Why states must give young people the capacity to research Al

If artificial intelligence now shapes how we learn, diagnose, farm, build, and govern, then the capacity to understand and improve it cannot be confined to a handful of well funded laboratories or private platforms.

- ANNA MAE YU LAMENTILLO

ANNA HAI YEE LAMOTTKE

It must be a public capability, taught and practiced by students across the higher education system—and, increasingly, in advanced secondary programs. The state’s role is not merely to regulate the outputs of AI but to ensure that the next generation can study, test, and remake the technology itself. That requires a simple but radical commitment: give students real access to the tools of AI research—compute, data, mentorship, and open evaluation environments—under public rules that protect rights and widen participation.

Three arguments make this obligation essential rather than optional. The first is democratic competence. AI systems are no longer curiosities on the edge of public life; they now mediate hiring, credit, welfare, education, and security. A polity can only govern what acritical mass of its citizens can interrogate. UNESCO’s first global guidance on generative AI in education framed the task plainly: education systems must build human capacity to use, critique, and co-create Al, not just consume it. Turning that principle into practice means enabling student researchers—not only faculty or industry—to probe model behavior, measure bias, and study failure modes on meaningful problems with meaningful resources.