Artificial intelligence has emerged as a transformative force, driving productivity and shaping new forms of education. The future of education will be characterized by interactive learning, the blending of virtual and physical environments, and personalized learning experiences. The key to empowering science education with AI lies in creating new learning scenarios and applications, such as immersive teaching, personalized services, and comprehensive assessments. It is essential to understand the principles and objectives of talent development, emphasizing the integration of theoretical research and practical engineering. Furthermore, it is important to explore the mechanisms of the integrated development of AI and science education, as well as the scientific and technological issues involved. We briefly discuss three viewpoints.

• STEM education is the fundamental way to cultivate innovative talents. Science education, namely STEM education, conforms to the basic laws of historical materialism and the principle that science and technology are the primary productive forces. The purpose of STEM is to teach the fundamental methods for understanding, describing, transforming, and constructing the world.
• The key to empowering scientific education with AI lies in new scenarios and new applications. In the field of education, AI empowers the processes of teaching, learning, assessment, management, and services. In terms of engineering, knowledge graphs combined with LLMs represent a new key to personalized tutoring. AI+ is also creating new scenarios and applications, such as autonomous infrastructure inspection and intelligent diagnosis with micro-nano robots.
• The key to the integration of AI with STEM education lies in teachers. AI will empower education but cannot replace teachers. Teachers who understand how to use AI may replace those who do not, enabling a new form of intelligence that surpasses the limitations of human intelligence through human-machine collaboration.

Professor Qinghua is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the president of Tongji University.

He is a winner of the National Funds for Distinguished Young Scientists and a Distinguished Professor for the Cheung Kong Scholar Project. He is one of the first batches of leading scientists for the “Ten-Thousand Talents Project”. Additionally, he is a member of the Academic Committee of the Science and Technology Department of the Ministry of Education and the chairman of the Steering Committee on Computer Instruction of the Ministry of Education. He is also in charge of the Innovation Team of the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Professor Qinghua Zheng is engaged in research on big data knowledge engineering and has won several awards, including three Second Prizes of the State Science and Tech nology Progress Awards, two First Prizes of the National Teaching Achievement Award, three Second Prizes of the National Teaching Achievement Award, and five Ministerial and Provincial-Level Science and Technology Progress Awards.