We are training engineers to think like AI.

And we call it education.

I see it every year in universities.

Students get clean assignments. Clear requirements. Expected outputs.

And they become very good at one thing:

Doing exactly what they are told.

No deviation. No questioning. No real ownership of the problem.

For years, that was fine.

Because execution was valuable.

But now we have AI.

And AI does one thing extremely well:

It follows instructions.

Give it a prompt, and it delivers. Faster, cheaper, and without hesitation.

So we need to ask a difficult question.

If students are trained to execute instructions, what happens when machines do that better?

We are not preparing them for the future.

We are training them for roles that are disappearing.

The real problem is not a lack of technical skill.

It is a lack of thinking.

The ability to: • question the assignment itself • understand context before writing code • decide what should be built, not just how

That is where humans still have an edge.

But we are not training for it.

We are optimising for grades, not for judgment. For correctness, not for curiosity. For compliance, not for responsibility.

And that is a dangerous mismatch with where AI is going.

This shift will not start with better tools.

It starts with a mindset change.

In universities. In educators. And in students themselves.

Because in a world where AI can execute almost anything,

thinking is no longer optional.