Manitoba ready to take the lead on AI

This Friday, the Manitoba government is hosting a summit for artificial intelligence (AI) in education.

The event will gather hundreds of school leaders, researchers, and policymakers from across the province. It’s a promise long in the making.

Three years after the release of ChatGPT 3.5, the government said in its November 2025 throne speech that they would work with teachers, experts, and families to “make sure (AI) is used safely and responsibly as a tool for learning, not a replacement.”

That commitment becomes more important the more data we see about AI use. One recent survey found that 73 per cent of Canadian students are using AI in their schoolwork. Twenty-five per cent do so every day or for every assignment. Another study found that 88 per cent of undergraduate students in the United Kingdom now use AI for schoolwork, up from 52 per cent just last year.

AI is showing up in the economy, too.

Twelve per cent of Canadian businesses use AI, a number that’s doubled in just the past year. All the while, study after study has found that people — teachers, professors, linguists, and the general public — aren’t nearly as good at spotting AI as they think they are.

Widespread AI use puts parents and teachers in a bind. Only 36 per cent of Canadians say they’re familiar with the rules and ethics of AI use, according to one recent study. And only seven per cent of teachers call themselves AI “experts,” because teachers went to school for their subject areas, not to learn about AI gadgets.

There’s a growing gap between the number of students who are using AI, and the support in place to make sure student learning is still front and centre. That means K-12 schools and universities need to seriously tackle AI literacy: the knowledge and skills for teaching and learning in a world where AI exists, and where students are being exposed to more AI content every day.

This isn’t a call to embrace AI uncritically.

We shouldn’t shy away from serious conversations about privacy, safety, intellectual property, cognitive offloading, or AI’s environmental impact.

But we’re kidding ourselves if we think banning AI and changing nothing will do any good. Plenty of school boards and universities tried banning AI. They quickly realized that since teachers can’t reliably detect AI-generated content, sticking our heads in the sand isn’t going to make AI go away.

Here’s the good news: Manitoba educators have already been moving the needle on AI literacy.

This fall, the Winnipeg School Division released its AI thinking framework, inviting teachers, students, and families to think about how to use AI in ways that align with core goals for teaching and learning. Lakeshore School Division has had a similar policy since 2023.

In the past year alone, I’ve worked with hundreds of teachers and university instructors to help them rethink what assessment can look like in an age of AI. And my colleagues at the University of Winnipeg and elsewhere have been studying AI and machine learning in business, computer science, and health care to better understand how these tools can help our communities, and what we need to do to keep students safe.

Twenty years ago, Manitoba Education released a guiding policy document for classroom assessment, focused on learning and assessment as complex, ongoing processes.

Other provinces used that document to develop their own assessment guidelines with the same framework.

The Manitoba government can provide that same leadership today — this time for assessment in the age of AI. K-12 teachers, school systems, and colleges and universities all face the same challenge and opportunity: how do we support students across our province and make sure they have robust learning experiences in a world where AI is all around us?

Some of that will come out of this week’s AI Summit.

But long-term change — sustained support, resources, research, and access to professional learning and made-in-Manitoba solutions — that’s the real opportunity.

That’s where Manitoba can and should lead.

Michael Holden is an assistant professor at the University of Winnipeg.