Students are using AI in school and test scores are down, but the OECD finds that those who use it once or twice a week perform similarly to nonusers | Fortune

It may not be all doom and gloom for AI in the classroom—there actually may be a Goldilocks effect.

The OECD’s latest Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) found that AI has led to a decline in multiple student skills as well as a drop in test scores, but moderate use is associated with stronger performance in certain subjects compared to limited or daily use.

For several common assignments, students who used AI “moderately”—from about once a month to once or twice a week—recorded higher average science scores than both students who rarely used AI and those who used it almost every day. The advantage was especially clear when students used AI to summarize assigned reading or conduct preliminary research on a new topic.

Students who reported using AI for that purpose weekly tended to perform at about the same level as AI nonusers after accounting for socioeconomic status. But students who used it almost every day and students who rarely used it, tended to have lower scores.

“These relationships do not necessarily imply a negative impact of AI use on science performance, but may reflect a complex mix of who adopts AI and how they use it,” the study found. “It also suggests that moderate and intentional use of AI for schoolwork and learning may be positively related to student performance.”