I has arrived, and an unprecedented credibility crisis is crashing after it—one that will wash away the credentialing system of education and work as we know it. In schools and universities, students are cheating their way to diplomas, with educators powerless to stop them. Hiring managers the world over are flooded with a sudden surge of impossibly refined resumes and cover letters, alongside interviews they can no longer trust, while well–funded startups emerge with the explicit aim to help you “cheat on everything.”
This is not happening in a vacuum. Beyond education and work, it’s societal as well. Before AI, we watched countless fake experts effortlessly drown out real ones to gain enormous power. With AI, the ability to amplify any such perspectives at scale, undetected, has arrived.
We must redefine education to be less about institutions, and more about infrastructure, to be the scaffolding of data–driven trust in society, rather than just symbolic window dressing. The problems we now face are due to a disconnected system ripe for exploitation.
Future of education and work cannot be its past
Academically and professionally, our world revolves around a system of certifying knowledge that treats the process as a means to an end. Once you’ve earned your stamp of approval, nobody can easily check how you acquired it. How can we be surprised at those who try to fast–track the apparent formalities?
It is a system that is largely unchanged from over 1,000 years ago. Online, we have collectively indulged in a modernization mirage: the wave of alternative credential offerings that have flooded LinkedIn (more than one million) have only perpetuated the same opaque tradition: the industry parlance of “verifiable credential” means you can verify the authenticity of that same archaic piece of paper, now digitized. It does not mean you can verify the learning, or the exact sources.
Whether traditional credential or alternative, it is a system begging to be gamed. AI is only a flamethrower pointing at abundant kindling where small fires were already burning.
The future of society
Before the internet, these symbols were useful and respected because they were the currency of influence for not only school and work, but of media and discourse as well.
That is no longer true, largely because where influence and power are earned has changed. Our education system is clinging to symbols of respect for a game long abandoned by the players. How do these old symbols fit into the new games that the internet has generated, the data–driven games of social networks, of decentralized media, of online events, of freelance work and expertise–on–demand? They don’t, in their current form.
In an AI world, where outputs are effortlessly fabricated, the inputs are what suddenly matter most; in a world that is dissolving in mistrust, it is the inputs that need to be verifiable by anyone, and integratable into the new domains of power and influence. We don’t need proof of completion, we need accessible proof of work. Proof of human knowledge. Not just for the integrity of school and work, but for our ability to trust our interactions in the platform–driven world shaping our discourse, politics, and future more than anything ever before.
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Proof of “human” knowledge is the future of education in an AI world
Image via Adobe Stock.
May 21, 2025
AI brings with it an unprecedented credibility crisis that threatens both the future of education and of society. Redefining education to be the scaffolding of data–driven trust in society helps address both issues, writes Mario Vasilescu.
A
I has arrived, and an unprecedented credibility crisis is crashing after it—one that will wash away the credentialing system of education and work as we know it. In schools and universities, students are cheating their way to diplomas, with educators powerless to stop them. Hiring managers the world over are flooded with a sudden surge of impossibly refined resumes and cover letters, alongside interviews they can no longer trust, while well–funded startups emerge with the explicit aim to help you “cheat on everything.”
This is not happening in a vacuum. Beyond education and work, it’s societal as well. Before AI, we watched countless fake experts effortlessly drown out real ones to gain enormous power. With AI, the ability to amplify any such perspectives at scale, undetected, has arrived.
We must redefine education to be less about institutions, and more about infrastructure, to be the scaffolding of data–driven trust in society, rather than just symbolic window dressing. The problems we now face are due to a disconnected system ripe for exploitation.
Future of education and work cannot be its past
Academically and professionally, our world revolves around a system of certifying knowledge that treats the process as a means to an end. Once you’ve earned your stamp of approval, nobody can easily check how you acquired it. How can we be surprised at those who try to fast–track the apparent formalities?
It is a system that is largely unchanged from over 1,000 years ago. Online, we have collectively indulged in a modernization mirage: the wave of alternative credential offerings that have flooded LinkedIn (more than one million) have only perpetuated the same opaque tradition: the industry parlance of “verifiable credential” means you can verify the authenticity of that same archaic piece of paper, now digitized. It does not mean you can verify the learning, or the exact sources.
Whether traditional credential or alternative, it is a system begging to be gamed. AI is only a flamethrower pointing at abundant kindling where small fires were already burning.
The future of society
Before the internet, these symbols were useful and respected because they were the currency of influence for not only school and work, but of media and discourse as well.
That is no longer true, largely because where influence and power are earned has changed. Our education system is clinging to symbols of respect for a game long abandoned by the players. How do these old symbols fit into the new games that the internet has generated, the data–driven games of social networks, of decentralized media, of online events, of freelance work and expertise–on–demand? They don’t, in their current form.
In an AI world, where outputs are effortlessly fabricated, the inputs are what suddenly matter most; in a world that is dissolving in mistrust, it is the inputs that need to be verifiable by anyone, and integratable into the new domains of power and influence. We don’t need proof of completion, we need accessible proof of work. Proof of human knowledge. Not just for the integrity of school and work, but for our ability to trust our interactions in the platform–driven world shaping our discourse, politics, and future more than anything ever before.
