Jad Faqih 

In recent months, artificial intelligence has begun to gradually make its way into schools in Lebanon. AI is a particular priority for private schools seeking to modernize their teaching methods and keep pace with global digital developments, as such schools have long presented themselves as the most scientific and advanced schools in the country. Notably, some schools, especially Catholic and Evangelical ones, have begun integrating artificial intelligence technologies in the 2025-2026 academic year.
However, it is important to note that this openness also brings significant challenges, as there are potential risks associated with the hidden ideological or religious biases that some of these systems may carry, whether in the data on which they are based or in their continuous updating mechanisms.
Therefore, a measured scientific and technical approach is required to leverage the vast educational capabilities of AI and protect the educational and cultural values upheld by Lebanese educational institutions.
This call for caution stems from several precedents observed in countries around the world that integrated these technologies into their schools earlier than Lebanon. In Canada, for example, an AI system was used to predict which students would fail, provoking a negative impact on their studies. Similarly, in US schools, machine learning (ML) misjudged children's texts based on their backgrounds and ethnic origins.
The Secretary General of Catholic schools in Lebanon, Father Youssef Nasr, confirmed to An-Nahar that Catholic schools are “very aware of the risks and consequences of integrating artificial intelligence into education and upbringing”. He also added that, “This tool is very important and indispensable, but it must be closely monitored, and awareness must be raised on how to use it.”
According to Nasr, “We currently have 20 schools equipped with STEAM Lab, a modern learning technology that includes AI systems, in parallel with monitoring by an ethics committee formed to ensure the preservation of our values and ethics, as well as a specialized technology committee.”
From a technical standpoint, communications management expert Gibran Khoury stated that "if the state, represented by the relevant ministries — namely the Ministry of Education and Higher Education and the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence — fails to intervene to develop a strategy aimed at protecting students from any harm that may befall them, as a result of integrating artificial intelligence into schools, school groups, such as Catholic, secular, and Islamic, must intervene to establish a regulatory framework for this integration that protects students from any ideological ideas that may be suspicious."
Regarding the nature of this regulatory framework, Khoury explains that "schools can adopt several measures to ensure that the AI platforms they select are devoid of hidden religious or ideological bias and do not evolve into biased systems over time. These steps include schools requesting details of the platform’s underlying data sources, content sources, classifications, and the data that feeds the system, as well as the update policy and continuous learning mechanisms, before signing the contract."
AI expert Sally Hammoud urged schools to “refrain from adopting open-source AI systems that rely on huge amounts of data and replace them with school-developed systems themselves, with the help of experts, ensuring they are compatible with the communities in which they are used.”
Another challenge may lie in the ability of schools to monitor any AI system they want to use or even test before its adoption. In fact, recruiting experts in this field may prove difficult for the schools. Therefore, the logical and practical solution remains the establishment of a committee of specialists from the Ministries of Education and Artificial Intelligence to examine these systems on behalf of schools and provide them with the necessary advice in this regard.