Parents have always worried about the future.
Will my children be happy? Will they find meaningful work? Will they become independent? Will they be able to navigate an increasingly complicated, challenging world?
Today's parents face a new wrinkle: artificial intelligence.
For the first time in history, a teenager can carry around a device capable of answering nearly any factual question, writing essays, solving equations, translating languages, generating images, and offering advice on almost any subject imaginable. AI promises to make many tasks easier, faster, and more efficient.
But its rise raises a more profound question:
What happens when young people become accustomed to outsourcing not only information, but initiative?
The challenge facing today's teenagers is not a shortage of knowledge. If anything, they’re drowning in it. What many lack is something harder to acquire: agency.
Agency is the conviction that you can act on the world rather than simply consume it. It is the habit of taking responsibility, making decisions, solving problems, and learning through experience. It is the quiet confidence that comes from discovering, again and again, that you are capable of much more than you imagined.
No technology can provide that. It has to be earned.
Writer and educator Kurt Hahn, founder of Outward Bound® and one of the great pioneers of experiential education, worried that modern life was depriving young people of opportunities to develop resilience, initiative, craftsmanship, and compassion. He argued that character is not formed through comfort or passive observation, but through meaningful responsibility.
His insights seem remarkably relevant today.
Artificial intelligence can explain how to navigate a coastline. But it can’t navigate one for you.
It can describe the dynamics of effective teamwork. But it can’t teach you how to work efficiently with six other people sharing a small space for three weeks.
It can generate a recipe for just about anything. But it can’t prepare dinner for hungry friends waiting below deck after a long day on the water.
It can explain leadership. But it can’t place you in a situation where others depend upon your judgment.
Real growth still happens when you engage the real world in situations that present challenges.
That’s one reason why many parents are increasingly drawn to experiences that place young people in unfamiliar environments where they have to adapt, contribute, and take responsibility. Whether hiking through mountains, traveling abroad, or serving as part of a sailing crew, these experiences require young people to develop skills that no algorithm or video game can supply.
On a traditional sailing vessel, there’s no substitute for paying attention. Weather changes. Conditions evolve. Decisions matter. Every member of the crew has a role to play. Young people quickly discover that their actions have consequences—not in theory, but in practice.
And lo and behold…
The teenager who hesitated to speak up begins offering ideas.
The teenager who relied on adults or a smart phone for every answer starts solving problems independently.
The teenager who doubted his or her abilities discovers reserves of previously unsurfaced competence and confidence.
These lessons extend far beyond sailing. Universities, employers, and communities continue to value such qualities as initiative, adaptability, teamwork, judgment, and leadership. Ironically, as artificial intelligence becomes more capable, these deeply human qualities take on a new urgency.
The future will belong not only to those who know how to use technology, but to those who know how to think independently, collaborate effectively, and act decisively when no one is holding their hand. (Or when a battery dies.)
AI can provide information. Experience provides wisdom.
AI can generate many answers. Experience develops judgment.
AI can help us do many things, but it cannot build character.
That essential task still belongs to life itself and the challenges we embrace.