To parents thinking about
their child's future
I thought about this letter for a long time before writing it.
Over the past few years I've worked on applying AI in enterprise settings, and taught people from all kinds of backgrounds — students as young as 6 and as old as 60; frontline workers, executives, professionals, and government officials.
These experiences let me watch up close what happens when AI truly enters every layer of society, every industry, every age — what chemistry it sets off with people.
Two things grew clearer and clearer.
First, this generation of AI large models is, in essence, a “general knowledge model.”It can read, understand, summarize, express, reason and generate — so the first thing it disrupts is exactly the “knowledge education” we knew best.
Second, in many adults' worlds, AI runs against the grain.Adults have formed their own knowledge structures, work habits, identities and path dependencies. AI's arrival brings not only efficiency, but anxiety, resistance, and a sense of being replaced.
But in children and teenagers, I saw a completely different reaction.
To them, AI isn't necessarily a cold tool, but more like a companion they can talk to, that keeps them company and helps turn ideas into reality.Adults have to relearn AI; the young may, from the very start, see AI as simply part of the world.
But AI is also like fire.
Handled well, it amplifies human ability; handled badly, it can devour a person's judgment, attention and agency.
So the real question of this era is no longer “can you use AI,” but — in a new age where humans and machines collaborate and coexist:
what makes a human human?
This question, AI will not answer for us.
I believe, more and more, that education in the AI era isn't about “teaching children how to use AI” at all — it's about using AI's arrival to return to the human being itself.
As machines grow better at remembering, expressing, generating and executing, education must answer all the more —how should human curiosity, judgment, creativity, responsibility and sense of value be protected, sparked and grown?
find, in human-centered education, one of the most precious abilities is creativity。
The stronger AI gets, the more valuable the creativity that truly belongs to humans.
I myself was, in fact, raised in very good educational soil — my creativity protected and lifted. I'm one of the greatest beneficiaries of this kind of education.
In 2007 I entered Zhejiang University's College of Computer Science, industrial design. That education was a turning point of my life.
Looking back today, the industrial-design track I was in has grown, in a new era, into the cross-disciplinary major of “Intelligent Engineering & Creative Design”, and entered the talent system of ZJU College of Computer Science & AI. That itself says something —design, engineering, AI and creativity are fusing ever more deeply。
From 2007 to 2011, we stood right at the eve of the mobile-internet explosion。
Back then we could already feel technology, business and the internet profoundly reshaping traditional art, design, manufacturing and industry. Our teachers realized early on —future talent can't master just one discipline; it must have the integrative, cross-disciplinary, cross-system ability to innovate。
So our teachers boldly explored a new generation of programs, exchanging with leading schools around the world, and gradually formed the philosophy of “Integrated Innovation Design.”Academician Pan Yunhe further put forward a new understanding of innovation design — that it isn't a single-dimensional skill, but a composite system made of humanity · technology · art · culture · business.
These five dimensions shaped me deeply.
They made me understand —real creation isn't showing off a single skill, but a composite ability. A good creator must understand technology and people; have taste and grasp business; be able to make things and know why they make them; solve real problems and hold cultural awareness and value judgment.
Around 2010, Zhejiang University and the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) formed a partnership, joining the educational exploration of this new design-and-technology university MIT with deep MIT support. To me, that was an important signal of the times —design education was changing worldwide; engineering, technology, the humanities and creativity were being rethought on a single educational blueprint。
Since 1990, when ZJU's design discipline was founded, this soil — fusing engineering and the arts — has raised wave after wave of cross-disciplinary talent. I later interviewed many alumni one on one: some became entrepreneurs, some designers, others went into technology, education, culture and industrial innovation.
From them I felt two things deeply:
It is:An atmosphere of cross-disciplinary fusion gave them the ability to keep creating;
It is:love for their work, and the courage to follow their hearts made them who they are today.
But in the past, this kind of creativity education could mostly only be given to undergraduates and graduate students.
The reason is simple — it depended heavily on foundational skills。
You had to draw, model, code, research, do user analysis, understand business models.The bar of expertise was too high, the bar of tools too high, the bar of expression too high.K12 children, however many ideas they had, could rarely turn ideas into real work, let alone real value.
So innovation education for children and teens often stayed at the level of hobbies, experiences and STEAM activities.
Until AI arrived.
These past few years I've run many experiments. We brought AI into classrooms, in front of children, and let children of different ages try using AI to create characters, generate stories, build websites, finish designs, voice opinions, construct projects。
The results confirmed my judgment, again and again —
the impulse to create may come earlier than we think.
Creativity doesn't belong only to adults; it also belongs to children not yet tamed by standard answers.
Young people have never lacked creativity.What they lacked were the old tool barriers。
that turned “ideas” into “real things and real value.” And this time, AI leveled many of those barriers。
So —
for the first time in history, we can give a real creativity-education system to the young.
Of course, this is never about cramming compressed college courses into children (that would be wrong).
What we really want to do is let children understand the world, from a young age, through a creator's eyes。
I often tell the children:
“Don't be just someone the world consumes.
Be someone who creates, who changes the world.”
It sounds grand, but it's actually very concrete —
when a child just scrolls short videos, plays games, and is led by algorithmic recommendations, they are being consumed by the world。
But when they start using AI to create a character, build a website, design a product, tell a story, solve a real problem, they begin to become a more active person。
They begin to go from consumer to creator。
This is why I started Yongle Education.
Founding my own “design school” was something I thought I'd only do after retirement. AI accelerated all of it.
Because I see ever more clearly —those who can create the next brilliance of the AI era will likely not be our generation of adults, but the young who grow up alongside AI.
Not us, but them.
What our generation must do is not pass the old world's anxieties on to them, but take the most precious educational accumulation of the past thirty-plus years and translate it into a language they can understand, act on, and carry away, then hand it to them —
I also believe, more and more —education will be one of the most important fulcrums of social fairness in the AI era.
Because AI itself can either widen the gap, or narrow it. What matters is —who understands it earlier, who masters it better, who makes it part of their own creative ability。
If only a few children reach AI's creative starting line, AI will widen inequality.
But if more children, whatever their background, can use AI to unleash their creativity —then education can become this era's new fulcrum of fairness。
This is the true weight of the name “Yongle.”
If you, too, are thinking about your child's future —
we welcome you to join us in bringing your child to the starting line of creation.
So they don't just adapt to the world,
but have the power to take part in creating it the world.
