AI and a New Renaissance: Rediscovering the True Purpose of Education

When I sat down to write this piece, I read white papers on artificial intelligence and education. Somewhere around page twenty, I had to laugh. How much of the report had actually been written by AI? It's a funny question, but I wonder if we're asking the wrong one.

Maybe, instead, we should be asking (and trust me, I tense up asking this too), if artificial intelligence can instantly generate an essay, solve a math problem, summarize a novel, or answer almost any factual question, what is the purpose of education in today's world?

As a parent, I share many of the concerns I hear from other parents: screen time, developing brains, and whether AI shortcuts the productive struggle through which children actually learn. But in my research, I found educators and researchers asking an intriguing question: Might AI actually help clarify what education is for?

For generations, schools have helped students build the foundational knowledge upon which deeper learning depends. Vocabulary, historical events, scientific principles, and mathematical formulas provide the building blocks for complex thought. Today, however, students can retrieve enormous amounts of information almost instantly. Knowledge may be at our fingertips. Judgment is more elusive.

Wharton professor Ethan Mollick, a leading voice on AI and education, argues that the competitive advantage in the age of AI is no longer simply knowing the answer. It is learning to ask better questions, exercise sound judgment, and work thoughtfully alongside AI rather than relying on it. While strong instruction remains essential, the enduring work happening in our classrooms is helping students cultivate curiosity, judgment, and confidence.

One phrase in my research stuck with me: "The process is the purpose." British technology philosopher Tom Chatfield writes that "learning cannot be automated or outsourced." Whether a student is writing a fifth-grade story or a college research paper, the value lies in the thinking, struggling, revising, and reflecting that develops the learner.

Think about an elementary student writing a story. The goal isn't another story for the world to read. It's what happens inside that child's brain while wrestling with ideas, organizing thoughts, choosing words, making mistakes, and trying again. Learning isn't simply producing an answer. It's becoming a person who can think. For all the challenges AI presents, it may remind us of that timeless truth.

And those challenges are real. Many of us worry about excessive screen time and what constant technology exposure means for developing brains. The goal should never be to put AI in front of children simply because we can.

The question isn't whether a technology is impressive. It's whether it advances a learning objective. What do we want students to know, understand, and be able to do, and does this technology help them get there? Before students can critically evaluate AI, they also need knowledge and skills of their own. We should be careful that technology doesn't eliminate the intellectual struggle through which those capacities are built.

Just because technology exists doesn't mean it belongs in every classroom, at every age, or in every lesson. A thoughtful school board should ensure innovation is guided by sound educational research, age-appropriate practices, and the professional judgment of our educators.

That tension is already playing out in two of the nation's largest school districts. Los Angeles Unified has paused student use of generative AI on district-issued devices, while New York City has adopted a one-year moratorium for students through eighth grade, allowing limited, supervised use in high school. These decisions raise important questions for every school district: At what age does AI support learning rather than shortcut it? What evidence should we require before introducing it into classrooms? And how do we ensure that students develop the foundational skills to think independently before relying on technology to think alongside them?

Emerging research suggests that, when developmentally appropriate, AI may be valuable not as an answer machine but as a thinking partner, asking Socratic questions, providing hints rather than solutions, and challenging students to defend their reasoning. Used thoughtfully, AI has the potential to raise the cognitive bar rather than lower it.

The encouraging part is that none of this requires us to abandon great teaching. It asks us to build on it. To me, this feels less like the end of education and more like the beginning of a new Renaissance.

The Renaissance was accelerated by one of history's most transformative technologies: the printing press. But what made it revolutionary wasn't the technology itself. It was what people did with it. Knowledge spread, assumptions were challenged, ideas crossed disciplines, and extraordinary creativity followed. Perhaps AI offers us a similar opportunity.

If machines become increasingly good at retrieving information, our schools become even more important as places where students learn discernment, empathy, creativity, ethical reasoning, resilience, and intellectual courage. Technology can generate answers. It cannot determine which questions are worth asking.

As I think about the future of Laguna Beach schools, I'm excited not because AI can do more, but because it challenges us to expect deeper thinking from ourselves. Our most important investment won't be in any particular software. It will be in our exceptional teachers, giving them the tools, training, and professional trust to cultivate curiosity, foster healthy debate, and help young people navigate powerful technologies wisely.

Artificial intelligence may change how we learn. But it also reminds us why we learn. And that may be the beginning of a new Renaissance.