Brain On. Hands On. Human in Control.
The next AI revolution may not be about making machines smarter. It may be about giving them hands.
And that has profound implications for how we educate our children.
A Bloomberg Opinion piece by Catherine Thorbecke, The Next AI Race Exposes the Limits of Language, made a point that stayed with me: understanding language is not the same as understanding the physical world through action. Helen Keller didn't just learn the word "water". She felt the cool of it on her hand.
The Industrial Revolution amplified our muscles. We aren't as strong as elephants, yet machines let us lift far more. We don't have wings, yet we fly higher and faster than birds.
The AI revolution is doing the same for our minds. Large language models help us analyse, explore and solve problems faster than ever. But does that mean we have achieved Artificial General Intelligence? I would argue not yet.
Intelligence evolved through our hands as well as our brains. When humans began to walk upright, our hands were freed to build, experiment and create. Brain and hand co-evolved. AI may follow a similar path. An LLM can explain how to tie shoelaces or fly an aeroplane, but knowing how in language is very different from doing it reliably in the real world.
That is why physical AI, meaning robots that perceive, manipulate and act, may be the next frontier. Until machines can operate in the physical world with near-human capability, claims of AGI deserve careful scrutiny.
What does this mean for education? I see two challenges.
The first is to teach children to think, not just to ask AI to think for them. Learning requires effort. When children struggle, test ideas, make mistakes and try again, that is when understanding forms. But banning AI isn't the answer. Used well, it can be an infinitely patient, always-available learning coach.
The balance is what I call "Try First." Let children attempt the problem on their own. Then let AI help them check their work, understand their errors and climb to the next level. AI should strengthen learning, not replace it.
The second is to develop children's hands, not just their fingers. Many young people are brilliant at swiping screens. Are they equally capable of building, making and experimenting? In a world moving towards physical AI, they need to design, build, test, fail and improve, connecting abstract ideas with physical experience. In other words: "Brain On, Hands On."
This is how we are evolving at ChildFirst. In 2017, ChildFirst became the first trilingual preschool in Singapore with coding and/or AI as the third language, teaching English, Chinese and Coding as three languages for the future. As AI advanced, we evolved the third language from Coding to AI.
But by AI, we mean far more than learning to use AI tools. We mean helping children become more human. As machines grow more capable, distinctly human qualities matter even more: empathy, emotional intelligence, creativity, independent judgement, wisdom, and deciding what is worth doing in the first place. We call this Human Intelligence (HI).
Now, as physical AI emerges, we are widening what AI means to us. It includes technological fluency, but also the ability to understand and interact with the physical world. This is where iSTEAM becomes essential: innovation, science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics.
Imagine children building earthquake-resistant structures, investigating why aeroplanes fly, or extracting DNA from a tomato with kitchen materials. These are not just science activities. They are chances to ask questions, form hypotheses, experiment and learn through their hands.
Our goal is not to compete with AI on its own terms. It is to prepare children to thrive alongside it: to think independently, use technology intelligently, act creatively, and stay firmly in control of the goals technology serves.