Delegates at ACE2025 reflect on how AI reshapes teaching and learning, highlighting the importance of balance among technology, human agency, critical thinking, creativity, and ethics.
Delegates at the ACE2025 conference had a chance to share their insights on what they think the future of education and skills looks like in the interactive Forum session titled ‘Global Citizenship: The Future of Education and Skills in an AI-Driven World’, conducted both online and onsite in Tokyo. The Forum revealed varied opinions regarding the role of AI in higher education. The onsite Forum session was led by Dr Sean McMinn of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, who served as the respondent, with Dr Melina Neophytou of IAFOR, Japan, as the moderator. The online Forum discussion was led by Dr Eric Hawkinson, who served as the respondent, with Apipol Sae-Tung of IAFOR, Japan, as the moderator.
The discussion on AI at the Forum moved beyond a simple critique of productivity to explore how AI is reshaping professional responsibilities and the value of academic disciplines. While recognising AI as a productivity tool, many also view it as a complex partner that challenges the very definition of human expertise. Whether discussing the use of AI for classroom management or its role in personal support, delegates consistently emphasised that human judgment, critical thinking, and ethical decision-making remain essential, and that these skills are more valuable now than ever before. The key message from the discussion was that while AI can serve as a powerful partner, it requires careful oversight and a commitment to preserving unique human skills. The future of education lies not in resisting technology, but in balancing technological integration with human agency, where learners and educators are able to reclaim their agency through experiential engagement within structural policy shifts.
The Forum opened with an icebreaker discussion on how delegates use AI in their daily lives, and revealed a mix of both professional and personal support. For professional support, AI was widely used in the educational setting as a collaborative tool for classroom management and brainstorming lesson plans, as well as a useful tool for students that requires strict guidance to prevent students’ over-dependency on AI. In addition to the education context, AI was also used for personal support, with a particular emphasis on emotional support. Delegates shared how they have turned to AI for advice on mental health and relationships when human resources were unavailable or difficult to access. The proliferation of AI beyond the delegates’ academic and professional use showed how AI is functioning not just as an academic aid, but as a counsellor of sorts, making user discernment and safety measures critical.
We are trying to collaborate with AI by discussing our thoughts about our lessons, and we also use it to create some exercises. But anyway, we still have great concerns that the students later on will rely too much on AI. (A delegate from Thailand)
Gemini has given me pretty good or sound advice. Whether it’s good or sound, of course, relies a lot on my ability to judge its advice… It depends on how the AI model is programmed or tweaked, and what kind of guardrails are built in so that it wouldn’t give wrong advice. (A delegate from Singapore)
I use it for relationship advice because sometimes my relationship isn’t going well, and then I’m just curious about how computers, especially AI, could give a different perspective. (A delegate from Indonesia)
The discussion that followed asked delegates for their views on the human factor and its co-existence with AI. We asked the delegates to rank the ‘value’ of disciplines to reveal their perspectives on the value of human skills. While ‘hard sciences’ such as health sciences were ranked highly due to practical concerns like ageing populations and the quality of healthcare, ‘social sciences’ emerged to balance the perceived economic necessity of hard sciences, citing the foundational value of human skills that are also based in the liberal arts. Many delegates agreed that disciplines should not be viewed in isolation. They are interconnected, with technological progress relying on foundational work in other areas. Delegates viewed that as technical barriers are lowered with the help of AI, human skills, which are cultivated by the arts such as creativity, ethical reasoning, and cultural understanding, become more critical in keeping humans ‘human’. In education, for example, many writing tasks that are intrinsically linked to thinking have now been largely transferred to AI. This could diminish students’ ability to reason and think critically, and essentially ‘dehumanise’ an essential human skill. Many called for cross-disciplinary collaboration to prevent a ‘robotic’ future.
In regards to economic recession and ageing, public health will be very important, but also language and literature. I teach English and everyday I feel that the way we learn language will drastically change in the future because of the advancement of AI technology. I hope language and literature will still be important. (A delegate from Japan)
I’m afraid I’m going to be a very difficult person and say I participated in an act of civil disobedience and didn’t do any ranking because I believe they are all equally important in their own way… You can’t have, for instance, work done in health sciences and natural sciences without people developing the technology. (A delegate from Japan)
We believe that AI is more focused on giving solutions… Another way we should develop it is to train AI to better understand how humans are responding to something rather than training AI to come up with a solution. (A delegate from Indonesia)
Writing is closely linked to thinking. If you can’t think well, you can’t really write well. But when you ask AI to write for you, you are also outsourcing your thinking to AI. (A delegate from Singapore)
Subsequent discussions focused on how to teach leadership in an automated world and what changes institutions must make in order to do so. Delegates agreed that leadership cannot be learned solely through theory; it requires experience and the ability to make difficult choices. Leadership requires ‘grit’ gained through real-world friction, such as getting lost in a foreign city or navigating complex human dynamics. The concern was raised that if AI smooths over all difficulties and decision-making processes for early-career professionals, they may never develop the judgment required for senior roles. Hence, AI should be proposed as a tool to simulate scenarios for training, but the final decision-making power must remain with humans.
I use AI simply as a complement or supplement… We infect or influence them with a kind of leadership that is humble, compassionate, and one that transforms. (A delegate from the Philippines)
We could train leaders by using AI to generate scenarios where we can train teachers, even teacher leaders, using these scenarios to discuss critical moments or difficult decisions so that they then can decide what are possible solutions. (A delegate from Singapore)
You cannot just learn pure leadership through a course. You have to have experience… There is beauty in getting lost and having to ask… And you will have to learn to be brave! (A delegate from the Philippines)
The session ended with the delegates’ perspectives on institutional policy on AI and its impact on education, voicing their call for a shift in ‘institution attitude’ rather than just imposing new rules. A majority of delegates acknowledged that their institutions were negatively affected by AI, citing issues of academic integrity and cognitive offloading. However, the proposed solutions moved beyond simply proposing technology bans. Delegates suggested that AI literacy should be separated into distinct technical courses, leaving space for critical thinking in other courses. This move, however, requires a fundamental shift in institutional attitude towards speed and adaptability in policy-making, with the ability to recognise and leverage its potential while maintaining awareness of the risks it may pose. Additionally, at a more micro level, Dr Hawkinson suggested that classroom assessment must also shift from ‘product-based’ grading to ‘process-based’ evaluation. In this way, the journey of learning is valued over the final output, thereby mitigating the risk of students bypassing the struggle of learning and leaning towards relying more on AI.
If we are to implement policy frameworks that will inform a better usage of AI, we need to change our attitudes… It starts first with the attitude, then shifts to policy framework, and then to the physical implementation. (A delegate from South Africa)
I would like to see maybe more AI courses that are separate from what teachers do in the classroom where we can direct students to take those courses and then we could actually allow teachers to teach, because I think when teachers teach, they do develop those necessary skills they use to survive the AI market. (A delegate from Norway)
The Forum concluded with a unified recognition that the disruption caused by AI is not merely a technological challenge, but a pedagogical imperative to prioritise human connection and agency. While acknowledging the utility of AI for efficiency and even companionship, the delegates strongly advocated for an educational approach that prioritises human experience and critical judgment. Institutions should move beyond reactive AI-detection policies towards a holistic restructuring of curriculum, one that embraces ‘process over product’ and fosters environments where students can safely struggle, collaborate, and lead, in that students are able to retain their agency and ability to think independently. Moving forward, the recommendation is for institutions to foster environments where technical literacy supports rather than replaces, the development of essential human values and leadership skills. AI should be embraced as a partner, while the spaces where human values, ethics, and creativity are forged must be encouraged and protected.
Watch The Forum at ACE2025 in the video below.
Banner image: Ahmadreza Rezaie, Unsplash
