How AI will transform education, from PreK to PhD

There has never been a better time to be five years old.

I often get asked this question: “If AI knows everything, why should my kids learn anything at all? Isn’t education obsolete?”

My answer is visceral and immediate: No, education will never be obsolete. It’s actually more important than ever. But it does need to adapt. Massively.

A few times per century, some new technological invention drops from the sky and uproots life as we know it. Whether we like it or not, we’re thrust into a “new normal,” one that significantly disrupts the pattern of our daily lives. People once thought the Industrial Revolution was the end of the world. And in some ways, it felt like it. People were scared, uncertain, powerless. Thousands of jobs were lost. But in the long-term, hundreds of thousands of jobs were created. Now, for you and me, everyday tasks are glossed with an ease and convenience that previous generations could have never dreamed of. All we had to do was adapt.

We did it again with the Internet.

And again, with the iPhone.

And we will do it again with AI.

Because beneath newfangled gadgets and innovations and movements, the human spirit throbs like a persistent pulse. We fear, endure, adapt, innovate, create, then marvel at what we’ve done and how far we’ve come. Eventually, we look back and say, “How did we ever manage without this thing?” And the cycle repeats itself.

The first 20 years of a person’s life no longer look anything like the experience of earlier generations. That may sound scary, but I promise you: there has never been a better time to be five years old.

The five phases of education (as we know it)

Let’s start with a quick look at how education works without AI.

Learning happens in five phases:

1. Pre-K to 3rd Grade
   Kids set the foundation of their education. They learn the basics: letters, numbers, how to read and write. There’s a popular adage: “Until 3rd grade, kids learn to read. After 3rd grade, they read to learn.”

2. 4th Grade to 12th Grade
   These years are all about mastering a standardized curriculum. In the U.S., that’s Common Core and AP courses. The goal is to stuff kids’ heads with as much knowledge as possible.

3. College
   Students begin to learn from seasoned experts. College classes are less about standardized test scores and more about domain expertise. For the first time, students can break away from generalized curriculum and dive deep into niche pockets of education: gothic literature, applied mathematics, biochemistry, the history of ancient Mayan civilization — you name it.

4. Master’s Programs
   Now, students shift to becoming experts themselves. “School subjects” become “career goals.” Students are no longer concerned with pure consumption of knowledge, but the long-term execution and creation of it.

5. PhD Programs
   Finally, the PhD shifts from mastering knowledge to creating it. Students officially break their “student” mold and step into the role of “inventor,” “creator,” and “industry expert.”

As you know, this is an arduous, expensive formula that can span the length of decades. Certain things must happen to elicit certain outcomes. Creation requires mastery. You can’t expand a frontier if you don’t know the existing frontier like the back of your hand.

The human knowledge graph is an intricate web of successes and failures, from caffeine-fueled all-nighters to heated debates with professors to actually being in the field, boots on the ground, testing, trying, experimenting, hypothesizing. Knowledge is the result of generations standing on the shoulders of giants.