Estonia has a reputation as one of the most digitally advanced nations in the world, thanks to its efficient digital platforms for government services and its startup-friendly culture. Its citizens’ digital prowess is largely due to the government’s decades-long campaign to bring technology into schools. Now, the government is launching AI Leap 2025, which will bring AI tools to an initial cohort of 20,000 high school students in September. Siim Sikkut, a former member of the Estonian government and part of the launch team, says the AI Leap program goes beyond just providing access to new technology. Its goal is to give students the skills they need to use it both ethically and effectively.

Tiger Leap was a program in the ’90s to bring computers and Internet and basic digital skills to all the schools in Estonia. I myself got exposed to all things Internet, because at that time, we didn’t have a chance to use them at home. These guys and girls became the founders of industry and of digital government, so it allowed us to make a leap in building a digital society in Estonia.

Our thinking is now we have to do the same sort of leap and expose our younger generations to this next wave [of technology]. There are differences between the programs. Then it was, We’ll give you the access and the tools to do with what you like. Now, with AI tools, we feel it has to be a bit more curated. You need to learn to use them as opposed to just getting an easier way out of your homework. So it’s more of a skilling effort than just an access effort.

We are still negotiating with the partners and vendors, so I won’t be naming companies. But fundamentally, we’re talking about a conversational AI assistant that is trained in the context of Estonian language and Estonian curriculum. It will be built for educational use, so it won’t be, for example, the ChatGPT that you and I would use in our daily life. It will support the learning more. For example, you don’t just submit your homework and get the answers back. In that scenario, the tool starts to tutor you more than give you an answer. We’re re-creating conversational AI as a learning assistant, and ideally we’ll have a lot of smaller subject-based apps added to that. We will have in place at least one tool, a conversation tool, and then we’ll build on that in the next few years.

We might have to launch it first just with basics. But the idea is that we’ll have two apps, a teacher’s assistant and a student’s one, so teachers get feedback or recommendations on how to guide the particular student better. The idea is to make learning more personalized for better learning outcomes.

These same concerns led us to do more on this front. What’s really driving us are two very pragmatic considerations. A lot of kids use [AI tools] anyway to substitute thinking more than to complement it. We have numbers that 70 percent of kids in high school use them anyway. So the harmful use is already there, and we want to counter that. Secondly, there’s a divide in use, maybe for reasons of socioeconomic background. But Estonia’s whole education system is built on uniform opportunity. So this is also an attempt to make sure that we don’t increase the divide for the future.

And what is the opportunity that you see for the students?

Sikkut: We’re making a bet that this is a competitiveness factor. If you’re not there, you’re left out. In the labor market, as a country, globally speaking, we’re saying, “Hey, look, you need to know how to get the most out of these tools.”

The current program will provide tools to 10th and 11th graders, right?

Sikkut: Yes, we’re focusing on high school and vocational education now. But there’s still a debate going on: Should we go younger than that? The jury is still out on whether that would make sense. You need to have some independent thinking and study discipline and just be a self-driven learner. That doesn’t start early.

Are there concerns about hallucinations and how to teach kids how to check for accuracy?

Sikkut: That goes right into the technical skill set of using these things. Unfortunately, hallucinations are a fact of life, and they will be for the time [being]. These AI skills will be taught by applying them in the rest of the curriculum. So in history class, as you use this AI study assistant, that’s where you learn about hallucinations and how to watch out for them.

Have you talked about this program with teachers? Are they receptive or nervous?

Sikkut: It’s all of the above. As you can imagine, you have early adopters who are enthusiastic. Today, they’re already using these tools to plan for their class, or they run essays through an AI tool. On the other end, you have folks who have basic digital literacy, but they don’t want anything more than that. We’ll have a communication effort to make sure that the teachers are okay and calm about it. The main message we’re trying to tell teachers is that they won’t get the full suite of tools yet. They will all be part of an experimentation program.

A version of this article appears in the July 2025 issue as “5 Questions for Siim Sikkut.”