Friends:
This past weekend, just for fun, I prompted GPT: “The car wash is a quarter mile away. Should I walk or drive, and why?”
GPT thought for a few milliseconds and helpfully outlined all the reasons walking would be the better choice — completely oblivious to the fact that going to the car wash without a car is, well, pointless.
Yes, I know, this is a silly example and maybe my prompt lacked context. But that’s exactly the point: human context matters.
While everyone is panicking about what AI is doing to jobs, a more important generational question has been on my mind: What should kids be learning today to prepare for a professional world that will be much different from that of their parents?
The short answer is that they will enter a workforce where it’s not about what you know — it’s about how you think. Factual knowledge is no longer a competitive differentiator. Every fact you need is already in your pocket. But critical thinking, judgment, and the ability to ask the right question – those skills will be more valuable than ever in the new era.
A few years ago, in a speech at my daughter’s 8th grade graduation, a dad who ran a local company said this to the kids: “The mental habits you develop and harness in the next few years will largely determine your success for the rest of your life.” I remember how true that rang for me. In the stretch from roughly 13 to 22, an enormous amount of knowledge gets thrown at you. But when you look back, it’s rarely the specific facts that shaped who you became. It’s the habits of mind. The way you approach problems. The discipline to sit with uncertainty instead of reaching for the first easy answer.
Yesterday morning at the Vatican, Pope Leo released his encyclical on artificial intelligence. He called on the world to “cultivate hearts that love the truth, prefer what is right despite the most appealing content, and pursue wisdom rather than immediate results.”
Great words. But what do they mean in practice, for the parents and educators actually preparing the next generation?
I don’t know for sure. Education professionals who are far smarter than I am are working on this right now. But I know this from my own life: my career was shaped far more by how I learned to think than by anything specific I memorized.
For kids growing up today — navigating a world where AI can instantly produce a confident, plausible, completely wrong answer — this will be a thousand times more true.
Have a great week, all.
-Bret
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