Learning in the Age of AI: Between Knowledge and Tools
I recently watched a segment on 60 Minutes about DeepMind and Google's latest advances in AI-assisted wearables — glasses paired with an earpiece that can instantly guide you through almost anything, almost like having an incredibly educated personal assistant at your side.
As we watched, my wife raised a simple but powerful question:
"What happens when kids take tests? Won’t they just be able to look at the test and have the glasses tell them the answers?"
At first, it sounds like a cheat. But it’s not that simple.
I told her it reminded me of when calculators were first introduced into math classrooms. At first, they were banned — because solving equations by hand was seen as essential to "real" math. But eventually, schools realized that calculators weren't going away. They pivoted: Rather than reward students for clinging to an obsolete method, they rewarded those who could use the tools wisely.
And that's the world we're heading into now, at an even faster pace.
In The Wake of Expectations, I kept circling around a version of this tension:
How do you look at the past — and honor what is valuable in it — without turning a blind eye to the future?
How do you balance respect for what was with survival in what is coming?
The kid who insists on doing every math problem by hand, refusing to touch a calculator, preserves something valuable — a depth of understanding, an intimacy with the problem. But that kid, for all their noble effort, isn’t going to beat the kid who learns how to use the calculator effectively.
It will be the same with AI.
The student who refuses to engage with AI tools out of stubbornness or fear will lose out — not because they aren’t smart, but because the world will move faster than they can keep up. But the student who only relies on the tools — who becomes completely dependent on AI to think for them — will be just as fragile, in a different— and arguably, worse—way.
I'm advocating for something harder, but more sustainable: A middle path.
You don't want to become John Henry — the folk hero who fought the steam drill with his bare hands and won the battle, but died in the process. You don't want to make yourself a martyr fighting technology. But you also can't surrender entirely, handing over your mind to machines without resistance.
It all comes back, again, to the same core idea as art for art’s sake:
You need to learn, not because it gives you a competitive advantage, but because learning has intrinsic value. Knowledge matters, even if — maybe especially if — the world tells you it doesn’t anymore.
And at the same time, you need to know how to use the tools — because otherwise you won't survive.
Real education, real growth, has to hold both truths at once:
Knowledge for its own sake.
Tool mastery for survival.
If you lose either half, you’re at risk.
If you keep both alive, maybe — just maybe — you can move forward without losing yourself.
Javier
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