[This is an extract from the 35th Memorial Lecture to honour Professor J.E. Jayasuriya, the first Sri Lankan to hold the position as Professor of Education and later head of the Department of Education at the University of Ceylon, organised by the J.E. Jayasuriya Memorial Foundation on 13 February 2026.]

Living in the age of artificial intelligence

We are living in a transformative era in education – the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Technological change has always influenced how teaching and learning take place. However, the current wave of technology innovation represents a rapid shift rather than a gradual evolution. Unlike earlier forms of educational technology, which primarily focused on storing information, automating administrative tasks, or delivering digital content, AI – particularly generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) – is interacting with us in ways that feel almost human. It can respond instantly to human requests, adapt to user input, generate original content, and engage in dynamic interactions that resemble human behaviour. These capabilities are accelerating its adoption across educational settings. As a result, the ways students learn and teachers teach are changing significantly, creating both new opportunities and complex challenges (Crompton, Citation2024; Illingworth & Forsyth, Citation2026; Sharples, Citation2025).

The implications of this extraordinary shift in teaching and learning extend well beyond efficiency or convenience. GenAI now participates actively in the teaching-learning process, influencing how students search for information, construct understanding, complete academic tasks and express ideas. Teachers, likewise, are encountering new possibilities for lesson planning, assessment design, providing feedback and differentiation of content. At the same time, these developments challenge established principles about authorship, originality, and academic integrity. Consequently, education systems worldwide are navigating strange territory in the current era, where technological capability is advancing much faster than pedagogical guidance.

Not surprisingly, such rapid changes evoke mixed feelings among educators: excitement, curiosity, concern, confusion, and sometimes even a sense of being overwhelmed by the pace, scale and implications of AI integration into education. While GenAI appears to blur the boundaries between human and machine contributions in learning, it also raises fears about student dependency, diminished critical thinking and weakening of professional expertise. These concerns are not about resisting innovation; rather, they reflect a careful and responsible engagement with a technology that has wide-reaching educational and societal implications.

As AI becomes increasingly accessible and widely used, educators are forced to ask some fundamental questions: If AI can provide instant, fluent answers to almost any question, what does learning mean today? How should teaching adapt when access to information is no longer scarce? How can educators ensure that AI tools support inquiry, reasoning and creativity rather than replacing human effort, thinking and reflection? These are not merely technical questions about software functionality or platform selection. They are pedagogical, ethical and deeply human questions that compel us to reconsider how learning experiences are designed and who remain responsible for educational decisions.

While AI systems can generate instant outputs, they do not possess understanding, intention, or moral responsibility. Nevertheless, educational decisions, what is taught, how learning is assessed, and why certain approaches are adopted, remain fundamentally human choices. Therefore, teachers continue to play a key role in designing learning environments, setting expectations, modelling ethical practice, and guiding students in the responsible use of technology. AI may influence educational practice, but it does not and should not determine the core purpose of education. It is neither productive to view AI as a threat to education nor to embrace it as a universal solution. Instead, what is required is a balanced and reflective approach – one that recognises both the potential and the limitations of GenAI. When integrated thoughtfully, GenAI can support personalised learning, stimulate dialogue, reduce routine workload and create opportunities for deeper engagement. However, such benefits emerge only when human values, professional judgement, and pedagogical design remain at the centre of education.

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This lecture therefore focuses on how GenAI can be integrated meaningfully into teaching and learning while preserving human agency. Rather than asking what AI can do, the emphasis is on what educators should do with AI, and how it can be aligned with sound pedagogy and ethical responsibility.

GenAI is transforming educational practices

GenAI, which is a rapidly evolving subset of AI, is transforming educational practices. While digital technologies continue to play a central role in education, GenAI represents a significant change from earlier tools due to its ability to generate new content dynamically rather than merely deliver or manage existing information. These capabilities are redesigning how knowledge is accessed, constructed, represented and assessed within educational contexts. GenAI has the potential to enhance teaching and learning by enabling a wide range of pedagogical applications. These include the simulation of diverse learning scenarios, the rapid creation of adaptive instructional materials, the provision of real-time formative feedback, and the design of more personalised learning experiences tailored to individual learner needs (Crompton, Citation2024; Qian, Citation2025).

To understand these transformations, it is essential to clarify what GenAI actually is. In simple terms, GenAI refers to systems that can create new content including text, images, video, audio, codes and data-driven outputs in real time in response to user input. These systems generate novel outputs by identifying patterns within existing datasets and recombining these patterns in new ways (OECD, Citation2026; UNESCO, Citation2023). This generative capability allows GenAI tools to produce original responses that vary according to context, purpose and user intent, making interactions appear flexible and conversational.

Shironica P. Karunanayaka is the Senior Professor in Educational Technology, Faculty of Education, The Open University of Sri Lanka, Nawala, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka.