Week by week, “What does the future look like?” becomes a harder question to answer. But even in the face of uncertainty, we can examine how transformative technologies — AI in particular — challenge our assumptions and way of living.

Technology is changing what we do and who we are faster than ever before

Our lives and behavior have always been shaped by innovation. But technology like AI puts our foot firmly on the gas pedal. Anthropic CEO Dr Dario Amodei talks about a “compressed 21st century”, predicting that the next ten years will see 100 years of progress in biology and medicine. Western University Chief AI Officer Professor Mark Daley believes that building machines that think “cuts to the heart of who we are…. And it’s in that difference that our greatest societal, existential, and imaginative challenges lie.”

We can’t yet know what development trajectory AI will take. Most likely, we’ll hit the ceiling at some point (the classic innovation S curve), but we could see exponential growth in the next 10 – 20 years. If AI can accelerate what we’re capable of in every facet of our lives, that includes education. Grasping the impact of that means going back to the root of education: why learning is so important in the first place.

Education is how we problem-solve our way to a better future

As humans, we have innate curiosity, imagination, creativity, and an ability to solve problems — usually by innovating. And we’ve evolved an extraordinary ability to change our individual and collective future through creating value in many different forms.

But the abilities we're born with can only take us so far. Learning is how we take what we’re naturally good at and enhance it. And education — the formal structure of learning — takes us further still. So what happens when we have a technology that problem-solves faster and better than any one person or group of people?

I think there are three big questions to tackle here.

1. What makes us, ‘us’?
What does it mean to be human? We won’t solve millennia of philosophical debate any time soon. But now machines are emulating many of the processes we think of as distinctly human — whether there’s real thinking happening or not.

We must actively think about where technologies present serious threats to who we are, and where they lead to new possibilities. In learning and education, it means asking how we center what it means to be human.

2. How do we create value in a world where intelligence is ‘free’?
True, it costs to develop, train and run AI models. But anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection can access on-demand intelligence that could far outstrip what they can get from human educators. To them, that’s free.

For centuries, access to knowledge and intelligence has often come at a price — something the wealthy can buy, but harder for others to tap into. Today, AI challenges and disrupts this model of education.

Of course, it’s an oversimplification to say that AI can free access to intelligence from the shackles of a market-driven system. But if we accept that AI will broaden access to information and offer the power to process it instantly, we need to reassess the skills students will need to create value in a future where intelligence is effectively free. And we need to rethink the roles human educators will have in that world.

3. How do we equip future generations to create meaningful value?
We aren’t just wealth-creating machines. We yearn to create things that have meaning. When AI can create at least some of those things for us, how do we think differently about flourishing in this new world?

Perhaps then, this is another way of looking at my first question. Before, I asked what happens when AI threatens who we are. What if now I ask what happens when we learn to work with AI to make us more than we are? Or, in short: how do we learn how to be human in the age of AI?

To do that, we’ll need learning environments that combine the strengths of human and artificial intelligence to unlock potential.

We can’t stop the march of innovation — but we can guide and steer it

Technology doesn’t just happen to us. The drive to innovate is coded into our DNA, but we have the power to determine which futures we aspire to, and how we get there.

That will mean having the humility to question our assumptions about who we are as individuals and where we’re going as a society, so we can actively work towards the future we want. If even a fraction of the promise of emerging AI capabilities comes to pass, we’ll need to radically rethink everything about our approach to learning and education. But if we do that with an open mind, and keep our focus on what makes us human, we have every opportunity to build a vibrant future.

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Professor Andrew Maynard
Professor, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University