Fortune India 40 Under 40 2026: AI will democratise education, but human capabilities will set the winners apart, say industry leaders

Artificial intelligence may make education faster, more accessible and easier to scale, but the rise of the technology is also likely to increase the importance of human skills such as creativity, judgment, empathy and ethics, education and skilling leaders said at the Fortune India 40 Under 40 event in Mumbai.

Speaking during a panel discussion on “Reimagining Education & Skilling”, Anuradha Suvarna, Chief Sustainability Officer & Head CSR at L’Oréal India; Siddhant Sachdeva, Co-founder of Rocket Learning; and Siddharth Shahani, Co-founder & Executive President of ATLAS SkillTech University, discussed the changing education landscape and the growing role of AI.

“AI is here to stay. It’ll help us scale up, create access,” Shahani said. But as AI becomes more pervasive, he said, human intelligence and capabilities will become even more important.

“Teaching your children creativity, judgment, ethics, integrity becomes the future,” he said, adding that knowledge and skills would increasingly flow through these capabilities.

The panel discussion also highlighted a shift in how Gen Z views AI and careers. Shahani said that while young people have anxieties around the impact of AI on jobs, they are also highly optimistic and comfortable with the technology.

According to him, students increasingly see AI as a tool that can help them build enterprises of the future. The entrepreneurial mindset is also gaining ground. Shahani said that five years ago, only about 1% of students in a classroom would say they wanted to become entrepreneurs, compared with around 20% today.

“That tectonic shift” reflects a growing preference among young people for self-employment and building value-creating startups, he said.

For Sachdeva, the AI opportunity in education extends beyond edtech platforms designed directly for children. Technology can also support the wider ecosystem around education, including Anganwadi workers and parents, he said.

However, skills requiring judgment, empathy and social-emotional learning will remain critical. This is particularly important in early childhood, where foundational capabilities are developed, Sachdeva said.

Rocket Learning works with children in the zero-to-six age group and currently reaches around six million children, according to Sachdeva. He said early childhood education needs greater attention, particularly for disadvantaged children who lack access to quality learning.

Suvarna said AI could improve accessibility and make it faster and easier to learn, work and access information. But technology cannot fully replace hands-on skills, particularly in vocational education.

“AI doesn’t really give you a perfect haircut yet,” she said, referring to the beauty skilling sector. While AI can generate a look, the actual transformation still requires human expertise, she added.

The discussion came against the backdrop of the National Education Policy, which the panellists described as a progressive framework but one whose success would ultimately depend on implementation.

Suvarna said she had seen encouraging progress in foundational literacy and numeracy, as well as in the integration of vocational education into schools. Shahani said the policy had created greater flexibility and autonomy for academic institutions and encouraged multidisciplinary education by bringing traditional and skills-based learning closer together.

Sachdeva, meanwhile, said the policy had opened the door for reform but that more implementation was needed on the ground, particularly to improve access for disadvantaged children.

As AI reshapes education and skilling, the panellists broadly agreed that technology will change how people access knowledge and learn new skills. But the capabilities that require human judgment, creativity, empathy and social understanding are likely to become more, not less, important in the AI era.