The Purpose of Education in an Age of AI

By: Giselle Furlonge, Co-Head of School

Since OpenAI's launch of ChatGPT in the fall of 2022, artificial intelligence has taken root in schools with remarkable speed. Students use generative AI to brainstorm ideas, explain concepts, generate images, solve problems, write code, and answer questions, and its influence on education, work, and society will only continue to grow.

I am often asked what I think about AI and how SAAS approaches the topic. 

While those conversations frequently begin with practical questions about appropriate use, assessment, and academic integrity, I find myself returning to a more fundamental question:

What is the purpose of education in an age of AI?

The answer to that question should shape our approach to AI—not the other way around.

Education Is About More Than Answers

One of the most important ways AI is changing education may be that it is forcing schools and educators to revisit assumptions that have long gone unquestioned.

We have spent centuries building institutions designed to help people acquire knowledge and expertise because both were relatively scarce. AI does not eliminate the need for either, but it changes the landscape in which they are developed and applied. As access to knowledge becomes increasingly abundant, the question for schools is no longer simply what students know, but what they do with what they know.

The purpose of education has never been simply to help students produce answers. It has always been to help young people become thoughtful, informed, ethical, and engaged human beings.

Education prepares students for work, certainly. But it also prepares them for citizenship, leadership, relationships, and meaningful lives. It helps them develop judgment. It helps them understand who they are and who they can become. It teaches them how to contribute to something larger than themselves.

At SAAS, we believe those goals matter as much as ever. In fact, this moment has only reinforced our conviction that while AI may change how students learn, it does not change what ultimately makes a life meaningful.

If anything, AI invites us to become more intentional about the human capacities we hope to cultivate.

That leads to another question…

What Becomes Valuable When Intelligence Is Abundant?

As I have wrestled with AI's implications for schools, I find myself returning again and again to a deceptively simple question:

What becomes most valuable when intelligence is abundant?

Much of modern education has been built around helping students develop knowledge, skills, and expertise. Those goals remain essential. But as AI changes the conditions under which knowledge is accessed and applied, it invites us to think differently about the qualities that may matter most in the years ahead.

As answers become abundant, the ability to ask meaningful questions grows even more important. As information becomes limitless, discernment becomes essential. And as content can be generated instantly, originality, judgment, and purpose become increasingly valuable.

This does not mean that knowledge matters less. In many ways, it matters more.

Students cannot evaluate an AI-generated response if they lack the understanding to recognize what is accurate, misleading, incomplete, or biased. They cannot exercise judgment without something upon which that judgment rests. Knowledge remains foundational.

If AI can write, calculate, analyze, and generate, then the central task of education may become less about producing intelligence and more about cultivating wisdom.

The questions that matter most are not whether students can access information, but whether they can determine what deserves their attention, navigate ambiguity, make ethical decisions when the answer is not obvious, and ask questions that genuinely matter.

These have always been educational goals. AI simply brings them into sharper focus.

And perhaps nowhere is that shift more visible than in the way we think about learning itself.

The Value of Friction

The most interesting part of the conversation about AI isn’t actually about AI at all.

It’s about friction.

Schools have always created opportunities for productive struggle. Students wrestle with ideas. They revise writing. They grapple with ambiguity. They solve problems whose solutions are not immediately apparent. They encounter challenges that require persistence, reflection, and resilience.

We do not create these experiences because they are efficient; we create them because they are transformative.

Learning often happens in the space between not knowing and knowing. The process of struggling with an idea, revising a piece of writing, performing in front of an audience, or working through a difficult problem is not separate from learning. It is often the mechanism through which learning occurs.

This is what makes the current moment so fascinating: AI is remarkably good at removing friction.

When a student is stuck on an essay, AI can generate a draft. When a reading feels challenging, AI can summarize it. When a problem seems difficult, AI can offer an explanation or walk through the steps.

Sometimes this is incredibly helpful for a student. AI can make learning more accessible, help students move beyond unnecessary barriers, and create new opportunities for exploration and creativity.

But sometimes friction is exactly where learning happens.

As educators, we are increasingly called to distinguish between the forms of friction that hinder learning and the forms of friction that produce it. When does technology deepen understanding? When does it bypass it? When does support create opportunity, and when does it short-circuit growth?

These questions cannot be answered through blanket rules or simple policies. They require judgment. More importantly, they require us to think carefully about what experiences help young people develop confidence, resilience, independence, and intellectual curiosity.

Ultimately, the question is not whether students should use AI. The question is: How do we preserve the conditions under which meaningful learning occurs?

That challenge extends well beyond the classroom.

More Than the Future of Work

At this point, many conversations about AI shift toward jobs, careers, and the future of work.

That is understandable. AI will undoubtedly continue to reshape the workplace, and today's students will enter a world in which adaptation and lifelong learning are increasingly important.

But focusing only on work risks missing the larger story.

Schools are not merely workforce development programs. While preparing students for future careers is important, education has always served a broader purpose: helping young people become thoughtful citizens, engaged community members, capable leaders, and fulfilled human beings.

Certainly, AI will continue to reshape the world of work. Our incoming sixth graders, members of the Class of 2032, will encounter careers and opportunities that we cannot fully predict, and they will need the adaptability and confidence to navigate continual change.

But AI is not only changing work.

It’s changing:

• Creativity
• Authorship
• Our relationship to truth and expertise
• How we communicate
• How we connect with one another

These are educational questions, too.

As educators, we are not only asking how students will use AI in their future careers. We are asking how AI might shape the way they think, create, relate, and understand themselves and the world around them.

At SAAS, we want students to understand both the power and the limitations of AI. We want them to experiment, create, question, and adapt. We want them to build foundational skills, exercise sound judgment, and engage emerging technologies with integrity and purpose.

Most of all, we want students to recognize that powerful tools do not relieve us of responsibility. If anything, they increase it.

The challenge before schools is not teaching students how to compete with machines. It is helping them become more fully human alongside them.

AI may change what students can do in ways we can scarcely imagine.

Our work is to help them understand who they are becoming and how they will use their knowledge, wisdom, and sense of purpose to contribute meaningfully to the world.

That has always been the deeper purpose of a SAAS education.