📚 Back to the Basics: How to Teach in the Age of AI 🤖

This week at Columbia University, I heard President Konstantinos Tasoulas of Greece 🇬🇷 answer a question that sits at the heart of my work: how should we educate young people when AI is changing everything so quickly?

His answer was simple and powerful. Go back to the basics. ✍️ Reading and writing. He reminded the room that there is deep beauty in the endeavor of learning, and in our shared humanity. 💛

We often think of education as the accumulation of knowledge. But when AI can retrieve and generate information in seconds, memorizing facts can no longer be the whole point. AI is so powerful that it can be a catalyst for creativity, but it may also stifle the act of creation itself. What matters more now are the qualities no machine can hand you: perseverance 💪, character 🧭, creativity 🎨, and the soft skills that let people work together, lead, and recover from setbacks. He argued that these are also the qualities employers and institutions should look for more in recruiting today.

This is exactly why YouthFund exists. 🌱 When a high school student builds a venture, they learn far more than a business model. They learn to write a pitch that persuades, to listen to a mentor's hard feedback, to fail and try again, and to imagine something that doesn't exist yet. Those are the skills that will define the next generation of leaders, whatever technology comes next. 🚀

To the students in our community: read widely 📖, write often ✏️, and keep building 🔨. Your curiosity and your character are your greatest advantages. ✨

Of course, you may agree or disagree. You may see other uses for AI, or other ways we should approach it. And not just you: universities, workplaces, and countries may come to different ideas and positions. So come together and have a discussion with us. I am curious to hear your take. 💬

Ariel
Founder, YouthFund

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