Schools will be hit early by AI. Here are three ways they can adapt
October 16, 2025
By Matthew Pietz
This article was written and edited without the use of AI.
AI can’t make a good cupcake, or clean your teeth after you eat one. So it makes sense that industries like food and healthcare will be changed by it more slowly.
Education, on the other hand, will be one of the first sectors affected, for two reasons. Schools and universities are centers of knowledge, which AI is decent at reproducing, and it will get much better. Also, we expect these institutions to prepare young people for the future, in which AI will play a major role.
At Keranaut, we think about this topic a lot. We believe three levels of preparation can help a school to fully adapt to the post-AI world. 1) Establish how students should safely and wisely use AI today. 2) Think carefully through what the economy and society will look like in 5-10 years, and prepare students to thrive in that environment. 3) Especially for tuition-based schools, adjust strategy in an era on the horizon when AIs will be as smart and pedagogically skilled as humans.
Even schools that seek to be proactive on AI quite reasonably focus on the first level. The future is so uncertain, plus no one wants to alarm parents, or indeed students, with talk of radical change. But there are things we can reasonably predict about the next decade, and school can remain a calm and consistent haven for young people in a time of turbulent change, while also making the necessary shifts to prepare them to do well out in the world.
Let’s explore each of the levels a bit more:
Establish how students should use AI now. Because AI will continue to change rapidly, a set of ethical guidelines are better than detailed policies. Solid strategies include in-class writing to make sure students use their own minds, and guiding them to use AI responsibly on discrete tasks like giving feedback. Using it as a “thinking partner”, a popular approach, may lead to student regression, even though it does mimic how adults use AI (adults also regress!). Schools should also help students think about harms of entering into “friendships” with AIs, and be vigilant about the use of AI to harass or bully, for example with deepfakes.
Prepare students to thrive in the new era. Thriving in the time of advanced AI means many things but one, especially relevant to universities, is employability. Schools should think beyond “how students will work with AI in the future” and focus on the many sectors that will long be the domain of humans: governance, leadership and strategy, entrepreneurship, “human touch” professions like daycare, hospice or therapy, physical skill-based jobs, curating trends and taste, justice and law enforcement, and of course building tech and energy infrastructure. Thriving will also mean emotional resilience, being able to build community bonds, and perhaps above all the ability to adapt to change.
Adjust the model to stay relevant. A large institution needs to think on a longer time horizon. All schools may need to change their self-conception and instruction methods, but the need is more urgent for those charging tuition, as we’ve addressed in a previous post. Even if humans are someday no longer the best source of expert knowledge or teaching approaches, schools will still be essential anchors of community, safe spaces for young people to develop. Content will emphasize leadership, emotional wellness, critical thinking, community-building, group dynamics and decision-making, and hands-on activities like science labs, musical instruments, the arts, and physical (even traditionally vocational) tasks. Schools may already do these things, but the key to adapting will be to go truly deep in these areas, to help some parents answer the question: If my kid can become an engineer at home, why should she come into class?
Education is a bedrock of society, and will remain so in the future, providing a firm foundation for our children to grow into resilient, informed, secure adults. But even rocks change under enough pressure, and we might watch the education space as a bellwether for how other sectors will adapt to a shifting landscape.
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