Reconceptualizing education for an Artificial Intelligence world

The rapid acceleration of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform learning and teaching, yet education systems are struggling to conceptualize and positionAI in relation to educative processes. This paper offers a reconceptualization of education for anAI-enabled world by articulating core premises to guide pedagogical thinking amid rapidly evolving AI technologies. It is argued that while AI systems increasingly demonstrate agentic behaviour, they remain foundationally distinct from humans because they lack feelings and biological experience. Drawing on this fundamental assumption, the paper advances ten premises concerning AI’s characteristics, constraints, and educational implications, including AI’s inherent biases, the centrality of natural language as the primary human–AI interface, and the growing significance of multimodality and embodiment. A triadic model of learning interactions is proposed, repositioning AI as a discursive partner alongside teachers and learners. Teacher expertise, particularly their AI pedagogical capabilities, and the systematic development of students’ AI literacies, are argued as essential to reduce the emerging “AI in Education OpportunityGap”. Finally, the paper outlines the human capabilities that will become increasingly valuable in an AI-saturated future—empathy, ethics, enterprise, and engagement—and reasserts the indispensable role of teachers in cultivating these capacities.