While much remains uncertain about its long-term impact on education, one thing is clear. AI is already reshaping how humans learn. Why spend years refining writing, reasoning, or creative skills if AI can perform these tasks faster and better? Why engage in the effortful processes that underpin deep and meaningful learning if those processes can be outsourced at a moment’s notice? Across domains, from science to the arts, we are entering a world of ‘AI-everything’, where AI can generate, predict, solve, and create at scale.

This raises a fundamental question. What is the role of educators in an AI-saturated world? This lecture explores possible answers to this question, focusing on the tenuous space between efficient and effortful learning. Drawing on research from the science of learning and cognitive psychology, it examines how tools that promise to make thinking easier may paradoxically undermine the cognitive effort required for deep and meaningful learning. It argues that the future of education will not be determined by AI itself, but by the choices we make about when and how we use it. In an increasingly artificial world, authenticity matters. The future of education will depend on how we teach the next generation to think deeply, effortfully, and wisely, while remaining authentically connected to the humanity of others.

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