Uhlík vs Křemík · Czech podcast about artificial intelligence

Eva Nečasová: there is no rush with AI for kids, relationships and teachers matter most

Episode 9 · 13 May 2026 · 1:01:15 · Guest: Eva Nečasová

Listen on: YouTube · Spotify · Apple Podcasts

Should children get to know artificial intelligence as early as possible so they don't miss out? Eva Nečasová, co-founder of the non-profit project AI dětem, says no in the podcast Uhlík vs Křemík. With hosts David Salomon and Adam Hanka she talked about AI literacy, teachers' fears, assessing pupils and why an avatar will not replace a teacher.

Technology races ahead, children mature at the same pace

Nečasová has been bringing AI into schools for four years. When large language models arrived and nobody was yet thinking about age limits, her team tried out how younger children communicate with them. She was surprised that it made no sense: the children couldn't formulate prompts properly and didn't understand the results. Her takeaway was that there is no rush. "The technology is evolving fast, but our evolution is somewhat slower," she says. In her view, children mature cognitively just as they did before AI, and it is better for them to enjoy childhood with their friends.

AI dětem teaches children from the third grade, but without devices. In the early grades, children learn principles such as machine learning, data or the cloud through games, worksheets, fairy tales and metaphors. They only work with apps in the upper grades of primary school. Nečasová also points to a common misconception that children know more about AI than adults. They use it naturally, but they don't consciously understand how it works. Because of this misconception, teachers are afraid to bring the technology into lessons.

Literacy instead of addiction

Asked how to tell AI literacy from addiction, Nečasová answers that someone who is AI literate is less likely to become addicted. In her view, literacy consists of theoretical knowledge of how the technology works, the skill to use apps effectively, and an attitude component, which she considers the most important. A large part of the AI curriculum, which already has more than 50 teaching materials for teachers, focuses on it.

You can't judge it just by the fact that a child is looking at a phone, she says, because much of children's social life has moved online. Warning signs are long-term lack of sleep or withdrawing into oneself. She now sees the biggest threat in AI companions. The problem starts when a child begins to isolate and would rather talk to a chatbot than to a living person.

Getting dumber, cheating and frontal teaching

According to Nečasová, two fears come up in every staff room: children will get dumber and they will cheat. She admits to mental laziness and notices it in her own writing. But it is up to adults, she says, to keep children from getting dumber. The chatbots her team develops are not meant to give ready-made answers but to guide the child through thinking, for example with Socratic questioning. She does not accept cheating as a problem: "From my point of view, cheating means that I as a teacher set up the lesson badly if children can cheat."

AI makes its way most easily into the lessons of teachers who already teach actively, through experience and reflection on it. Yet she cites a figure of 70% for frontal teaching from a Czech School Inspectorate report, though she was not sure whether it refers to the share of teaching or of teachers. Adam Hanka asked whether artificial intelligence merely amplifies the long-standing unpreparedness of Czech schools for the digital age, and Nečasová agreed that it is now more noticeable.

A dream system and the role of the teacher

Nečasová would like to build a school information system powered by AI. It would help schools implement the revision of the framework educational programme, store evidence of learning in each pupil's portfolio, and, in her view, make CERMAT, which is very stressful for children, unnecessary. Part of it would be formative assessment: instead of a grade, clear criteria, pupil self-assessment and descriptive feedback. In the upper grades, where a teacher sees 100 to 300 children a week, this is impossible without AI, which is why the team has been testing an app called Tiny for a year.

But AI will not replace teachers, she says. When testing in classrooms, she sees that the person of the teacher transforms the lesson, whether AI is used or not. "For me, school is a social institution, a school where we learn to live together, where we learn to talk to each other." For the future, she believes relationships and motivation matter most for children, because when they learn what they enjoy, they learn how to learn.

You can listen to the full conversation with Eva Nečasová in the podcast Uhlík vs Křemík.

The episode is in Czech. Czech page with chapters, quotes and the full transcript