In the year 2030, two 10-year-olds sit down to learn. One opens a textbook, memorises facts for an exam and waits for the class to move forward. The other logs into an AI-powered learning companion that understands her strengths, identifies her gaps, adapts lessons in real time and fuels her curiosity with projects linked to her passions.
Fast-forward 20 years: which of these students will lead, invent and tackle problems the world has yet to imagine?
This is not science fiction. It is the investment decision every nation must face today. The future will not be secured by pouring money into another chatbot, drone or data centre. The most powerful bet any country can make is to build an ecosystem for AI in education. The nations that master how humans and machines learn together will not only prepare their people for the challenges ahead but lead the pace for global progress in the century to come.
Today’s schools were built for the industrial age. Students sit in rows, follow rigid timetables and study from standardised textbooks, and the exams test how well they can recall information. This model once served its purpose: it prepared young people for predictable jobs in predictable hierarchies, where efficiency and uniformity were prized.
Today, we are witnessing the rapid erosion of these conditions. Routine work is being rapidly automated thanks to artificial intelligence and robots, knowledge is abundant thanks to machine learning, and the premium is now on creativity, adaptability and problem-solving. An education system designed for the factory floor cannot equip students for the challenges – or the opportunities – of the digital age.
In the age of artificial intelligence, machines are already outperforming humans in information recall, pattern recognition and soon even reasoning. The value of human work will no longer lie in memorisation, but in creativity, adaptability, judgment and vision. Without radical innovation in how we teach the young, we risk condemning millions to what the historian Yuval Noah Harari has called the “useless class” – people with skills easily replaced by machines.
The new school cannot continue to be just a building. The AI school is an ecosystem – a physical and digital space where learning adapts to each student in real time and supports learning for life. Imagine a classroom where AI quietly tracks each child’s progress. It notices who struggles with fractions, who races ahead in storytelling, who learns best by listening and who thrives by doing. It then adapts lessons instantly, personalises feedback and even detects when a child is losing focus.
In this model, AI does not replace teachers. Rather, it frees them. Algorithms handle routine tasks like grading, lesson plans and practice drills. Teachers become mentors, designers of experiences and guides for the profoundly human: curiosity, empathy, imagination and ethical reasoning. The best teachers of the future will co-teach with AI rather than competing with it. They will translate data into human understanding and help students develop what no algorithm can replicate: the ability to ask better questions, to weigh meaning and to make judgment calls in uncertain worlds.
Parents often ask: what skills should my child learn in the age of AI? The answer is not coding anymore. It is AI literacy – knowing how these systems work, where bias creeps in and how to collaborate with them wisely. It is prompting, questioning, validating.
We used to dismiss these capabilities as “soft skills”, pushing them into extracurriculars and, worse yet, after-school activities. In truth, they are the hardest to automate and the most essential to civilisation: curiosity, creativity, adaptability, compassion and the ability to learn across disciplines. As Demis Hassabis of DeepMind once said: “Learning how to learn will be the defining skill of this century.”
Moreover, it never ends. The AI school doesn’t stop at graduation. It becomes a lifelong learning companion. Imagine an AI mentor that remembers how you learn, recommends new skills when your industry shifts and connects you with peers across the globe facing similar challenges.
This is already happening. Universities and companies are experimenting with “learning twins” – digital companions that track how you think and help you retrain. In 10 years, not having one may feel as strange as not having a smartphone today.
A global race is already under way, and nations that understand this are moving fast: Estonia has launched a national AI learning programme for teenagers, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have embedded AI into school curricula as part of Vision 2030 and some experimental schools in the US are replacing fixed classes with personalised AI learning journeys.
Every generation has one transformative investment. In the 20th century, it was electricity. In the early 2000s, it was the internet. In the 2020s, it is AI for education.
The industrial age of schooling is over. The age of intelligence has begun.
