Archive · 23 Aug 2026
Saikat Majumdar on Education, Intelligence, and AI’s Human Future
Saikat Majumdar wrote a book called Open Intelligence about education and artificial intelligence.
He says people are worried that AI could change their studies, jobs, and creative lives.
He believes stories help people understand shared feelings, not just facts and numbers.
He also thinks writing should connect with readers instead of merely showing how clever the writer is.
AI writing tools can help more people communicate in polished language.
However, polished language may not always mean that the person has the same ideas or skills without AI.
Majumdar thinks AI could become very good at writing that follows familiar rules.
He is less sure that AI can create writing filled with the unpredictable feeling of lived human experience.
He says readers will help decide whether perfectly crafted writing is enough.
Saikat Majumdar says Open Intelligence examines education, creativity, identity, and human development in an AI-shaped future.
He presents storytelling and narrative intelligence as essential ways humans share emotions, fears, and common reality beyond objective data.
Majumdar argues that accessible writing should move readers rather than display intellectual brilliance or technical craft.
He says AI writing tools can broaden access to polished language but may also conceal gaps in ideas, communication, or independent expression.
Majumdar believes AI may master rule-based writing forms, while readers’ desire for lived experience and distinctive artistic voice could preserve demand for human creativity.
- Who
- Writer and academic Saikat Majumdar, discussing his book Open Intelligence: Education Between Art and Artificial.
- What
- An interview about artificial intelligence, education, narrative intelligence, writing, and the future of literary creativity.
- When
- The interview’s publication date is not specified in the article.
- Where
- In an interview with Scroll.
- Why
- Majumdar wrote the book to examine how AI is reshaping education, creativity, knowledge, careers, and ideas about human intelligence.
Potential Benefits of AI
Risks and Human Limits
Access to polished communication
Potential Benefits of AI
AI writing tools can help more people participate in forms of language and presentation traditionally favored by power structures.
Risks and Human Limits
Polished language may misrepresent a person’s independent ability, especially when they cannot communicate or think similarly without AI.
The value of technique
Potential Benefits of AI
AI can improve or potentially master writing forms based on recognizable rules, and even accomplished writers may learn from its technical capabilities.
Risks and Human Limits
Mechanically perfect writing may lack the distinctive, unpredictable, and emotionally lived quality that readers associate with human art.
Education and intelligence
Potential Benefits of AI
AI creates an opportunity to move beyond an emphasis on language, numbers, and standardized tests toward broader human abilities.
Risks and Human Limits
If education remains focused on narrow forms of intelligence, people may be poorly prepared for the ethical, political, and human challenges of an AI-shaped world.
- Book discussed
- Open Intelligence: Education Between Art and Artificial
- Author
- Saikat Majumdar
- Central concept
- Narrative intelligence as a distinctively human way of understanding shared emotions and reality
- Education concern
- Majumdar questions whether current educational priorities and standardized testing sufficiently prepare people for an AI-driven world.
- AI writing tools
- They may widen access to polished discourse, but can also produce language that lacks distinctive character or conceal limitations in ideas and independent expression.
- Literary craft
- Majumdar says AI may quickly master forms governed by discernible rules, while human readers may continue seeking the felt quality of lived experience.
- Related book
- College: Pathways of Possibility, which Majumdar says addressed education and career questions.