Class of 2031: What our children will need that machines can't give them
My kids are returning to school this week.
I have two beautiful boys: one is 12 and heading into Year 7 in Melbourne, the other is 10 and starting Year 5. I was going through the school materials for my eldest when something stopped me: he'll graduate in 2031.
I work in technology. After years of researching, testing, and watching what's happening in AI, I can't help but wonder what kind of world he'll walk into when he leaves school. Many experts claim we could reach AGI around that time. Some say it could bring tremendous abundance and prosperity for everyone. Others worry it could create a new form of servitude—trapping people in a class system they can't escape.
As a parent, I'm hopeful. But I'm also cautious and watchful about what might lie ahead.
I'm writing this not just for my two boys, but for any young person trying to imagine what their life might look like—and what they might need to do to be successful in the age of AI.
First and foremost, I don't have the answers—the future is unknowable. Just suggestions, from staying close to the curve, of what might help.
1/ On being human
You will need to be deeply human: grateful for what you have, compassionate towards others, always curious to grow and learn, and resilient through change—harnessing the ability to triumph through adversity. Accepting your own and others' strengths and flaws will matter more than ever.
In an age where computers dominate—images, sounds, video and text—taking time to cherish human connection will become even more important. So will being charitable with others.
You will need to learn the most human skills there are: building friendships, falling in love, exploring different cultures, resolving conflict. As the vortex of human-to-AI communication grows—because it will grow, and it will be enticing—you'll need to resist the pull to spend too much time there.
Charity and service—whether for your family, your community, or your country—will be crucial. These shape identity. They keep people connected, not just to themselves, but to each other. These ideas might sound cliché, but I believe they'll become more important as the world accelerates and changes even faster.
2/ On work
This year, we'll likely have intelligence that—at least academically, and in terms of certain knowledge work—will exceed the capabilities of the most capable humans. By 2031, data centres will be filled with armies of geniuses, spawning in real time to solve problems of unfathomable scale today.
By then, my eldest son will be leaving high school. What skills will he need to succeed in that market and workplace? Will college still be worthwhile? Will there even be a labour market? Will human labour still be as valuable as it is today? And if it is, what jobs and skills will matter?
We used to prepare our children through school, college, apprenticeships and work experience to build trades and skills that would serve the community and bring economic security. How do we prepare our children for a world where those pathways are not so clear today?
You will need deep curiosity, a high work ethic with an ability to create value, integrity, resilience, an ability to take calculated risk, and a genuine joy in change.
You will also have learned how to learn—the ability to learn new things quickly. In this world, people will work alongside AI companions, set a vision, and then push into the frontier where the agents still can't do it for you. The ability to learn hard new things, and the grit to follow through, will matter.
Whether you choose medicine, physics, maths, engineering, business & enterprise, media & art, or healthcare, you'll need to learn fast and learn well—and to test, iterate in the real world. Developing a sense of taste will still matter.
Using these skills, you will need to adjudicate on truth, and to discern facts from fiction, in a world with more access to information than ever, that often will be misrepresented as authentic and accurate.
People skills will become even more important. Whether people end up doing more work that's directly for other people—construction, healthcare, sales—or whether knowledge work shifts into higher order activity, with AI doing the heavy lifting, being someone others want to be around and do business with will count. Being inclusive, bringing people together, and helping a group achieve an outcome will still be essential.
Ultimately - the ability to deliver value will be your strength - whatever the field, progressing it and leaving it better than how you found it, will ultimately define success.
And even if the transition from today's world into a post-AGI world is turbulent—if people are displaced, or inequality widens—the collection of skills suggested here will still be needed: learning how to right the wrongs, navigating a challenging social and political landscape, finding opportunity where it seems scarce, and campaigning for reform and change.
3/ On agency
Agency, and making the most of the fact you have it, will be crucial in a world that is nudging, cajoling and manipulative, in ever more subtle and indirect ways than before.
When machines can do more, what you choose to do becomes the defining question. Agency isn't just about choice —it's about meaning. The goals you set, the problems you care about, the communities you serve: these will be yours to determine, not outsourced. Guarding that freedom, and exercising it deliberately, will be the difference between a life lived and a life scrolled through.
There will still be hard problems to solve: inequality, rising demand for energy and power, and the climate risks that come with it. At the same time, there will be opportunity—growing commercialisation and exploration of space, frontier science and engineering, and new economic paradigms that emerge.
To my boys and any young person looking ahead
People have weathered upheaval before—empires rising and falling, the printing press, the industrial revolution. AI will bring its own profound change, and with it, opportunity.
Be grateful, stay curious, build resilience. Most of all, have fun and make a difference.