School leaders don't need convincing that AI has arrived in the classroom faster than most systems can keep up with.
From chatbots doing students' homework to teachers scrambling to rewrite assessment tasks, the pace of change has left many educators asking the same question: are we building the right skills in young people for a world already being reshaped by AI, or are we simply reacting to it?
That question sits at the heart of a major new report from the Global Federation of Competitive Councils (GFCC), released in partnership with Torrens University Australia.
Titled ‘The Human Edge: Global Perspectives on AI and Prosperity’, the report draws on insights from 113 leaders across 32 countries and five sectors, offering one of the most globally diverse assessments yet of how nations can build human capability and institutional readiness for an AI-driven world.
Professor Aleks Subic, Vice Chancellor and CEO of Torrens University Australia, chairs the GFCC Global Task Force on Human and AI and has led the research behind the report's findings and recommendations.
He says the report reveals a widening gap between how quickly AI capability is advancing and how slowly institutions are adapting to it.
“Technology is advancing rapidly, investment is surging, and adoption is spreading across sectors,” Professor Subic said. “Yet education systems, workforce models, governance frameworks, and social protections are not keeping pace. This is the defining competitiveness challenge of the AI transition.”
Professor Subic said one of the critical challenges for educators is how we can develop human capability in the AI era.
“How can universities go beyond the focus on AI as a tool or a research engine to producing graduates who can work alongside AI to achieve greater productivity, creativity, efficiency and who can make a greater contribution in society to inclusive social growth,” he said.
“This survey is not biased to either technology or human and society, it is viewing the whole issue in a comprehensive balanced manner, this is why is it called the human edge.”
Professor Subic said Torrens University's collaboration with the GFCC reflects the University’s belief that the future of competitiveness depends on empowering people with the capabilities to co evolve with technology.
“Traditionally, national and regional competitiveness was measured through productivity, innovation and research output but in the AI economy, competitiveness will depend on the capability of people to adapt, learn fast, redesign work and build trust.”
Rather than churning out more data scientists, coders or AI engineers, the report argues the real value lies in people who can bring judgement, critical thinking and cross-disciplinary skills to the table — using AI to create more value, not simply to automate existing tasks. And the risk, the report finds, isn't that AI replaces people altogether, but that it rewards some while excluding others, making access for minority and disadvantaged groups a critical priority.
In this new landscape, institutional readiness — the capacity to redesign work, learn quickly, build trust, deploy technology responsibly and distribute productivity fairly — is fast becoming the real frontier of competitiveness.
To close that gap, the report puts forward seven strategic recommendations for governments, universities and employers.
These include establishing AI-ready education and skills frameworks across every stage of learning, embedding lifelong learning as permanent national infrastructure, and redesigning work itself rather than just curricula to maximise human-AI collaboration.
The report also calls for protecting graduate and apprenticeship pathways as AI reshapes entry-level work, embedding inclusion into AI policy from the outset, developing new measures of human-centred AI competitiveness, and strengthening governance frameworks that build trust while still supporting innovation.
Professor Subic said AI represented one of the greatest opportunities of the century to improve productivity, innovation and prosperity — but only if people remained at the centre of policy and practice.
“The true potential of AI does not lie simply in technology, but in what it can do for human capability – but that will only be achieved if institutions prioritise educating people about how to work with it,” he said.
“Any university or institution that uses AI without strengthening human capability may produce short-term efficiencies but will be fragile in the long-term.”