We may already be in the era of ‘peak humanity’, a time where we have the greatest levels of education, reasoning, rationality, and creativity – spread out amongst the greatest number of us. A brilliant result of the massification of universal basic education and the power of the university.

But with the rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that can already replicate and even exceed many of our reasoning capabilities – there may soon be less incentive for us to learn and grow. The grave risk is that we then become de-educated and de-coupled from the driving seat to the future.

In all the hype about AI, we need to properly assess these risks to collectively decide whether the AI upsides are worth it and whether we should ‘stick or twist’. This paper aims to catalyse the debate and reduce the probability that we sleepwalk to a destination that we don’t want and can’t reverse back out of. We also make 13 clear recommendations about how AI developments could be regulated - to slow things down a little and give time for informed choices about the best future for humanity. Those potential long-term futures include:

1. AI Curtailment; 
2. Fake Work; 
3. Transhumanism; 
4. Universal Basic Income 

each with very different implications for the future of education.