When Knowledge Ceases to Be Scarce: Pragmatism, Human Growth, and the Purpose of Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) confronts education with a question that is philosophical rather than technical: not how schools should use AI, but what education is ultimately for once knowledge is no longer scarce. This article addresses that question through a single, extended argument rather than an empirical report. It proceeds from a historical observation, that the modern transmission model of schooling rested on the scarcity of knowledge, and shows, drawing on the pragmatist philosophy of Charles S. Peirce, William James, and above all John Dewey, that AI dissolves this scarcity and thereby reopens the deepest question about the aims of education. The article’s central claim is that the most consequential change AI brings to education is not technological but teleological: as knowledge shifts from a scarce resource to a pervasive condition, it can no longer function as the destination of education and must be repositioned as a condition for the fuller aim of human formation. To clarify what “the full development of the human person” means, an idea too often asserted rather than defined, the article brings Dewey’s concept of growth into dialogue with the German tradition of Bildung, with Gert Biesta’s account of subjectification, and with Nick Bostrom’s Deep Utopia, whose “purpose problem” sharpens, by pushing to the limit, what remains distinctively human when instrumental tasks are automated. The argument closes by weighing and answering four objections. In doing so, the article extends pragmatist philosophy of education into the age of AI and proposes that the value of education be judged by its capacity to form persons who can use knowledge and AI to judge wisely, act responsibly, and keep developing in a changing world. The Vietnamese context provides a particularly relevant setting for this discussion, as the country’s strong commitment to educational development and digital transformation offers an important opportunity to place emerging AI capabilities in the service of human growth and the broader purposes of education.