Filenews 4 August 2025 - by Dora Christodoulou
Artificial intelligence is no longer a technology of the future. It's here. And he speaks to our children without asking us.
This is what the Vice-Rector for Research and Innovation of Neapolis University Paphos and member of the National Artificial Intelligence Team of the Republic of Cyprus, Savvas Hadjichristofis, emphasizes today.
Our children trust her, she says. They ask her about success, happiness, love, good and evil. And she answers. Friendly. Quickly. Certainly. But not humanly. Not with empathy. Not with the truth that it has hurt. Not with the heart.
He gives answers that seem wise, but they are statistical, Mr. Hadjichristofis points out. Sentences that seem well-thought-out, but are automatic. It shows that it listens, but does not feel.
And yet, the child listens to her. He believes her. He puts it inside him. Before we do it. Before the teacher speaks. Before school starts. Before we build with him a voice that distinguishes the real from the possible.
This new reality does not wait for us to organize. It does not make room for us in the curriculum. It already shapes children's thinking. Silently, quickly, deeply.
If we don't have time to speak first, the voice that will shape their world will not be ours, he warns.
As the Vice-Rector for Research and Innovation of Neapolis University Paphos points out, most countries place artificial intelligence education in high school or later.
They treat it as a technical object, as an IT skill. Indeed, he points out, international guidelines, such as those of UNESCO, propose limiting the interaction of children under the age of 13 with AI.
But let's be honest: we can't control it completely anymore, he admits.
Artificial intelligence doesn't just show up when we shout it out. It doesn't wait on apps that open with permission. It is everywhere. Invisible, diffuse, camouflaged as information, video, sentence, filter, game, image.
The child does not know AI as a code, he experiences it as a voice, as an answer, as an authority. And if we do not have time to mediate this experience, the child learns to listen without judgment. Trust without question. And to adopt without empathy.
And when we talk to him about algorithms or data later, it may already be too late. Perhaps he has already learned to live in a digital narrative that no one taught him to understand, he points out.
In the second grade of elementary school, the poem "Xanthoula" by Dionysios Solomos has been taught for over a century, says Savvas Hadjichristofis. And every year, children learn and forget about it. They say it out loud and they have nothing left. Not because it is not beautiful, lyrical, genuine, full of tenderness and loss.
But the children do not understand the meaning. It does not concern them. They don't feel it is theirs. And it's a shame. Because this poem speaks of something deeply human: the fleeting moment of beauty, the separation, the touch of memory.
How can the child feel this tenderness when it is presented to him as memorization material, he wonders. Until we turned it into a song. And not just a song, we made it a song with the help of artificial intelligence, in rhythms chosen by the children themselves.
The children became co-creators. They felt it. They sang it with their own measures. And then the poem became theirs. They remembered it. They loved it. We didn't change the poem. We changed their relationship with it. This is what artificial intelligence can do when it is pedagogically integrated: to open up avenues of connection, not to dictate.
We don't need more material, Mr. Hadjichristofis points out. We need an education that leaves space for the child to breathe, to feel, to belong.
The point is not to teach children how artificial intelligence works; it's to teach them how to think when they use it.
To ask: Who said that? Is it fair? Is there another perspective? Can I trust what I hear? These questions are not programming. It's moral resilience. And it's not taught with worksheets or explanations of how ChatGPT works is taught through imagination, cooperation, reflection, narration, play, he points out.
And it is precisely here that the great, unique opportunity lies, he says. We can, perhaps for the first time in years, teach technology not as a final product, but as a stimulus for questions. To connect AI with poetry, music, history, philosophy, emotions.
To increase the interest of children, not because "it is modern", but because it is personal.
Artificial intelligence gives us a door to re-see education not as information transfer, but as human formation.
And this door opens first to elementary school, not to university. If we lose it, we will not just lose the 'new tool'. We will miss the opportunity to nurture children who wonder.
Necessity of an education framework
If the State does not establish a framework for children's education for AI, then the framework will be set by the market, argues Savvas Hadjichristofis. And the market has goals, but not pedagogical. It has techniques, but not love. He has power, but no responsibility towards our children.
The school must function as a bulwark but also as a creative field. AI is not a threat. It is a tool. But the child must first learn to hold the tool and then use it, she emphasizes.
Artificial intelligence will continue to "talk" to our children. The question is whether we will have time to teach them how to listen.
Because in the end, the most important voice in a child's life should not be a platform, but a teacher, he concludes.
