María Intencipa remembers when her small rural Colombian school was blissfully untouched by the artificial intelligence revolution. That was just last year, and those days now feel like a distant memory.
The chemistry teacher at José Gregorio Salas Rural High School watched her quiet farming community get swept into the global AI disruption almost overnight. Students who once struggled with basic assignments were suddenly turning in work featuring sophisticated vocabulary and complex arguments they’d never learned in class.
“When I assign homework, students just use AI,” Intencipa told Rest of World. “Because it’s easier.”
AI in Latin American Schools: The Double-Edged Sword of Accessibility
The transformation began when Meta Platforms rolled out AI chatbots across Latin America in July 2024, embedding them directly into Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Whether users wanted them or not, these apps became instant gateways to artificial intelligence assistance.
The shift didn’t happen gradually. Students at the rural school first discovered an AI bot called “Lucia” through the WhatsApp messaging app. What Intencipa initially thought was a human tutor turned out to be the Luzia app, which transforms WhatsApp into an AI assistant.
Soon, teachers across the school noticed the telltale signs: homework submissions that didn’t match students’ usual writing styles, essays with arguments never covered in textbooks, and a general surge in work quality that seemed too good to be true.
Paradoxically, despite these brilliant-seeming assignments, more students began failing their exams. The disconnect was clear students were copying AI-generated content without understanding it.
Meta’s approach proved particularly effective in countries like Colombia. The company fine-tuned its apps for emerging-market consumers, making them cheaper to use and designing them to work with basic phones and unreliable internet connections.
“Here, Facebook is the king,” explained Luisa Cárdenas, a social sciences teacher in Colombia’s coffee region. Her students “simply copy what comes up in the chat, but they’re not capable of analyzing what they’re replicating.”
This dominance stems partly from Meta’s controversial agreements with telecommunications companies that restrict users on cheaper data plans to specific apps and websites, including Meta’s platforms. For many Colombian students, these AI-enhanced apps have become their primary gateway to artificial intelligence, even more so than ChatGPT.
Colombian Classrooms Tackle AI Disruption with Creative Solutions
The AI disruption couldn’t have come at a worse time for Colombia’s education system. The country already faces enormous challenges: only 54 out of every 100 students complete high school, and just 11 of those graduates reach acceptable levels in critical reading, mathematics, and natural sciences.
Colombian students ranked worst in creative thinking among countries assessed by the OECD’s international student assessment program. Some students graduate without mastering basic reading and writing skills, according to Cárdenas.
Sixteen-year-old Sergio represents many students’ attitudes toward AI assistance. “I ask it for everything,” he said. “When they give me an assignment, I just research and copy. I don’t read or anything.”
Faced with this challenge, Colombian educators are getting creative. Byron Giral, a philosophy teacher in Guatavita, uses role-playing exercises focused on hyperlocal topics that AI systems are unlikely to know about. Students debate complex community issues while acting as mayors, business executives, and other local stakeholders.
“Since it’s an oral exercise, they have to use critical thinking,” Giral explained. “If I only asked for written work, it would be very difficult to determine that they’re learning.”
Chemistry teacher Intencipa has taken an even more radical approach: she’s eliminated homework entirely. Instead, she requires all student work to be completed in her classroom, where she can ensure students are using their own minds rather than artificial intelligence.
“Now I keep all my work in the classroom,” she said.
While Colombia’s Ministry of Education promotes “safe and gradual” AI use with adult supervision for younger students, teachers on the ground are largely left to figure out solutions themselves. Their innovative approaches may offer valuable lessons for educators worldwide grappling with similar AI-driven disruptions to traditional learning.
