AI + education

and the horror of hyper-personalised learning

An edited version of my column on Digital Subjectivity from a few weeks back was published in the Daily Maverick today. Please have a read if you missed it. Writing it got me thinking about AI and education in a new way.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025-06-10-of-beings-and-machines-digital-subjectivity-identity-and-ai/

As these things go, I received an email today telling me about the benefits of “hyper-personalised learning” that AI provides. And I have to say that I find it deeply concerning that people could see niche-AI-generated curricula as an educational plus. Not because I am a luddite or anti-capital, but because it fundamentally misunderstands what an education is all about.

The trouble with "hyper-personalized education" is that to know what one is interested in you first need 1) good language skills (reading and writing - what the Daily Maverick piece is about) and 2) broad exposure to a range of topics. Once you've done that - which is the purpose of basic education, it is up to you to pursue your interests as you see fit - be as niche as you want, as business minded as you want, but without a broad starting point, hyper-niche learning will make people myopic, not intelligent.

The point of an education is to learn how different aspects of the world fit together. What if someone knew everything about coding but nothing about climate change? They would never know the relationship between the two. And I think promoting that kind of an education does a disservice to students.

The world is so much richer than what we can imagine, and so zoning in on only what we think we want to know about, cuts short the possibility of stumbling across something you didn't think you needed to know. And it might just change your life. That is the beauty of a good education. It teaches us how to learn, how to be critical thinkers. The subject matter is always a secondary matter.

The whole world is in a state of flux, and many things will have to change across industries, education and the economy - but we must never forget that technological progress is only ever a tool, it is not an end in itself. What we do with it, is up to us.