AI is getting very popular among students and teachers, very quickly

The American public as a whole remains on the fence with artificial intelligence, according to many polls, but in education, adoption among teachers and students is rapidly rising.

In a little over a year, the percentage of teachers who say they are familiar with ChatGPT — the breakthrough generative AI chatbot from Microsoft-backed OpenAI, which is next headed to the Apple iPhone — rose from 55% to 79%, while among K-12 students, it rose from 37% to 75%, according to a new poll conducted in May by Impact Research for the Walton Family Foundation, in conjunction with the Learning Engineering Virtual Institute's AI Lab.

When it comes to actual usage, a similar spike occurred, with 46% of teachers and 48% of students saying they use ChatGPT at least weekly, with student usage up 27 percentage points over last year.

Maybe most notable, the reviews from students are broadly positive. Seventy percent of K-12 students had a favorable view of AI chatbots. Among undergraduates, that rises to 75%. And among parents, 68% held favorable views of AI chatbots

"It is a lot more positive data than I expected," said Ethan Mollick, professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and an expert and author on AI who reviewed the polling data.

The polling data lines up with the experience of Khan Academy and its founder Sal Khan, who has been working with Newark, New Jersey's school district, among others, to test the use of a customized ChatGPT for education, Khanmigo, over the past year. Khan recently told CNBC that its AI tool will expand from 65,000 students to one million students next year. It also recently announced that Microsoft is paying so that AI can be offered to teachers across the U.S. free of charge. (School