FT.com / no paywall: “South Korea’s plan to introduce artificial intelligence-powered digital textbooks in schools has provoked a backlash from parents and academics concerned about children’s overexposure to digital devices and potential misinformation. Education minister Lee Ju-ho said this week that tablets loaded with AI features were “pivotal” to a planned overhaul of the Korean school system. The technology is set to be introduced next year into classrooms for schoolchildren as young as 8. But the proposal, which the South Korean government says is the first of its kind in the world, has been met with opposition by many parents already anxious about the amount of time their children spend using smartphones and tablets. South Korea consistently ranks among the highest-performing countries in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment tests. However, the government in Seoul is worried that a traditional emphasis on rote learning is stifling innovation, at a time when the country is seeking to reduce its dependence on traditional manufacturing industries…According to South Korea’s education ministry, the tablets will be customisable so that “fast learners” and “slow learners” can be assessed by the software and given different AI-generated tasks with varying levels of complexity. But the government has provided few details on exactly how the digital textbooks — and other AI-powered education tools being developed by Korean tech firms including LG and Samsung — will work or how the system would be prevented from AI’s tendency to “hallucinate” or produce errors…”