Estonia’s AI Leap Brings Chatbots Into Schools

Estonia has a reputation of one of the most digitally developed countries in the world, thanks to its effective digital platforms for government services and its friendly publishing culture. Its digital citizens’ ingenuity is largely due to the decades -taking government campaign to school. Now, the government launches the Ai Leap 2025, which will bring artificial intelligence tools to a preliminary group of 20,000 high school students in September. SIIM SIKKUT, a former Estonian government member and part of the launch team, says the AI ​​Leap program goes beyond providing access to new technology. Its goal is to give students the skills they need to use morally and effectively.

What is Tiger Leap, and how is the model what you are doing now?

Sim Sicot: Tiger League was a program in the 1990s to bring computers, internet and basic digital skills for all schools in Estonia. I myself was exposed to all things on the Internet, because at that time, we had no chance to use it at home. These men and girls have become the founders of industry and the digital government, so we allowed us to jump in building a digital society in Estonia.

How does the artificial intelligence leap program follow this model?

Sicot: Our thinking is now we have to do the same kind of jump and expose our younger generations to this next wave [of technology]. There are differences between programs. Then it was the case, we will give you access and tools to do what you want. Now, with artificial intelligence tools, we feel that it should be more coordinated. You need to learn to use it instead of just getting an easier way than your home duty. So it is more than a skill effort than just access effort.

How will this look like in practice? What tools can students reach?

Sicot: We are still negotiating with partners and sellers, so I will not call companies. But basically, we are talking about Amnesty International Assistant, the conversation that was trained in the context of Estonian language and Estonian curricula. It will be built for educational use, so it will not be, for example, ChatGPT that I was using in our daily life. You will support learning more. For example, not only send your home duty and get answers again. In this scenario, the tool begins to teach you more than giving you an answer. We re -create AI conversation as an educational assistant, and perfectly, we will have a lot of applications based on smaller themes that have been added to that. We will have at least one tool, a conversation tool, then we will build on it in the next few years.

Will teachers be able to see what students do?

Sicot: We may have to launch it only first with the basics. But the idea is that we have two applications and assistant for the teacher and one of the student, so teachers get notes or recommendations on how to better direct the appointed student. The idea is to make learning more specialized to improve learning results.

When we hear about artificial intelligence in education, there is usually a position of death and depression like, “This will destroy the minds of the next generation. There is no way they learn anything. They will only be these shortcuts.”

Sicot: These same concerns led us to do more on this front. What really drives us is very pragmatic considerations. Many children use [AI tools] However to replace thinking more than completing it. We have numbers that 70 percent of high school children use them anyway. So harmful use already exists, and we want to face it. Second, there is a gap in use, perhaps for socio -economic reasons. But the entire education system in Estonia is based on a unified opportunity. This is also an attempt to ensure that we do not increase the gap for the future.

What is the opportunity you see for students?

Sicot: We bet that this is a competitive factor. If not there, you will be excluded. In the labor market, as a country, globally, we say, “Hey, see, you need to know how to achieve the maximum benefit from these tools.”

The current program will provide tools for tenth and eleventh grade students, right?

Sicot: Yes, we focus on high schools and vocational education now. But there is still a discussion that happens: Should we advance from that? The jury is still out of whether it is logical. You need to get some independent thinking and study discipline and be self -educated. This does not start early.

Are there concerns about Hallucinogenic And how to teach children how to verify accuracy?

Sicot: This goes directly to the set of technical skills to use these things. Unfortunately, hallucinations are a fact in life, and it will be at that time [being]. These artificial intelligence skills will be taught by applying them in the rest of the curriculum. So in the history category, while using an artificial intelligence assistant, this is where you learn about hallucinations and how to pay attention to them.

Have you talked about this program with teachers? Is it acceptable or nervous?

Sicot: all of the above. As you can imagine, you have the first adopters who are enthusiastic. Today, they already use these tools to plan their separation, or run articles through the artificial intelligence tool. On the other end, you have people with basic digital literacy, but they don’t want anything more. We will have a communication effort to make sure that teachers are fine and calm about it. The main message we are trying to tell teachers is that they will not get a full set of tools yet. They will all be part of the experimentation program.

A copy of this article appears in the July 2025 issue as “5 questions for SEM Sikout”.