GenAI and The Divide We Didn’t See Coming
We thought digital natives would lead the future — but GenAI is rewriting the rules. A new and ominous divide is emerging. What if the very skills we once called outdated are now the keys to thriving in the age of artificial intelligence?
W e had come to accept as an axiom that younger generations were naturally favored by the advent of digital technologies. What could be more logical, after all, than assuming that those native to this digital biotope would be more adept at navigating new digital configurations? Thus, we equated digital natives with digital masters: lords and owners of the future.
Meanwhile, older generations found themselves demoted, weighed down by their pre-digital habits and behaviors, deemed as obsolete and as barriers to a digital language they would never speak fluently. Though harsh, this seemed almost natural — part of the order of things, the inevitable law of generational replacement.
Yet with the rise of AI, a counter-narrative is emerging.
It is as though a trap is closing in on the very generation once anointed by the digital age.
First, their competitive advantage is morphing into widespread suspicion. Once hailed as messiahs holding the keys to the future, they are now seen as cheaters. While we grapple with the methodological puzzles AI poses for educators, have we fully grasped the existential shock it represents for students?
Learning in the age of AI is fraught with tension. In a world that birthed the greatest invention since the printing press, using AI risks branding one a impostor ou plagiarist, while abstaining from it devalues effort itself — since the machine can replicate the work. With AI, the mechanism of gratification has snapped.
Second, AI is eroding internship opportunities, under the pretext that tasks traditionally assigned to interns — data synthesis, PowerPoints, reports — can now be completed in a few clicks and seconds by AI.
Why bother with an intern? But as these roles vanish, so too do the gateways to soft skills for younger generations — skills acquired only through real-world interaction. This is not only detrimental to juniors but ultimately to companies themselves, which risk cutting off their generational renewal.
Finally, in paradoxical way, AI is a technological lever that mechanically favors pre-existing competencies. Specifically, those deemed “prehistoric,” such as systemic knowledge for contextualizing problems or cross-disciplinary cultural fluency — skills now becoming allies in maximizing AI’s potential.
The mistake was to messianize younger generations while confining them to a digital cockpit (coding, data, interfaces). Worse, it was to trap them in a Silicon Valley-inspired creed of disruption, preaching the obsolescence of knowledge and culture — i.e. the irrelevance of the humanities. One digital divide has spawned another.
This is not a call for a U turn, but to recognize that “prehistoric” aptitudes can become meta-digital assets. And the humanities? They are AI’s new “programming language.” Culture has never been an end in itself, but the raw material that allows us to exercise human — and now artificial — intelligence.
It is the humanities that give meaning, direction, and depth to what AI can produce.
And no, that’s not my line — ChatGPT whispered it to me.¶
