By Torkel Klingberg and Åsa Wikforss

(Originally published in Dagens Nyheter, DN Debatt, 2024-10-11) 

Digitization already poses challenges for schools. However, the new AI technology also risks lowering young people's motivation to study. Therefore, it is essential - for teachers, parents, and everyone who works with young people - to highlight the meaning of knowledge and education.

Why seek knowledge? The answer may seem obvious, but as digital technology and AI take over traditional human knowledge, it is crucial that we can answer the question. Why spend time and effort learning things when the facts we need can be easily found online and when generative AI answers our questions? Why practice language skills when AI writes our texts?

Within the school, the issue becomes acute. There is a risk that using AI reduces interest among young people in acquiring knowledge. In the worst case, we will see a human resignation to technology. In previously unpublished questions from the Youth Barometer, young people's attitudes towards generative AI were investigated, and the answers show that these are not unfounded fears: 62 percent believe that AI will make it more challenging to enter the labor market, and 30 percent answer that AI has made them think about their own choice of education. As one of the respondents puts it: Why study a several-year-long education if a computer will still take over your job in the future?

What counterarguments can we offer a discouraged teenager? It may be worth recalling current and timeless arguments about the meaning of knowledge.

• Knowledge promotes learning. One of the psychological factors most important in learning something new is prior knowledge. It provides context and the opportunity to associate the new knowledge with something we already know. No one knows what the tasks of the future will look like. But we can be sure that it will look different and probably require lifelong learning.

• Learning promotes intelligence. Research shows that one of the most important environmental factors that promotes intelligence is education. IQ increases by approximately 1.5 points for every year in school or university. In the same way that we train to keep our bodies in shape despite machines being stronger, there is intrinsic value in education to keep our brains in shape despite AI.

• Knowledge is required for critical thinking. Critical thinking is domain-specific: how good you are at critical thinking in a question depends on how much knowledge you have in that particular subject. AI-generated disinformation will increasingly test the ability to think critically, and it is essential to strengthen knowledge.

• Knowledge is a prerequisite for freedom and democratic influence. Anyone with a weak knowledge of society and politics risks being manipulated by propaganda agents and turned into a puppet. This risk increases when chatbots can be used to influence our feelings and thoughts—then knowledge is required to resist.

• Anyone who wants to improve society needs knowledge. The world faces many challenges in the coming decades. We must solve the climate and energy problems, protect ourselves against the next pandemic, and work for global peace, health, and education. We also need to ensure that AI development is used for the good of humans. Many young people have pessimism and despair about the future. It must be turned into an incentive to contribute to change. Change, improvement, and a positive future will always require education and research.

• Knowledge contributes to education, which gives us a richer life. Ever since classical Greece, philosophers have emphasized that education is an inalienable part of realizing one's potential and living a rich life. Knowledge broadens our perspectives, deepens our understanding of ourselves and others, opens the door to the richness of human culture—science, art, and literature—and makes it easier to deal with adversity and see opportunities.

There are both hopes and fears about what robotization and AI will mean. Development optimists point to how AI can accelerate research and technology development. Pessimists see that an AI with superhuman intelligence could pose a concrete threat to human survival. Psychologically, AI development can affect us negatively by out-competing us in areas that require knowledge and creativity. It leads to unemployment and the question of the meaning of existence when we are no longer needed. This is an existential problem now being debated by philosophers and writers.

In his book Sapiens, Harari describes how language made knowledge and shared stories possible. When AI threatens to take over our knowledge work, it challenges the foundations of human existence's uniqueness. As Harrari emphasizes in his latest book, Nexus, we must take this challenge very seriously; otherwise, human culture may be replaced by a hybrid culture where AI controls development. The thought is dizzying.

The concern among young people that can be discerned in the responses from the Youth Barometer may be part of this larger, existential problem surrounding AI and humans. There are no easy answers to these challenges. But when it comes to youth, education, and the search for knowledge, we must motivate the next generation because a belief in the future is necessary for us to realize the optimistic visions of the future. This article intends to provide some concrete arguments for such a motivating dialogue. We must help young people understand that in the society of the future, their knowledge and creativity will be needed more than perhaps ever before in human history.

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