative impact on student agency and learning outcomes, particularly for marginalized communities.


It’s a spectrum between hope and fear. And hope leading to over, you know, stimulation, right? And fear, resistance and not really getting there. So I think that’s a very important spectrum. And I think a program like AI literacy and Samad kind of brings in an equilibrium.

Speaker

Chitra Ravi


Reason

This comment provides a nuanced psychological framework for understanding how educators approach AI. Rather than binary acceptance/rejection, it recognizes the complex emotional landscape and positions AI literacy as an ‘equalizer’ that helps people find balance.


Impact

This ‘hope-fear spectrum’ concept became a central analytical framework that other speakers referenced. It elevated the discussion from technical implementation to the human psychology of technology adoption, influencing how the group discussed teacher training and change management.


We have to be careful about double-checking cross-checking with valid sources and not trusting the result you know directly… it is more about you know not over relying on AI tools and using your judgment to kind of validate the results

Speaker

Dr. Shabana Bhattacharya


Reason

This comment addresses one of the most critical challenges in AI education – maintaining critical thinking skills while leveraging AI capabilities. It emphasizes human agency and judgment as essential complements to AI tools.


Impact

This insight shifted the conversation toward the crucial balance between AI utilization and critical thinking preservation. It influenced the discussion about curriculum design and highlighted the importance of teaching validation skills alongside AI literacy.


The jobs in AI are not just of the guys who build the models… The rest of us are going to be more journeymen, more people who will actually figure out ways in which this technology will affect us… even in an area like art history, what is it that the technology can do to their own discipline

Speaker

Shri S. Krishnan


Reason

This comment democratizes AI by distinguishing between AI creators and AI users, emphasizing that AI literacy is relevant across all disciplines, not just technical fields. It broadens the scope of who needs AI education and why.


Impact

As the closing perspective from a government official, this comment validated and amplified the panel’s discussions while expanding the vision beyond traditional education to cross-disciplinary AI integration. It reinforced the universal relevance of AI literacy programs.


Overall assessment

These key comments collectively transformed the discussion from a technical implementation conversation into a holistic exploration of AI’s human dimensions in education. The progression moved from addressing fears (AI as assistant, not replacement) to demonstrating impact (curiosity to confidence transformation) to understanding psychology (hope-fear spectrum) to ensuring responsibility (critical thinking preservation) and finally to universal relevance (cross-disciplinary applications). Each comment built upon previous insights, creating a comprehensive framework that addressed technical, psychological, pedagogical, and policy dimensions of AI literacy. The discussion evolved from defensive positioning about AI in education to a confident, nuanced understanding of how to implement AI literacy programs that empower rather than replace human agency in learning.


Follow-up questions

How can we ensure AI literacy reaches every student, parent, and child in India to make them active contributors rather than passive recipients of AI?

Speaker

Speaker 1 (Central Square Foundation representative)


Explanation

This represents a fundamental challenge in scaling AI literacy programs across India’s diverse population and ensuring equitable access to AI education


How do we safeguard critical thinking in AI literacy education?

Speaker

Bhanu Potta


Explanation

This is crucial for ensuring students and teachers don’t become over-reliant on AI tools and maintain their ability to validate and verify AI-generated results


What specific methodologies work best for building confidence in teachers who need to cascade AI literacy training to their students?

Speaker

Bhanu Potta (implied through questioning Chitra)


Explanation

Understanding effective teacher training approaches is essential for successful implementation of AI literacy programs at scale


How can we prevent over-utilization of AI tools where teachers generate content without knowing how to validate it?

Speaker

Chitra Ravi


Explanation

This addresses the risk of teachers becoming dependent on AI without developing critical evaluation skills


What are the long-term impacts of AI literacy programs on learning outcomes and student engagement in government schools?

Speaker

Implied by multiple speakers discussing early results


Explanation

While early anecdotal evidence is positive, systematic research on long-term educational outcomes is needed


How can AI literacy be effectively implemented across different disciplines beyond computer science?

Speaker

Shri S. Krishnan


Explanation

Understanding how AI applies to various fields like art history and other disciplines is important for comprehensive education


What are the comparative experiences and challenges of AI literacy implementation in other Global South countries?

Speaker

Bhanu Potta (when asking Ramya about global perspectives)


Explanation

Learning from international experiences could inform better practices and avoid common pitfalls


How do we measure and ensure responsible engagement with AI among students and teachers?

Speaker

Tanushree Narain Sharma


Explanation

Developing metrics and frameworks for ethical AI use is crucial for program evaluation and improvement


Disclaimer: This is not an official session record. DiploAI generates these resources from audiovisual recordings, and they are presented as-is, including potential errors. Due to logistical challenges, such as discrepancies in audio/video or transcripts, names may be misspelled. We strive for accuracy to the best of our ability.