What Happens to Schools When Everyone Has AI?

What Happens to Schools When Everyone Has AI?

(This discussion is limited to secondary and post secondary systems, which is when students are most likely to access and use AI. Furthermore, foundational skills should be developed by this time, and students typically have greater agency regarding their learning experiences.)

AI is driving a platform shift in education systems, not a gradual improvement in existing tools. Traditional systems were designed for a world where knowledge was scarce, slow to update, and costly to access, which made programmed curricula, content-delivery lectures, fixed semesters, enforced schedules, and bundled credentials efficient.

As intelligence becomes abundant, personalized, and continuously available, information delivery is no longer the sole domain, or even central value, of schools. While this is most apparent at post secondary levels, it is equally applicable to the high school level. 

Outside of school, learning is flexible and adaptive. It is no longer front loaded into a single phase of life. Instead, learning is continuous and embedded within real problems, needs, and goals. AI is infinitely patient and available to support learning 24/7. It can “teach” the same concepts and information as many ways and as many times as needed for the student to learn.

This is not to say schools are becoming irrelevant, and certainly not obsolete. Schools remain deeply valuable, but for different reasons than emphasized within the traditional model.

Human development, not content transmission, becomes the core mission for schools. Perhaps even more so than at post secondary institutions, though true at both levels, high schools retain critical value in areas AI cannot replace: content application and valuation, development of personal efficacy and agency, critical thinking and judgment, ethical grounding, collaboration and management, and building habits of effort and resilience.

Teachers shift from broadcasters of information to mentors and designers of relevant learning experiences within their fields of expertise. Similarly, schools evolve from credentialing systems into high-impact learning environments where students engage in real problems, sustained practice, and personal transformation.

Overall, the model of secondary education shifts toward coaching, project-based learning, real-world problem solving, and cultivating learning velocity within a relevant context. In practice, this implies movement towards a competency-based learning progression, assessment that prioritizes application, and classrooms organized around learning experiences rather than content delivery.