If you had the knowledge of an entire civilization at your fingertips and had the task of building tools to support learning, what would you do? Would you build a multiple choice worksheet generator? A reading passage builder? A drill-and-kill tool dressed up as an adaptive game? 

If this sounds crazy to you, you’re not alone. With generative AI, we are in this very scenario today. Despite clear signals from almost every constituent group, employers, higher education, the military, parents, and even young people themselves, the vast majority of edtech AI tools are focused on making efficient a system of schooling that is not meeting modern future-readiness requirements. 

If we want a learning system geared for the modern world, we should be centering a more responsive product development question: How can AI help us unlock human potential in previously unattainable ways such that every young person is inspired and prepared for life, career, and democracy in the age of AI as individuals and for the common good?

AI changes how learning can occur and what must be learned. For the first time in history, we are confronted with a technology that mirrors human-like language capabilities, exceeds human analytical capacities, and can mimic human intuition in ways that make it feel alive. As a result, in an AI-infused world, human skills, such as critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and creativity, rise in importance alongside modernized content knowledge, the ability to transfer ideas across contexts, and the self-efficacy and agency to identify and solve problems. 

While some argue that AI is overhyped, we should recognize that “today’s AI is the worst AI you will ever use.” Soon we will laugh at the clunkiness of chat based AI in the same way that we laugh at early text messaging on flip phones. As multimodal agentic AI, AI that can process, integrate, and act upon information from text, images, audio, and video, becomes the norm and integrates with advances in wearable technologies and robotics, humanity is on the verge of capabilities for learning transformation that are presently unimaginable. As such, we must imagine the future of learning through the lens of advancing AI capabilities as opposed to static present capabilities.

AI, when used in ways that deepen human abilities, relationships, and cognition, referred to as pro-human AI use, has the potential to unleash a new era of learning by impacting everything from learner support to learning experience design and differentiation. 

So how can AI be used as a tool for future-ready learning outcomes? 

• AI can build human skills and connection while improving content learning. In a typical school today, building individualized learning for each child either requires a superhuman educator with unreasonable demands for differentiation, regimented quasi-differentiated curriculum materials, or placing students with an adaptive computer program. The superhero solution leads to rapid burnout. The regimented materials meet the needs of a non-existent average. The computer programs miss the relational aspect of learning, are often less personalized than advertised, and provide addictive dopamine hits that challenge the development of authentic motivation. None of it is ideal. 

But in an AI capable world, these tradeoffs are no longer necessary. AI can support the development of human skills and connection, while improving learning outcomes. Adult educators can gain more time to work 1:1 with learners and build deep relationships with them even while learners experience high quality content and collaboration with their peers. These statements are not a dream, but a reality that is coming to life in learning environments via AI tools like OKO that engage learners in curated content and support collaborative problem solving among them similar to high-quality small group instruction. 

• AI can personalize and democratize learning. Across the world, students come to class each day and are told what they are learning that day by a teacher following a standard pacing guide and aligned curriculum materials. Star educators find ways to make connections between standardized content and children’s interests, but children are largely expected to conform to whatever is being taught. This results in disengaged teachers forced into robotic content delivery roles and disengaged students forced into passive information receiving roles. 

But in an AI infused world, this entire equation is flipped. With AI powered tools like Inkwire, educators can build unique project-based learning experiences designed with their context, content, and skill development goals in mind. Better yet, organizations like RevX have leveraged Inkwire to enable learners as young as middle school, to build their own learning journeys aligned to knowledge and skills development goals. In making learning more personal and approachable, these pro-human AI use cases democratize access to knowledge and learning experience development. Learning becomes an engaging experience of discovery, design, and development rather than compliance, conformity, and passivity. 

• AI can empower educators and learners to solve their own problems. Education is a sector that is often designed for instead of with. Tools are made to solve problems and then educators are trained on them. As expected, most of the tools fail to meet the needs of educators or their learners and practitioners are often forced to work around the tools until the next set are layered onto the sector. 

Pro-human AI tools finally undo this dynamic by enabling educators and learners to develop their own solutions to their own problems. With tools like Playlab, educators have built tools that enable them to replicate their coaching feedback to provide better support to many learners at classroom scale. Similarly, Playlab tools have been developed by educators to support integration of high-quality instructional materials into project-based learning environments. 

But remember, these existing, deployed AI use cases are just the beginning of what is possible as AI capabilities are rapidly improving every day. New AI-supported assessment mechanisms will allow us to measure what matters by enabling real-time, ambient observation of knowledge and skills development that were previously hard to capture, understand, and grow. AI-enabled virtual and augmented reality experiences are enabling immersive learning that create meaningful practice environments for learners. When combined with new learning management systems and learning records, a whole world of learning possibilities opens up. 

The true promise of pro-human AI is to fundamentally transform the very foundations of learning. The advent of AI offers education a chance to move beyond the shallow efficiency of an outdated system and toward a future where technology amplifies our humanity, empowers every learner’s unique journey, and measures mastery of the skills and knowledge necessary for the future.