[2025 AI Ethics Seminar EP.5] Knowing, Competence, and Education in the AI Era

The advancement of generative AI is fundamentally shaking the existing definition of competence. In the past, Technê-based ability—quickly finding correct answers and efficiently producing results—was the measure of competence, but now this domain is undergoing an 'outsourcing of Technê' to AI.

As AI takes over technical proficiency tasks such as calculation, summarization, and generation, humans are now required to develop a new form of knowing: Epistêmê. This goes beyond mere skill acquisition to encompass the ability to understand the meaning of phenomena and judge what is right and wrong.

The specific capabilities humans must possess in the AI era are as follows.

• Problem-setting ability: AI excels at solving given problems, but defining which problems matter and posing questions remains the responsibility of humans.
• Ability to establish judgment criteria: There is a need for the responsibility to select the optimal option—among the statistical choices AI presents—that aligns with an organization's values and social context, and to explain the reasoning behind it.

Ultimately, education and organizations in the AI era must focus on cultivating the ability to ask 'why should we solve this problem' rather than 'how to solve it.'