For this thought piece, I assume that children can use AI as part of their learning, to explore how education might prepare them for life alongside it. I remain very concerned about the potential harms of children interacting directly with AI, and this article should not be read as an endorsement of that access.
I want my children to grow up in a world where they have more opportunity to be curious, creative and connected. A world where technology helps them pursue ideas, understand other people and do things that would once have been beyond their reach. A world where the benefits of progress are shared, and where a worthwhile life means more than being economically productive.
AI could help us build that world by enabling people to solve problems far more effectively and efficiently than they could alone. From improving everyday life in a community to tackling challenges in education, health and the environment, I see an extraordinary opportunity to turn human curiosity and ideas into practical progress. Whether we realise that opportunity will depend on the choices we make about education, technology and the kind of society we want our children to inherit.
As a parent and someone who has spent decades building tools for education and communication, I find that possibility enormously exciting. I use AI, experiment with it and build with it. I can see how much it could enable people to achieve.
I am also concerned that, by the time today’s children leave school, the world they enter will be very different from the one our traditional education system was designed for. That system simply does not prepare them for the world that is coming, yet we continue to treat fundamental educational reform as something that can wait.
There is a real cost to that delay. As AI makes information readily accessible, acquiring and reproducing prescribed knowledge carries far less value on its own. Yet this remains a central pursuit of traditional education, consuming time that children could spend developing curiosity, judgement, creativity, adaptability and the ability to work with others. Knowledge still matters as a foundation for understanding, but we need to reconsider how much of childhood we devote to accumulating it, and what we leave too little time to develop.
We need to think beyond how AI might help children complete today’s schoolwork. We need to consider what education should help them become, how they will find meaning and belonging, and what a good quality of life means in a world woven together with AI.
Curiosity should be at the centre
For me, curiosity is the starting point. The desire to understand something, explore an idea or find out whether a possibility could become real is a powerful reason to learn.
When answers are readily available, that desire matters enormously. A child can use AI to finish a task as quickly as possible, or use it to open up a subject they might otherwise never have explored. The technology can support either approach. The purpose and environment around its use make a difference.
Imagine a child who wonders why a local river floods. With AI, that question could quickly lead into geography, weather, engineering, wildlife, local history and decisions about where we build homes. They could investigate explanations, compare evidence, develop a proposal and discuss who it might help or disadvantage.
AI could help them explore that question further. A teacher could help them notice gaps, challenge assumptions and encounter ideas they would not have discovered alone.
Could education give children more opportunities to follow meaningful questions across subject boundaries, with enough structure and guidance to build a broad understanding of the world?
Knowledge remains essential. What we know gives us something to think with. It helps us recognise connections, form opinions, question claims and imagine possibilities. Having access to an answer does not make the knowledge in our own heads redundant.
The challenge is to connect that knowledge with a reason to care about it, and to preserve the pleasure of discovery throughout a child’s education and into adult life.
Remove the drudgery, not the challenge
Getting an answer and learning are different things. A child can receive a correct answer without understanding why it is correct, how to question it or how to use that understanding in another situation. Making answers easier to obtain does not, by itself, mean that learning has taken place.
What I want AI to make easier is the process of developing understanding: exploring an idea, working through confusion, testing possibilities and making connections. Some difficulties are a valuable part of that process. Others are obstacles that thoughtful support can help children overcome, allowing them to move further and faster in their learning.
A child who is trying to communicate an idea may benefit from help organising it. Someone exploring an unfamiliar topic may need an explanation presented differently. Removing those obstacles can create room for more ambitious thinking.
However, there are also times when working through something ourselves is the learning. If the aim is to develop an argument, handing over all the reasoning defeats the purpose. If the aim is to understand a mathematical relationship, receiving the answer is only a small part of the task.
The questions I would ask are: what problem are we trying to solve, what do we need to understand, and how could AI help us reach a better solution? In education, the value lies in children learning to investigate the problem, test ideas and judge whether a solution actually works. Completing a task quickly is useful only if it serves that purpose.
That requires judgement. We will not always need to understand every detail of every process we use. We should still understand enough to question the outcome, recognise when something needs checking and decide what happens next.
Could AI help children achieve more while also strengthening their confidence in their own ability to think? The goal is to remove the drudgery, not the challenge.
Learning to question, choose and contribute
Critical thinking becomes especially meaningful when a child cares about what they are trying to achieve. A real problem gives them a reason to ask whether an answer is credible, whether another approach might work better and whose perspective is missing.
An AI-generated proposal for improving a playground, for example, is something children could examine together. Would it work in the space available? Would younger children enjoy it? Could someone using a wheelchair take part? What would they need to find out before recommending it?
The value lies in the investigation and discussion, including the decisions to reject or change a suggestion.
I believe age-appropriate AI literacy should have an explicit place in education and also run through learning across the curriculum. Children need opportunities to examine errors, bias, persuasive language and the difference between a plausible response and a well-supported conclusion. They also need to consider when using AI is appropriate, what information they should share and who remains responsible for a decision.
Specific tools will change. Increasingly capable systems may take on more of the steps involved in completing a task. Children will still need practice recognising worthwhile problems, deciding what they want to achieve and judging whether the result serves that purpose.
This is part of what I mean by an entrepreneurial mindset: noticing that something could be better, believing you could make a difference and having the initiative to try. That might mean starting a business, helping a neighbour, creating something useful or contributing to a community project.
Could education do more to build that belief through experience? Children could have repeated opportunities to create, build, solve and contribute: identifying a problem, understanding who it affects, trying ideas and seeing what they can achieve. Each experience could give them a stronger reason to think, “I could do something about this.” The ambition can grow from a small classroom or community challenge to much larger problems.
AI could be an enormous equaliser here. An idea that once required a team of specialists, substantial funding or years of technical training may become something a person can begin exploring and building for themselves. More people could have the means to turn an idea into something useful, including those who would previously have lacked the resources or confidence to attempt it.
That possibility changes what children might imagine for their own lives. Could we help them grow up with the expectation that they can make things happen, and with the curiosity and persistence to find out how? Confidence becomes more meaningful when it is grounded in the experience of learning, trying, improving and making a contribution.
As adults, they may be able to use AI to investigate options, handle laborious tasks and test solutions at a speed and scale that would otherwise be out of reach. Human judgement remains essential in deciding which problems deserve attention, whose needs matter and whether the result improves people’s lives. Making this opportunity widely available will also depend on access to the tools and support to use them.
Could this become a larger purpose for education: helping people develop the belief, judgement and ability to create, build, solve and contribute alongside others and AI? Curiosity, knowledge and creativity gain practical meaning through what they enable us to achieve, and through the discovery that our contribution can matter.
Teachers matter in this future
What might education look like if teachers and other adults created a framework for exploration that was flexible enough to work across subjects and follow each child’s interests? Its starting point could be the questions, activities and problems that most strongly motivate that child. Adults would help turn that interest into a purposeful investigation, with meaningful goals, appropriate challenge and opportunities to create, test and discover, supported by AI.
The wider knowledge would grow around that central activity, giving it context and opening up new directions. A child interested in designing a game might explore storytelling, probability, visual design, coding and the psychology of cooperation. These connected areas could become investigations in their own right, while the project gives the child a reason to want to understand them. The framework would be guided by the learning and connections worth pursuing, with room to move across conventional subject boundaries.
This would require substantial guidance from teachers and parents. Adults would help shape the questions, extend the challenge, identify gaps and introduce ideas the child would not encounter alone. An initial interest, however narrow, would be an entry point into a broader education. Alongside that exploration, adults would ensure that essential foundations are developed and that children encounter experiences capable of sparking entirely new interests.
Could this create an environment in which children increasingly want to learn because the learning helps them pursue something they care about? Curiosity supplies a reason to take the next step, seek an explanation, try an approach and persevere when it fails. The adult’s task would include helping that motivation grow into the confidence and discipline to tackle unfamiliar or difficult work.
AI could help children sustain that momentum by offering explanations when they need them, adapting to their understanding and helping them explore the next question without a long delay. Used thoughtfully, it could enable rapid progress while leaving the discovery and thinking with the child. The purpose of that progress is to deepen understanding and open up more ambitious possibilities.
Adults would remain actively involved as the exploration develops, helping children reflect on what they have learnt, assess the quality of their work and decide what to investigate next.
Could teachers use AI to build and adapt frameworks with less prepared content and more room for children to explore? The framework could provide questions, goals, prompts and connections, with targeted explanations and resources introduced as the investigation develops. The promise here is a content light framework in which the child does the exploring, not more AI slop.
We also need to rethink how we recognise learning. A polished piece of work tells us only so much about the understanding behind it. Would we learn more by paying greater attention to how children explore, explain, revise, collaborate and respond when something does not work?
Might developmental portfolios offer a richer picture: records of a young person’s interests, projects, achievements, growing capabilities and contributions?
There is still a place for checking what someone can do independently. However, assessment should help us understand the person developing through education, including what motivates them and where they might find a fulfilling direction. Not just testing their knowledge.
Human connection needs protecting
Some of my strongest concerns involve the place AI could take in children’s emotional lives.
Growing up involves learning to live with people who have their own needs, limits and perspectives. Friendships require patience, compromise and care. Disagreement can be uncomfortable, and repairing a relationship can take effort.
I worry about what happens if children become accustomed to interactions that appear endlessly available, agreeable and centred on them. Could ordinary relationships begin to feel too demanding? Could we inadvertently reduce opportunities to develop empathy, resilience and tolerance of other people’s needs?
These are questions about the adults children will become, and about the communities and relationships they will build.
I draw a particularly firm line around psychological care. AI should not become a substitute for the human care and professional support a vulnerable child needs. A reassuring conversation with a system must not quietly displace an opportunity for a trusted adult to recognise that something is wrong and help.
As someone who builds technology, I believe we have a responsibility to consider these consequences before introducing features. The fact that something can be built does not establish that it belongs in a child’s life.
The technology I want to see should create more opportunities for human connection: helping children share ideas, collaborate, communicate and participate in the world around them.
Creativity is part of being human
The conversation about AI and creativity often centres on the quality of the output. Can it produce an impressive picture, a convincing story or an enjoyable piece of music?
For education, there is much more to consider.
When a child writes a story, makes a picture or performs something for another person, the value includes what they are trying to express and what they discover through making it. Their choices carry something of their experience, imagination and perspective.
Human creativity is a way of communicating with one another. We should protect both the ability and the desire to do it.
AI can be part of that process. It might help someone experiment or realise an idea they would otherwise struggle to express. We should still make room for children to develop their own skills, enjoy the process of making and feel that what they have to say is worth sharing.
The availability of an impressive generated result does not remove the value of a child creating something themselves. Education should help them understand that their contribution matters.
Preparing for a worthwhile life
Education is often discussed in terms of preparing children for employment. That matters, but I think our ambition should be wider.
We cannot know exactly how work will change over the course of today’s children’s lives. I believe we should take seriously the possibility that AI could eventually reduce the need for human labour very substantially, rather than assuming it will simply change the tasks within familiar jobs.
That possibility raises questions about who benefits, how prosperity is shared and where people find a sense of purpose. Greater technological capability does not automatically produce a fairer society.
Paid work can provide meaning, identity and connection. So can caring for others, making things, learning, exploring, participating in a community and contributing to a cause. Children deserve to discover a range of ways to lead worthwhile lives.
There is an optimistic future here: one in which people have more freedom to pursue meaningful activities because less of their time is consumed by economic necessity. Achieving it would require deliberate choices about ownership, accountability and the distribution of benefits.
Those responsibilities cannot be left to individual children, parents or teachers. Ethical AI requires individual moral judgement and collective societal responsibility. We need institutions and enforceable agreements that keep powerful organisations accountable and help ensure that progress benefits society broadly.
Education has a role in helping young people participate in those decisions, ask who is affected and think beyond their own immediate advantage.
Children are growing up now
The difficulty is that these longer-term ambitions sit alongside an immediate responsibility. Children are forming habits, expectations and relationships today.
I worry about the gap between the speed of technological change and the speed at which education and public policy can respond. During that gap, too much responsibility may fall on parents and individual teachers, with very different levels of time, confidence and support available to them.
We should not accept a future in which some children learn to direct powerful tools with confidence while others are left dependent on systems they have little opportunity to understand or question.
For those of us building educational technology, including at Oodlu, I believe the test should be whether our work helps children become curious, independent thinkers who can work with others to solve meaningful problems. Engagement and efficiency are useful when they support deeper understanding and the ability to turn ideas into something that makes a difference.
We can apply that same thinking to everyday learning. Give children room to ask their own questions. Discuss how they reached a conclusion. Make space for collaboration, disagreement, creativity and independent effort. Help them experience the satisfaction of understanding something and using that understanding to contribute.
I remain optimistic about what we could build alongside AI: a world in which people can tackle problems more effectively, turn promising ideas into practical improvements more quickly and share the benefits of that progress. I want children to inherit more opportunity, stronger relationships and greater freedom to lead fulfilling lives.
Their education should help them imagine that world, question the choices shaping it and take part in creating it.