A Human Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

It seems that nearly everyone is thinking and writing about artificial intelligence right now, and with good reason. We have entered a moment of enormous progress and speculation around AI and its implications for nearly every aspect of human experience: how we learn, create, communicate, work, and even how we understand ourselves. As a school, we believe it is important to approach this moment with both curiosity and care. We want to understand these technologies. We want our students to understand them. And we want to ensure that our decisions about AI are guided not by novelty, fear, or hype, but by a clear understanding of our mission and purpose at Avenues.

When information is abundant, judgment matters more. When answers arrive instantly, the ability to ask thoughtful questions matters more. When machines can imitate creativity, human voice, originality, and purpose matter more. In many ways, our aspirations become even more important in the age of AI, not less.

An Avenues education is, and will remain, deeply human.

Fortunately, our approach begins with something steady. The technologies around us may change. The fundamental purpose of an education does not.

At Avenues, we exist to develop future world-wise leaders uniquely equipped to understand and solve global-scale problems. We seek to graduate students who are accomplished thinkers, confident communicators, compassionate citizens, and architects of lives that transcend the ordinary. Those aspirations remain just as important in the age of artificial intelligence as they were before it.

Inspired by Wallace Stevens' poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, Avenues will host a new community event in October 2026 focused on dialogue and learning through many lenses around one of the most pressing issues of our time.

Our inaugural forum begins with a simple but profound question: what do we need to know and understand about the rapid rise, dynamic present, and uncertain future of the world our students are inheriting, a world now filled with AI tools, hopes, and worries? Through conversations spanning ethics, education, creativity, economics, philosophy, history, computer science, and more, the forum invites educators, parents, and invited thought leaders to explore AI from multiple perspectives, reflecting our belief that the most important questions about artificial intelligence are ultimately questions about humanity.