LEGO Education Says AI Learning Should Start With Children's Agency

Children as role models, not recipients

Andrew Sliwinski, Vice President and Head of Product Experience at LEGO Education, spoke in the session "Child agency in the age of AI". He said the speed and uncertainty around AI have led adults to focus too heavily on the technology and underestimate the next generation. "We've lost track of what children are capable of," he said.

At the LEGO Group, he explained, the principle that "children are our role models" informs the design process. That means talking to children, asking what they think and involving them in conversations about the technologies meant for them.

Sliwinski showed a video in which children discussed AI and developed their own policy for its use. They raised concerns about incorrect information, deepfakes, cheating, unequal access and becoming overly dependent on AI. One child said, "AI should be a tool and not a friend." Another argued AI should only be used if everyone has access to it. A third called for classes that teach children to handle AI without weakening their ability to think and learn independently.

Enthusiasm does not necessarily equal comprehension, he cautioned. Younger children may see generative AI as a "magic box". "But AI isn't magic. AI is technology," Sliwinski said. AI literacy, in his view, should hand children a screwdriver so they can take the box apart, understand its components and build something new.

Five capabilities and a broader foundation

Sliwinski argued that supporting children to use current AI systems safely is important but not enough. "We need to stop preparing children for a world where they're secondary to AI," he said. Children should understand the foundations of AI, including computer science, data, probability, sensing and algorithmic bias. He said these should become as fundamental to education as reading and numeracy.

He named five capabilities children will need:

• Creativity: "AI models look backwards. We need children to be able to look forward," he said.
• Curiosity: helps children think critically, question systems and resist cognitive offloading.
• Collaboration: children need chances to learn, build and solve problems together, even though many AI experiences place them alone in front of screens.
• Care: considering the effects technology may have on other people, especially as the time from idea to working prototype shrinks.
• Computational thinking: reasoning systematically and understanding how complex processes are structured. Coding remains valuable, he said, but the method should not be confused with the objective.

Ten red lines for AI and children

Sliwinski introduced ten principles developed by the LEGO Group to guide its use of AI with children. Described as "red lines", they are meant to protect children's agency, privacy, safety and wellbeing. He highlighted three.

• AI features should never undermine children's creativity, agency or understanding. When AI does the thinking for children, it can weaken the learning it is meant to enable.
• AI should not be presented as having human intelligence, emotions or social abilities. Children need an honest view of it as a tool without a mind, feelings or intentions.
• Processing, training and inference should remain local to a child's device. Sliwinski described privacy as a fundamental human right and said on-device processing prevents data from being transferred across networks or stored on external servers. It can also support access where internet connectivity is unreliable.

"Never let the technology lead the child," he said. "We need to start with what we want children to learn, how we want them to learn it, and then the technology needs to follow."

Learning by building together

Recalling his early work in mathematics education, Sliwinski described classroom problems that were abstract and disconnected from children's lives. He argued computing and AI education risk repeating this when children work alone on tightly constrained tasks. Decades of education research, he said, show children learn best when they build, experiment and connect technology to subjects they care about.

LEGO Education summarizes its approach in four principles: prioritizing children's agency and engagement, building foundational AI literacy beyond using current tools, treating safety and wellbeing as non-negotiable, and creating hands-on, collaborative experiences that encourage creativity and a lifelong desire to learn. The company's Summit involvement included hands-on Youth Zone activities and discussions on trust, privacy and inclusive AI learning.

Sliwinski stressed that educators, parents and communities remain indispensable. Adults do not need every answer, he said, and one of the most powerful things they can tell a child is: "I don't know. Let's go find out together."