What Is Education in the After-Human-Intelligence Era?
Is the traditional classroom obsolete—or just awaiting its obituary?
In the era of After-Human-Intelligence (AHI), the velocity of change has outpaced our legacy education systems. We’re still producing graduates through 12-to-16-year pipelines designed for the industrial economy—only to send them into a world where their skills are already outdated. This isn’t just a gap. It’s a structural failure.
Degrees vs. Machines
A newly minted college graduate now competes with AI models that never forget, continuously self-train, analyze markets faster than any analyst, and operate 24/7 at near-zero marginal cost.
While academic institutions debate curriculum updates, AI is rewriting the rules of work—instantly and autonomously. Education was built for an age when knowledge was scarce and slow to acquire. Today, knowledge is abundant, automated, and instantly accessible. The question is no longer what do you know, but what can you do—and how fast can you do it?
The New Learning Architecture
We must shift from linear learning pipelines to continuous learning loops:
Role-based, real-time microlearning
AI-curated and personalized content
Just-in-time skills training, not just-in-case degrees
Education must become as agile as software—patched frequently, responsive to new signals, and tailored to individual trajectories. Institutions that can’t adapt to AHT speed risk becoming irrelevant.
The Hidden Shift: We’re Educating the Machines Too
Education isn’t just about preparing people for work anymore. It’s about training the models that will do the work. If you're not prompting, curating, or designing those systems, you're being optimized out of them.
The Existential Risk to Higher Ed
Accreditation cycles take years. AHT evolution moves in weeks. Unless higher education radically redefines its purpose and cadence, it may become ceremonial—prestigious, but functionally obsolete. Survivors will:
Shift from gatekeepers to guides
Prioritize telemetry over tenure
Deliver adaptive, ongoing value—not static diplomas
What Is the Board’s Role?
This transformation raises urgent questions for boards. Are your learning and development systems ready for AHT-speed? Are you hiring based on outdated signals? Are you investing in—or partnering with—real-time education ecosystems?
And more broadly: What responsibility does your board have in shaping the future of learning itself?
In the After-Human-Intelligence era, everyone is a student. And every boardroom is now part of the classroom.