Can Education help Humanity grow alongside AI?

In his opening message to HUMANE.S. 2026, Amandeep Singh Gill, United Nations Under Secretary General and Special Envoy for Digital and Emerging Technologies, addressed a community that spans the whole continuum of human development: from classrooms to careers, from early learning to lifelong learning.

When information is no longer scarce

For generations, Gill recalled, education was closely tied to access to knowledge, which was scarce. Schools transmitted facts, universities cultivated disciplines and expertise, and professions guarded specialised knowledge.

AI is changing that relationship. For the first time in human history, machines can retrieve information, generate content, write code, analyse data and increasingly perform tasks long associated with professional expertise. This forces a deeper question: not only whether we are teaching the right skills, but what it means to learn and to know in the age of AI.

Information is not judgment

Knowing, Gill reminded the audience, has never simply meant possessing information. Libraries hold information, databases hold information, and AI systems can now generate it. But information alone is not wisdom. It is not judgment, it is not responsibility, and it is not the capacity of human beings to understand one another.

This is why, in his view, the mission of education becomes more important, not less. As machines automate more tasks, education must cultivate what makes us human. As machines process vast amounts of knowledge, education must build the judgment to know what to do with it. As machines assist our decisions, education must strengthen our ability to reflect on their consequences.

“A responsibility shared by every profession”

This applies across medicine, engineering, teaching, business and public service. Increasingly, the greatest human contribution lies not in accessing information, but in exercising judgment and taking responsibility. Gill pointed to a Canadian tradition: the Iron Ring worn by engineers, a reminder that their profession carries obligations because it affects human lives. The same principle, he said, applies to education.

Gill closed by inviting participants to explore not only what AI can do for learning, but what learners, educators and institutions must become. The future, he concluded, will be shaped less by the intelligence of machines than by the wisdom, judgment and humanity of the people who use them.