In Denmark, schoolchildren will defend their work orally due to the use of AI

Another country is trying to figure out how to protect itself from the widespread use of AI. Banning it is pointless — which means it is necessary to learn how to more carefully monitor how independently students complete homework assignments and prepare individual projects.

In Denmark, starting with the upcoming school year, upper-grade students will be required to orally present and defend their written homework assignments. This requirement will apply to 9,000 students enrolled in the two-year graduation program leading to a secondary education certificate. The oral defense will help determine whether the student understands what their work is about, whether they copied it word for word from a neural network, and whether they are able to argue their point of view, construct explanations, analyze working methods, and present conclusions.

Nobody is going to ban AI outright — that would be utopian, tilting at windmills — but learning to work with it and more carefully monitoring student preparation is necessary:

• Monitor PC screens during exams and tests (including online ones),
• Use firewalls and filters — these can restrict access to selected online resources, among which well-known neural networks can be listed,
• Assign more in-class work, done "in person," with a teacher and classmates,
• Strengthen the role of the teacher — as a mentor, as a guide.

The Danish Minister of Education Magnus Heunicke has already noted that schoolchildren have begun relying on AI en masse, copying ready-made answers and neural network suggestions with no reasoning or reflection of their own. In the long term, this could undermine the analytical abilities of the younger generation and reduce academic skills.

An oral defense of written work is one way of adapting secondary education to the spread of AI. Using a neural network is fine, but only if the student retains the ability to explain the structure and content of the text, justify their arguments and conclusions, and answer the teacher's questions. If a student can do all of this, it means they are not relying on AI blindly but using it as a relevant and useful tool. That is exactly what we should be striving for!