On October 5, 2026, Leonardo Medrano wrote in an opinion column published by LA NACION that artificial intelligence can personalize education, identify learning difficulties earlier and give students a more active role. Medrano is Secretary General of Academia y Desarrollo at Universidad Siglo 21. His central question is how education should direct the technology: what to strengthen, what to avoid and what to teach.
Personalized Learning, More Data
Medrano wrote that AI entered education at a speed difficult to compare with earlier technological transformations. Debate, he said, often swings between those who expect technology to solve many educational problems and those concerned about its risks and inclined to restrict its use. Neither position, he argued, is enough.
Modern education greatly expanded access to knowledge, but it did so through relatively standardized models, Medrano wrote. Students with different prior knowledge, difficulties, interests and learning speeds often receive the same content, at the same pace and through similar teaching strategies.
AI systems could change that arrangement. They can spot when a student needs more explanation of a concept, propose new activities, adjust complexity or suggest other resources. They can also offer greater challenges to students who progress more quickly. The column describes these functions as possibilities, not as results already achieved in every classroom.
Student interactions with educational environments also generate information, including participation, results, study time, completed activities and postponed assignments. Used well, Medrano wrote, those data can help educators understand students’ learning paths, identify difficulties early and offer timely support.
The Risks and the Human Role
Medrano identified three risks: misinformation, dependence and dehumanization. AI systems can produce convincing answers that are incorrect, he wrote, and false claims may appear as credible as true ones. He called for students to learn to evaluate information, verify sources, compare arguments and identify bias.
There’s also a risk that reducing cognitive effort could weaken cognitive abilities. The educational challenge, according to Medrano, is to tell the difference between using AI to strengthen thought and using it to replace thought.
The technology can answer questions around the clock, generate hundreds of exercises and provide different explanations. But Medrano argued that education involves more than answering questions. Technology should free time from tasks it can perform efficiently, he said, so that time can return to activities requiring human presence: accompanying students, challenging them, inspiring them, listening and building community.
What Students Need to Learn
Medrano named competencies, communication and creativity as priorities. As access to information becomes easier, he wrote, value will depend less on accumulating content and more on knowing how to use it. People will still need to explain ideas, reach agreements, ask good questions, understand different perspectives, lead teams and convey meaning, even as systems produce large volumes of information.
Creativity will matter, too. If AI can generate a technically correct answer in seconds, Medrano wrote, the distinction will increasingly lie in asking unanswered questions, combining previously separate ideas, imagining alternatives and creating new solutions.
His conclusion: education’s task isn’t simply to accompany technological change, but to give it direction—using AI to expand the capacity to learn, create, understand and transform reality, and to reach further than people could alone.