In Bozkurt et al.’s (2023) speculative futures, AI mediates much of how people read and write. In the darkest stories, once AI handles content, teachers are reduced to delivering a pre-set curriculum or are replaced entirely, and learning turns solitary. This echoes Pham et al.’s (2025) finding that generative AI mostly supports solitary learning.

Writing from the context of adult learning, I imagine a cautiously optimistic future. Adults bring experience and self-direction to their learning. Laurillard’s Conversational Framework (1993, 2002) offers a model for learning alongside AI rather than through it, with learner and teacher each responsible for their own thinking (Tankelevitch et al., 2024). The teacher becomes a cognitive facilitator, helping adults notice when they value AI’s output over their own judgment (Lee et al., 2025). I believe we could arrive here because adults are already stretched. Across OECD countries, lack of time due to work or family is the most common barrier to adult learning (OECD, 2025), and AI offers learning that fits around a job.

Two tensions complicate this. First, Oakley et al. (2025) argue that constructivist approaches may leave learners without the internal knowledge they need. Second, Selwyn (2024) warns of “reverse adaptation,” where education reshapes itself to suit machines. A facilitator without subject expertise could become a cheaper replacement for a qualified teacher, as in Selwyn et al.’s (2020) Lakeside school. As Selwyn insists, the future “is not a foregone conclusion” (2024, p. 13).

Could a teacher without subject expertise really support adult learners, or does good facilitation still need some knowledge of the field?

References

Bozkurt, A., Xiao, J., Lambert, S., Pazurek, A., Crompton, H., Koseoglu, S., Farrow, R., Bond, M., Nerantzi, C., Honeychurch, S., Bali, M., Dron, J., Mir, K., Stewart, B., Costello, E., Mason, J., Stracke, C. M., Romero-Hall, E., Koutropoulos, A., . . . Jandrić, P. (2023). Speculative futures on ChatGPT and generative artificial intelligence (AI): A collective reflection from the educational landscape. Asian Journal of Distance Education, 18(1), 53–130. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7636568

Laurillard, D. (1993). Rethinking university teaching: A framework for the effective use of educational technology. Routledge.

Laurillard, D. (2002). Rethinking university teaching: A conversational framework for the effective use of learning technologies (2nd ed.). RoutledgeFalmer. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315012940

Lee, H.-P., Sarkar, A., Tankelevitch, L., Drosos, I., Rintel, S., Banks, R., & Wilson, N. (2025). The impact of generative AI on critical thinking: Self-reported reductions in cognitive effort and confidence effects from a survey of knowledge workers. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1–22). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713778

Oakley, B., Johnston, M., Chen, K.-Z., Jung, E., & Sejnowski, T. J. (2025). The memory paradox: Why our brains need knowledge in an age of AI [Preprint]. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.11015

OECD. (2025). Trends in adult learning: New data from the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills. OECD Publishing. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/trends-in-adult-learning_ec0624a6-en.html

Pham, T. D., Karunaratne, N., Exintaris, B., Liu, D., Lay, T., Yuriev, E., & Lim, A. (2025). The impact of generative AI on health professional education: A systematic review in the context of student learning. Medical Education, 59(12), 1280–1289. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12686775

Selwyn, N. (2024). On the limits of artificial intelligence (AI) in education. Nordic Journal of Pedagogy and Critique, 10, 3–14. https://doi.org/10.23865/ntpk.v10.6062

Selwyn, N., Pangrazio, L., Nemorin, S., & Perrotta, C. (2020). What might the school of 2030 be like? An exercise in social science fiction. Learning, Media and Technology, 45(1), 90–106. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2020.1694944

Tankelevitch, L., Kewenig, V., Simkute, A., Scott, A. E., Sarkar, A., Sellen, A., & Rintel, S. (2024). The metacognitive demands and opportunities of generative AI. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1–20). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642902

AI Statement
I used Generative AI to help locate sources, discuss ideas, revise drafts for clarity and length, and format references. The central ideas and argument are my own. I reviewed and edited all AI suggestions, vetted sources manually,