AI is forcing us to rethink what education is actually for.

AI is forcing us to rethink what education is actually for.

We are seeing very different perspectives emerge on the same question ->

1\ Restrict it.

New York City is banning student-facing generative AI through 8th grade for the 2026-27 school year. Los Angeles has imposed a moratorium on student use of generative AI on school-issued devices. Many schools have banned AI-use. The logic is that students need to wrestle with hard problems themselves to build judgment, critical thinking and the ability to learn.

The risk is students miss out on learning the most powerful tool of their generation. Students elsewhere will build that skill early and compound it for years.

2\ Raise the bar.

Ben Horowitz shared a perspective from Stanford professor Dan Boneh: if AI makes traditional problems too easy, make the problems harder. With AI, Boneh is seeing students solve problems no student in history could have solved. AI raises the ceiling on what a student can attempt.

Personally, I love this perspective. The counter point of course is over-reiliance. A physician recently wrote that AI is making her a better doctor while potentially depriving residents of the "productive struggle" that develops clinical judgment. Judgment and critical thinking can form poorly when the tool always supplies the first answer.

3\ Redesign "the school" entirely.

Alpha School uses personalized AI-driven academics to compress core instruction into roughly two hours a day. The recovered time goes to projects, leadership, entrepreneurship, physical activity and real life experience.

Fidji Simo recently described her daughter's positive experience at Alpha School.

Zoom out.

The same question is showing up at work.

Early career professionals built judgment through repetition. AI now compresses much of that apprenticeship.

I have previously argued for corporate flight simulators -> realistic, AI-rich environments where people practice complex decisions, experience consequences, and learn when to trust, challenge or override AI.

This is already happening:

-> KPMG launched TaxSIM, simulation-led training built around realistic client scenarios.

-> Deloitte established a Global AI Simulation Center of Excellence to explore scenarios.

-> Bank of America uses AI conversation simulators in its internal training division.

Today, AI capabilities are moving faster than schools, career ladders, training and professional norms can adapt.

That gap is an opportunity. Every institution that develops people now gets to redesign how judgment is built, faster and at far greater scale.

I enjoy learning. It's how I spend my weekends. Learning expands the mind, and (used rightly) AI expands the learning. For me, it's an accelerant. Picture that in the hands of every student, every new hire, every curious mind.

The generation growing up with this accelerant will do incredible things we can barely imagine today.

Let's build schools and organizations worthy of them.

Until next time,

Ram

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Ram Srinivasan

MIT Alum | Author, The Conscious Machine | Global Future of Work and AI Adoption Leader published in Business Insider, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, MIT Executive Viewpoints and more.

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Ram Srinivasan currently serves as an Innovation Strategist and Transformation Leader, authoring groundbreaking works including "The Conscious Machine" and the upcoming "The Substrate Shift."

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