t the Salzburg Global Seminar in December, 50 education leaders gathered to examine a question of growing urgency. What is the purpose of education in an age defined by intelligent machines, cultural volatility, and ecological uncertainty?
The consensus was clear—education must no longer be driven solely by economic or civic imperatives. It must instead prepare learners to remain fully human in an increasingly post–human world. This calls for a reinvention of purpose: not only to transmit knowledge, but to cultivate discernment, ethical imagination, and creative resilience.
Foundational literacies must evolve. In a recent briefing to the European Commission, I argued that AI and visual literacy, emotional intelligence, narrative reasoning, and systems thinking must now complement reading and numeracy. The OECD echoes this shift in its Learning Compass 2030, urging a focus on agency, co–agency, and wellbeing over static content mastery.
Creativity, in this context, goes from decorative to essential. It is the capacity that enables learners to make meaning in unfamiliar terrain, to question the given, and to generate value beyond replication. While machines can mimic form, human creativity offers intention, reflection, and renewal. Education must nurture this ability—not in isolated subjects, but across all domains of learning.
Emerging technologies offer compelling and powerful potential: adaptive learning, multilingual content, and global collaboration. Yet the consensus of dozens of experts at Salzburg was clear; the integration of such tools must be approached with ethical clarity. We must guard against premature cognitive exposure in early learners, algorithmic bias, and the erasure of cultural nuance. Technology should support human development—not streamline it into uniform efficiency.
This transformation also redefines the educator. The teacher becomes not merely a transmitter of knowledge, but a mentor in meaning–making, a designer of learning ecologies, and a guide through uncertainty. Systems must empower teachers as knowledge architects and ethical leaders.
To be educated in the age of intelligence is not simply to be informed or skilled, but to be aware, imaginative, and wise. The purpose of education must be to cultivate lives of agency and consequence—capable not only of responding to change, but of shaping it.
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To thrive in Intelligent Age, make education beyond utility
Image via Pixabay.
September 24, 2025
In the Intelligent Age, education can no longer be driven solely by economic and civic concerns. Instead, education must prepare learners to remain fully human in an increasingly post–human world, writes Leonor Diaz Alcantara.
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t the Salzburg Global Seminar in December, 50 education leaders gathered to examine a question of growing urgency. What is the purpose of education in an age defined by intelligent machines, cultural volatility, and ecological uncertainty?
The consensus was clear—education must no longer be driven solely by economic or civic imperatives. It must instead prepare learners to remain fully human in an increasingly post–human world. This calls for a reinvention of purpose: not only to transmit knowledge, but to cultivate discernment, ethical imagination, and creative resilience.
Foundational literacies must evolve. In a recent briefing to the European Commission, I argued that AI and visual literacy, emotional intelligence, narrative reasoning, and systems thinking must now complement reading and numeracy. The OECD echoes this shift in its Learning Compass 2030, urging a focus on agency, co–agency, and wellbeing over static content mastery.
Creativity, in this context, goes from decorative to essential. It is the capacity that enables learners to make meaning in unfamiliar terrain, to question the given, and to generate value beyond replication. While machines can mimic form, human creativity offers intention, reflection, and renewal. Education must nurture this ability—not in isolated subjects, but across all domains of learning.
Emerging technologies offer compelling and powerful potential: adaptive learning, multilingual content, and global collaboration. Yet the consensus of dozens of experts at Salzburg was clear; the integration of such tools must be approached with ethical clarity. We must guard against premature cognitive exposure in early learners, algorithmic bias, and the erasure of cultural nuance. Technology should support human development—not streamline it into uniform efficiency.
This transformation also redefines the educator. The teacher becomes not merely a transmitter of knowledge, but a mentor in meaning–making, a designer of learning ecologies, and a guide through uncertainty. Systems must empower teachers as knowledge architects and ethical leaders.
To be educated in the age of intelligence is not simply to be informed or skilled, but to be aware, imaginative, and wise. The purpose of education must be to cultivate lives of agency and consequence—capable not only of responding to change, but of shaping it.
