Raising Intelligent Humans in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

A month ago, I was filling out my toddler’s school application form when a question truly made me pause: “What are your hopes and aspirations for your child when they graduate from school?”

Now that’s a wildly futuristic question for a parent , and a deep and important one, especially for a generation of parents who are hilariously underprepared to equip their children for whatever wild ride lies ahead.

Parents don’t write the book of their children’s lives; they are merely chapters in it. And yet, they try. They learn, they grow alongside their children, and often believe they are the ones steering the course of their lives.

It’s truly fascinating to watch a little one learn, engage, communicate, and play. The future is uncertain—for us and for them. With an unprecedented abundance of information and intelligence, education for today’s children is going to be both wonderful and challenging. As someone who spends considerable time grooming and mentoring early-career professionals at work, I see a generation of highly capable individuals—graduates brimming with skills and optimism—facing extreme uncertainty even before their careers begin. They are both blessed and cursed by the sophistication and complexity of the world they are yet to navigate. It is a world of highs and lows, of parity and random draws.

I’ll save my thoughts on Gen Z for another day.

Coming back to the question I was trying to answer, I wrote: “We aspire for our daughter to develop analytical thinking that allows her to engage deeply with complex ideas, while also cultivating the intuition to see the bigger picture and connect concepts with clarity and purpose. Beyond academics, we wish for her to grow into a confident communicator, and to become a compassionate, resilient individual who approaches life with empathy and courage.”

This made me reflect on the skills I was trained in professionally—and those I had very limited exposure to. I want to take a more holistic approach to parenting, something most parents of my parents’ generation were not necessarily intentional about. When I think back to the teachings of my parents and grandparents, I now recognize a quiet wisdom in many of them. But I began to truly reflect on and internalize those lessons much later in life.

My father, an atheist, would often quote a verse from the Bhagavad Gita—“karmanye vadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana”—whenever I lamented a failure. He explained its meaning to me in simple Bengali. I understood it as a vague concept but never truly internalized it. At the time, it offered little comfort. I was a motivated, results-driven child, unable to connect with the wisdom on the surface, and no one really deconstructed it in a way that helped me regulate my emotions or apply it meaningfully.

I often wonder how we raise intelligent human beings in an age of artificial intelligence. I wonder how much value human intelligence will retain a decade from now- and in which facets. I wonder whether our species is headed toward utopia or collective self-destruction—the latter, apparently, carrying a 20% probability, according to our tech gods.

I worry about our children’s future, and that’s where the second part of my answer becomes foundational. We must be intentional about teaching our children compassion, resilience, empathy, and courage. This is a roller coaster ride we are on together. The way we learned and grew is no longer sufficient.