Higher Ed, This One's for You: A Global Warning — and an Invitation
By Claire L. Brady, EdD
Hundreds of technology experts from around the world just issued a collective call to action. And higher education is right at the center of it.
The Building a Human Resilience Infrastructure for the Age of AI report from the Imagining the Digital Future Center surveyed 386 global experts — and what they found should reshape how every higher education leader thinks about their role right now.
Here's the headline: 82% of these experts say AI will play a significantly larger role in shaping daily life and key societal systems within the next ten years or less. And nearly half — 45% — say humans will be only "a little" or "not at all" resilient in the face of that change.
Not because AI is unstoppable. But because we haven't built the infrastructure to meet it.
The experts aren't just worried about the technology. They're worried about us. About what happens when people stop exercising judgment, stop questioning outputs, and start deferring to systems they don't understand. They call it "superstupidity" — not AI becoming too smart, but humans becoming dangerously dependent on systems they've stopped interrogating.
That is an education problem. And that means it's our problem.
The report calls specifically on educators to "create literacy regimes in all AI-related domains" — and goes further than the standard "teach people to use AI" framing. What these experts are asking for is something they call existential literacy: the capacity to understand how technology reshapes our goals, values, and identities. To think critically, adapt to uncertainty, and remain the author of your own decisions even inside systems designed to make that harder.
Sound familiar? It should. That's what higher education has always been for.
This is not a moment to panic. It is a moment to lead — with clarity, with purpose, and with the full weight of what our institutions were built to do.
What Higher Ed Leaders Should Do Now
Reframe AI literacy as a core competency, not a tech skill. The experts are clear: the gap ahead is not technical, it's epistemic. Students need to know when to trust AI outputs, when to question them, and when to override them entirely. That's a curriculum question, not an IT question.
Protect productive struggle in learning. Several experts specifically warn against optimizing away friction. When students wrestle with hard problems before turning to AI, that struggle is the learning. Design for it intentionally.
Build institutional transparency. Students are watching how their institutions use AI. Be explicit about where it appears and where human judgment remains non-negotiable. Silence reads as evasion.
Make the human case — out loud. Curiosity, ethical reasoning, empathy, judgment — these are not soft skills. According to this report, they are the skills that cannot be machined. Name them. Teach them. Protect them.
Stop waiting for certainty before acting. These experts are not asking institutions to have all the answers. They're asking us to stop being passive while the window to shape this transition remains open.
The report closes with a vision worth holding onto: if we get this right, the joining of humans and AI could be the catalyst for a new stage of human flourishing. A partnership that amplifies the best of us.
Higher education doesn't just prepare students for the future. At our best, we help shape what that future becomes. That's not a burden. That's the whole point.
Higher education has never been just about what students know. It's about who they become. That mission has never mattered more than it does right now.
Read the full report: Building a Human Resilience Infrastructure for the Age of AI
Note: this image was created using ChatGPT
