Skills for an AI World: Where we may be tomorrow

Optimism mixed with worry about the future, a desire to avoid over-reliance, a focus on developing transferable skills, and a need for more skills provision in an uncertain world – these are some insights shared by children about the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Over the last few months, children have been telling us how they feel about this future and the skills they think will be important tomorrow.

This article is part of UNICEF’s ‘Skills for an AI world’ initiative. It is based on preliminary findings from child consultations conducted in 2026 with 97 children in five countries across Africa: The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Egypt, Mozambique, Rwanda and Senegal. The findings are grounded within existing research and expert consultations held in 2025 and build on our previous article outlining how children are engaging with and thinking about AI today.  

1. Optimism is accompanied by significant worry about the future

“[The] impact will be positive in the future, like helping us create robots, helping us to work, helping us making [sic] the technological revolution, but also … there are good and bad consequences.” 
– A 14- to 17-year-old from the DRC

Some children we consulted are thinking positively about a future in which AI can assist across various areas of life – it can help with studies, speed up various tasks, and support people to get better answers to questions. A 9- to 12-year-old in Rwanda spoke about the broader positive impact of AI: “We will be happy to see my country develop because of AI.”

However, this is accompanied, often overshadowed, by worry. Children in the DRC, Egypt, Rwanda and Senegal expressed fear about AI creating job loss, as put by a 17-year-old in Senegal: “What worries me the most is the risk of job loss due to automation.”

In previous research in Brazil, Kenya, and Thailand, children shared worries about automation creating mass unemployment and economic instability. And these fears are not unfounded. UNICEF’s recent Global Outlook on the predicted impact of AI on work highlights that youth, those in entry-level jobs, women, and those in clerical roles are at highest risk of job loss.

But this is not the full picture. AI is and will continue to automate workplace tasks, especially those which are more routine, but this is not the same as eradicating roles entirely. The 2025 UNDP Human Development Report noted that success in the labour market can come when activities carried out by humans and AI complement each other, as automated routine tasks can free up people’s capacity to focus on uniquely ‘human’ tasks, like building relationships. Indeed, children are already aware of this need to focus on positive collaboration with AI: an Egyptian 15-year-old consulted by Generation Unlimited described how “AI should enhance, not replace, human efforts.”

2. Children want to avoid over-reliance on AI

“What worries me when we talk about artificial intelligence in the future is that … students will be lazy mentally because they will always do research [with AI] instead of trying to learn in the classroom.” 
– A 9- to 12-year-old from Mozambique

The children we spoke with are concerned about over-reliance on AI. They worry about laziness and cognitive decline from overuse of AI – this was highlighted in the DRC, Egypt, Mozambique and Rwanda. A 16- to 17-year-old in Mozambique also worried that people may lose the ability to “express themselves or their feelings to society”. Such perspectives align with wider-held views about the risks of unsupported use of AI in education, with Brookings warning of over-reliance on AI, emotional and cognitive dependence, and diminished critical thinking.

One 17-year-old from Egypt described how we could check for over-reliance: “If I lived my life in 2040 and found that this AI, and I couldn't live without it, then that's a problem [sic].”

To protect against this and to maintain their autonomy, children expressed desire to limit the tasks that they use AI for, especially when it comes to emotional support. They also describe the importance of developing skills themselves, for example, learning how to research based on their own knowledge and developing ‘hard’ skills like a language or photo-editing.

3. Children prioritize transferable skills

“You can get an answer, then you go to check it, you verify it and see that it's something that is useful and you understand it.” 
– A 9- to 12-year-old from Rwanda 

In the DRC and Egypt, children described the importance of knowing how AI models work and how to develop AI tools. In Egypt, Mozambique, Rwanda and Senegal, children spoke about the need for good prompt engineering to elicit better results from AI systems.

However, beyond these, children in our consultations primarily focused on transferable skills, also known as life skills, for example, knowing how to evaluate information. This could involve verifying AI responses using alternative information sources. Such views align with findings from a study in Brazil where children expressed a desire to know how to verify facts and distinguish real information from AI-generated "hallucinations" or misinformation. These capabilities are components of information literacy and critical thinking, which are essential for assessing vast amounts of information and for mitigating extreme trust or distrust of online content.

The joint European Commission and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) AI Literacy Framework highlights that thriving in an AI world requires a broad suite of capabilities, including technical knowledge, durable skills and future-ready attitudes. This was apparent in consultations with children, as they also expressed their desire for a wide range of competencies, including foundational skills in literacy and numeracy, skills to protect one's privacy as well as the need for appropriate attitudes towards AI use and relevant background knowledge.

4. Children require more support developing skills

“Every time we develop [skills] there's something new that comes out.” 
– An 11-year-old from Egypt

Some children mentioned they want to receive support developing skills from friends, family and at school as well as from community-based organizations. Indeed, skills-building initiatives already exist. The children we consulted in Rwanda had taken part in a debate in school about using AI, while those in Egypt were already part of an AI skills training programme. UNICEF’s recent mapping of digital skills initiatives (forthcoming) reveals a landscape of programmes that tend to focus on digital content creation and problem-solving. We see broader examples of AI literacy being embedded into national curricula, for example in China and India.

However, this is by no means a picture of comprehensive AI literacy provision. Education practitioners in low- and middle-income countries have expressed concern that education systems are still unprepared for developing AI literacy. Moreover, countries’ varying levels of AI Preparedness mean that there is great variety in terms of the starting points for delivering skills initiatives, for example in terms of existing levels of digital infrastructure. Uneven or insufficient provision of skills can widen inequalities along socioeconomic, geographic, and cultural and linguistic grounds – this is a concern that young people are already grappling with.

Initiatives in AI literacy must support all children to develop necessary competencies, particularly those most at risk of being left behind. We do see positive examples of this targeting, for example in Bolivia, where an initial cohort of adolescent girls have completed the first national AI course. This achievement also coincides with the recent approval of the first-of-its-kind national policy on digital and socio-emotional skills for girls, developed with UNICEF’s support.

5. Uncertainty is a key concern

"What worries me is not knowing what will happen in the future.” 
– A 9- to 12-year-old from Mozambique

Children we spoke to in Mozambique and Egypt described feeling uncertain about the future. They don’t know the direction that AI developments will take, echoing similar views held by young people in Kenya in UNICEF’s most recent Young Visionaries report. The speed of technological developments means it is difficult to know what trends will endure or fade.

This theme also emerged in our expert consultations, specifically the scale of uncertainty at the moment. There are many unknowns in the AI space: Will AI developments proceed democratically, or will they continue to be concentrated among a few tech giants? Will AI be heavily regulated or left open to market forces? How will impacts on skills needs and jobs vary in different contexts?

No one can accurately predict the benefits or dangers that AI will bring, and the situation is made even more unclear by a volatile geopolitical climate and technological competition.

It is important to remember this level of uncertainty as we help children prepare for the future. It creates a need to regularly reassess current and emerging trends, and ensure policy and practice adapt accordingly. And with today’s children being the people who will have to engage in these uncertain futures, it is crucial to embed their perspectives as we tackle these questions.

What’s next

This article is by no means an exhaustive list of everything children need to be prepared for the future. Rather, it showcases some key themes emerging while analysis of child consultations is ongoing. In July 2026, UNICEF Innocenti will publish its full findings from the child consultations, which will explore children’s views on AI and their skills needs in greater depth. This will also share key recommendations on how we can suitably equip children with these competencies, so that every child can be prepared to thrive in an AI world.