Gabriella
BERLIN – A prominent expert, Gisela Schmalz, has issued a stark warning regarding the impact of the datafication of our idea of intelligence in the rapidly advancing era of artificial intelligence (AI) in 2026. She fears the emergence of new mass manipulation that will fundamentally alter the educational landscape, especially for schoolchildren who are now integrated into digital systems.
This warning comes amid the rapid adoption of AI technology across various sectors, including education, which increasingly relies on algorithms and data analytics to evaluate cognitive abilities. According to Schmalz, this step could backfire in the future, given the history of using the intelligence quotient (IQ) as an instrument of power and social differentiation.
In her critique, Schmalz emphasized that the concept of IQ has historically often been misused to categorize individuals, create hierarchies, and even limit a person's potential. With AI, the potential for such misuse could increase exponentially due to the unparalleled scale and speed of data collection and analysis.
Whoever has school children will be surprised, she said, implying that this paradigm shift in measuring and understanding intelligence will have profound implications not yet fully grasped by the broader public, especially parents and educators.
Datafication of intelligence refers to the process of converting complex aspects of human cognitive abilities into data that can be measured, analyzed, and manipulated by algorithms. This includes academic performance assessments, learning patterns, and even emotional responses, all converted into digital metrics.
Today's AI era allows systems not only to measure but also to shape, or even manipulate, our perception of what intelligence truly means. This has the potential to create a narrow standardization of intelligence, overlooking the diversity of unique potentials and talents not measurable by digital parameters.
The implications for education are highly significant. Curricula and teaching methods could be algorithmically tailored based on AI-determined intelligence profiles, potentially inadvertently steering students toward certain paths or even limiting their exploration beyond system-defined parameters.
Concerns about mass manipulation are not limited to formal education. With increasingly sophisticated AI recommendation systems, the information and stimuli received by children can be filtered in such a way as to subtly shape their worldview and even their thought processes.
The ongoing global debate on AI ethics and governance must now urgently incorporate this aspect of intelligence datafication. How society ensures that this advanced technology does not harm the cognitive development and freedom of thought of future generations is a crucial question.
Alongside these changes, we also need to observe how human interaction with AI alters our communication patterns and even our very identity, as discussed in the article Are Humans Becoming 'Robotoids'? AI Interaction Changes Our Communication Patterns!. This indicates that AI's impact is multisectoral and fundamental.
Policymakers, educators, and parents bear a collective responsibility to understand these risks. Creating robust frameworks for AI use in education, with an emphasis on critical development and student autonomy, is a step that can no longer be postponed.
Editorial Insight: Gisela Schmalz's warning underscores the urgency to critically evaluate AI's impact on the definition and measurement of intelligence. If not managed wisely, this datafication risks creating a society homogenous in thought, dictated by algorithms, and losing the essence of human intellectual diversity. Protecting the freedom of thought and creativity of children in this digital era must be a top priority. The world must avoid the historical mistake of making intelligence merely a tool for social control.
