With the advent of Artificial Intelligence, we are facing, globally, a crucial crossroads for schools and educational systems in general.
Let us try to look at education from a historical perspective, starting with the recent essay “Knowledge or Barbarism. History and Future of Education” by Jacques Attali, one of the greatest contemporary European intellectuals, who considers the educational challenge crucial for the future of humanity: “…without education of the highest level for all human beings […] the suicide of our species is imminent.”
Attali adds, “Everywhere in the world, the function of knowledge transmission remains, from earliest antiquity, the raison d’être of the family, the state, businesses, the church and schools. And now the Internet also plays an essential role.”
The 20th century saw-for the first time in human history-the spread of schooling and literacy on a global scale: children included in school systems increased from 45 percent in 1948 to 95 percent in 2022: compulsory schooling, extended to the underprivileged classes and the female population, is an extraordinary civilizational achievement. Yet this outstanding achievement, recently achieved, is already being jeopardized by technological developments, particularly the Internet, Artificial Intelligence, the potentially negative impact on human intelligence of these technologies, and the related social and economic implications.
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