French students in the fourth year of secondary education will receive one hour of lessons per week about artificial intelligence (AI) from September 2027. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced this via X. The VivaTech technology fair is taking place in the French capital Paris until Saturday.
“We cannot allow an entire generation to discover artificial intelligence without giving it the keys to understand and therefore control the technology,” the French Prime Minister said. According to Lecornu, education must therefore prepare French youth for the “world to come”, including by teaching young people to think critically and to understand models and applications. Students must also master the ethical side of the story, he says.
In the meantime, legislative initiatives are being worked on in France to ban social media for young people under the age of 15. These plans go hand in hand with the new lessons about AI, says Lecornu. “They start from the same ambition: to make our students free, autonomous citizens,” it says.