Rethinking Education in the Age of AI

A conversation between Baratunde Thurston and Abby Falik

In a world increasingly shaped by technology, the question of how we educate young people has never been more urgent. Baratunde Thurston, co-creator of Life With Machines, sat down with Abby Falik, co-founder of The Flight School and writer at Taking Flight, to explore what it means to prepare humans–not just workers–for a future disrupted by AI.

Of course, you should watch or listen to the discussion, but read below for a preview of the themes Abby and Baratunde explore.

For generations, traditional education has treated students like machines: fill them with knowledge, measure their recall, rank them, and repeat. AI now exposes the limits of this system.

“The robot in my pocket can pass every exam faster and more accurately than any human.”

The critical question becomes: if school isn’t about memorizing facts anymore, what is it actually for?

One answer lies in fostering human “aliveness.” Beyond knowledge acquisition, the most valuable capacities today are the ability to adapt, collaborate, imagine, and respond creatively to change.

These skills aren’t learned through lectures, textbooks or standardized testing. They emerge through action, reflection, and genuine connection with other people and the natural world.

The Flight School models a different approach to learning. It’s a global, lifelong community where students join from anywhere in the world, loop in and out over years, and engage in courses and mentorship with people who think big, approach problems creatively, and just live interesting lives—instead of traditional academic professors.

The school demonstrates how higher education can be reimagined not as a conveyor belt of tests and credentials, but as a space for genuine growth and exploration.

It’s a radical experience that doesn’t follow traditional rules of time, place, or credentialing. There’s no tuition–the learning is offered freely. There’s no graduation either. Instead, students remain part of a lifelong community, contributing back as guides and co-creators of the experience itself.

In this vision, AI isn’t a threat to education. It’s an invitation to reimagine it.

If we let machines handle the bulk of information transfer, we might finally be free to focus on what makes us human: learning to live fully, forging genuine connections, and developing the courage to navigate an uncertain world. These capacities can’t be automated. They emerge through human presence and embodied experience.

This approach offers a radical redefinition of success for the schools of the future. Instead of producing students who excel at conformity and performance, it cultivates humans who are awake, animated, and oriented toward collective flourishing.

Abby describes this as teaching students to “source what comes next”–to contribute meaningfully to the world and co-create systems and opportunities that anchor on human values rather than simply competing within existing structures.

This conversation points toward a paradigm shift in how we think about education.

• What if learning were lifelong and rooted in experience rather than confined to four years on a campus?

• What if we measured growth by creativity, courage and human connection rather than test scores?

• What if we prepared young people not merely to succeed within the current paradigm, but to imagine and build the world we actually want to inhabit?

In asking these questions, we open the door to a future where education becomes a launchpad for possibility–a space where aliveness takes center stage, and where humans, not machines, define what it means to thrive.

Watch the full conversation above and don’t forget to subscribe to Taking Flight and Life With Machines.

Want more?

• In a special series on youth and AI, Baratunde and the Life With Machines team have been exploring how we can help the next generation shape their future, not just survive it.

• The Wall Street Journal published Abby’s letter this week in response to Palantir’s recently announced program to recruit students straight out of high school.