AI and education in Korea

As a college professor, I’ve found myself in a strange new reality. I no longer assign writing homework the way I used to. These days, there’s a good chance (maybe 80 percent) that students will lean on Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to help craft their essays. In just minutes, these programs can produce polished, convincing papers that are nearly impossible to distinguish from human writing. Sometimes I half-joke that if students are letting AI write their papers, maybe I should let AI grade them, too. Then we could all go to the beach instead.

But beneath the humor lies something serious. AI is quickly becoming astonishingly good at tasks we once believed were uniquely human. It’s not just writing essays — it’s coding software, diagnosing diseases, composing music and solving advanced math problems in seconds. Generative AI in particular is creating art, music and ideas that used to feel like the exclusive domain of human creativity. And it’s advancing so rapidly that many of us can’t help feeling unsettled.

It’s no surprise that people are asking, if machines can now process information faster and more precisely than any person, do we still need to study things like philosophy, math or the sciences? What’s the point of practicing writing or learning to paint when a program can whip up an essay or a digital artwork at the click of a button? And with so much knowledge available instantly online, do we even need traditional schooling anymore?

As an educator, I’ve been thinking a lot about those questions and my own answer is a resounding yes. We still need all of it — maybe more than ever.

Philosophy and the humanities help us grapple with the “why” questions and navigate the moral gray areas that no algorithm can resolve. Math and science aren’t just about getting the calculations done and solving problems. They’re about learning how to reason, question and explore. And writing, even in a world full of text-generating tools, is more than words on a page. It’s a way of organizing our thoughts, challenging our own assumptions, grappling with ambiguities and discovering what we truly believe. Studying philosophy, history, literature and science builds a kind of intellectual resilience that machines can’t replicate. Those skills — curiosity, critical and independent thinking, creativity — will be what sets people apart in an AI-driven world.

Of course, AI will keep getting better at many kinds of work, especially those that depend on analyzing huge amounts of data quickly and accurately. But I’d argue that much of what makes life meaningful and pushes society forward isn’t particularly “efficient.” Scientific breakthroughs often happen through trial and error, with plenty of failures along the way. Art and music come from personal passion and individual perspectives, not just algorithmic pattern recognition. People dream and create for reasons that go beyond practicality or material benefits, and that’s part of how we grow and make life rich.

To make the best use of AI, I think we’ll need an education system that does more than train people in technical skills. We’ll need schools that nurture independent thinking, empathy, interpersonal skills, cultural understanding and the ability to connect ideas across different fields. Those are the human qualities that AI can’t easily mimic. And they’re also the qualities we’ll need most in the future.

This feels especially urgent in South Korea, where I experienced the education system firsthand. For decades, Korea’s education system has emphasized efficiency, intense competition and memorization aimed at acing standardized tests. It’s a system that’s achieved impressive results in global rankings. But as AI becomes increasingly capable of retrieving facts and solving routine problems, it’s worth asking: Why should humans compete on those terms? Why memorize facts that AI can retrieve instantly? Machines are simply better at efficiency than we are.

Meanwhile, many Korean students find themselves exhausted, stressed and unsure whether their education is preparing them for a world that demands creativity, adaptability and ethical judgment as much as technical expertise.

Korea’s approach to education made sense during an era of rapid economic growth and industrialization. But that era is ending, and AI is ushering in a new one. I believe this is a moment to rethink how and what we teach. Instead of clinging to a “factory model” of education, we could build systems that encourage interdisciplinary learning, creativity, ethics and problem-solving. Those are areas where human beings still have a distinct edge.

Ultimately, the goal of education in the age of AI shouldn’t be to compete with machines, but to help us become more fully, thoughtfully human.

Min Seong-jae (smin@pace.edu) is a professor of communication and media studies at Pace University in New York.