AI is forcing education to answer a question that reaches far beyond software: what do children need from learning? The debate is not only about faster tools or lower costs. It is about whether education should prepare students to solve problems, build relationships, think critically, and live in a world shaped by artificial intelligence.
Daniel Susskind, an author and researcher on AI, has argued that “human tutors are too expensive to provide to everyone.” That fact creates a powerful case for using AI in education, especially if technology can help more students receive support that families cannot afford to provide on their own.
The Promise of Support for Every Student
If every student had access to a human tutor, the result could be quality education for all and less anxiety about job losses. That vision connects education with the wider changes AI is bringing to work. Better support for students could help them prepare for those changes, while also addressing fears about the future of employment.
Yet the idea of replacing human help with AI raises a different question: what kind of support does a tutor provide? A tutor can become part of a student’s meaningful interaction with another person. That interaction is not only about answering questions or completing assignments. It can shape confidence, judgment, and a student’s understanding of the world.
The debate becomes sharper when students protest against AI. Their concerns focus on graduate outcomes, along with the fear that AI will enrich the few and worsen labor conditions. These students are not raising a narrow objection to new technology. They are challenging the way its benefits and costs may be shared across society.
Education Is More Than Problems to Solve
Society consists of meaningful interactions with others, not problems to be solved. That idea places a clear limit on any education system built around automated answers. A machine may help with a task, but education also asks students to understand other people and take part in shared life.
Susskind has drawn a line between older forms of online connection and AI, saying, “social media at least used to provide connection – AI fundamentally does not.” The distinction matters because a tool can produce information without creating the human bond that gives learning its meaning.
That does not erase the value of AI. It does demand a more careful view of what the technology can offer. AI may help address the cost of human tutors, but it cannot turn every educational need into a technical problem. The goal should be to expand access to quality education without losing the interaction that makes education human.
Daniel Susskind’s advice is direct: “We should try to be imaginative.” Imagination here means looking beyond a simple choice between traditional classrooms and automated systems. It means asking how human guidance, new tools, and stronger critical thinking can work together.
Preparing Children for Their Future
Pil and Galia Kollectiv, the authors of a letter responding to Susskind, warn that “we are letting our children down if we prepare them for the world that we grew up in rather than the one they will inhabit.” Their point turns the education debate toward curriculum design. Schools must prepare children for a future shaped by AI, not only preserve the assumptions of an earlier one.
That preparation requires rethinking education and curriculum design. Students need more than exposure to AI tools. They also need the ability to question how those tools affect work, opportunity, and labor conditions. They need to examine whether a system serves many people or enriches only a few.
The future of education may therefore depend on balance. Human tutors cannot be provided to everyone because they are too expensive, yet human interaction remains central to society. AI can help address the cost of support, but students’ concerns about graduate outcomes and labor conditions show why access alone is not enough.
The most important challenge is not deciding whether AI belongs in education. It is deciding what education must protect as AI enters it. Schools can use new technology while keeping meaningful interaction, critical thinking, and human connection at the center.
Children will inhabit a world different from the one their parents grew up in. The strongest response is not to prepare them for the past, or to hand every problem to a machine, but to redesign learning around the people and possibilities that future will require.
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