Should Children Learn to Read and Write—or Is Learning to Talk to AI Enough? by Prof Sarit Kraus
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Join us at the IAS STEM Graduate Colloquium by Prof Sarit Kraus from the Bar-Ilan University. This talk is in conjunction with the IAS Frontiers Conference on Artifical Intelligence 2026, jointly supported by the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) and the College of Computing and Data Science (CCDS).
"Should Children Learn to Read and Write - or Is Learning to Talk to AI Enough?" by Prof Sarit Kraus (Bar-Ilan University)
AI systems can now write text, generate images, and make complex decisions, raising a fundamental question about education and human skills: if machines can read and write for us, what should humans still learn? This talk examines how large language models and other foundation models are reshaping the meaning of literacy and intelligence.
Rather than replacing people, modern AI can act as a partner—an advisor, teammate, or intermediary in complex tasks. However, effective collaboration is not automatic. AI systems can be biased, opaque, and misaligned with human goals, making it essential for humans to understand, question, and guide them.
The talk introduces the idea of synergistic intelligence, where human–AI teams outperform either humans or machines alone. We discuss how intelligent advising agents, including multi-agent and multimodal AI systems, can support decision-making, reduce cognitive load, and improve trust in human–AI–robot teams. The central message is that critical thinking remains essential—not despite AI, but because meaningful collaboration with intelligent systems depends on it.
About the speaker:
Sarit Kraus is a Professor of Computer Science at Bar-Ilan University. Her research focuses on intelligent agents and multi-agent systems that integrate machine learning (including LLMs) with optimization, logic, and game theory. She develops agents capable of interacting effectively with people and robots.
She has received many honors, including the IJCAI Computers and Thought and Research Excellence Awards, ACM SIGART and Athena Lecturer Awards, the EMET Prize, and two IFAAMAS Influential Paper Awards. A Fellow of ACM, AAAI, and EurAI, she also received an ERC Advanced Grant and a commendation from LA for the ARMOR system.
Kraus has published over 400 papers, co-authored five books, chaired IJCAI-2019, will chair IJCAI-2027, and is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences.