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Oshoma Momoh is chief technical adviser at MaRS Discovery District

Our children are back at school this week, which raises a lot of questions. What should they be learning? What can we teach them ourselves? As parents, we help them succeed, but with work hurtling toward a digitized, automated future, our own experiences won’t always apply.

After 25 years in the software industry, I should perhaps confine my evangelism to engineering and programming. But I don’t just want to teach my children how to code. Digital literacy is increasingly important, but it’s not enough. Artificial intelligence techniques are developing so rapidly that a broader approach is needed.

Instead, I want to teach my children about their humanity.

Yes, technology will eliminate some human jobs and transform others. We’ll soon see software tools doing many tasks previously considered the exclusive realm of humans.

But machines and algorithms will remain just that – tools. They can do rote tasks, but only crudely approximate our nature. So while they may displace portions of our work as surgeons, drivers, machinists and clerks, they may never take over as caregivers, chefs, architects and company founders – roles requiring essentially human abilities such as empathy, reflection, judgment, creativity and critical thinking.

The more machines and software do our rote labour, the more competitive advantage and personal meaning our children will need to derive from their most essential human skills and traits. This shift will reshape lives and work forces.

I’m thinking hard about this as my children return to school. I’d like them to master two types of human traits in particular – the humanistic pursuits (arts, sport, music, literature) that stir human emotion and desire, and problem-solving skills (creativity, design, entrepreneurship) that move us forward as a species.

My 10-year-old daughter, for example, is learning volleyball, loves to sing and studies extracurricular mathematics. I’d like her to pursue them all. They’re deeply connected to her humanity.

Volleyball is unlikely to offer a career path, but the confidence of mastery will last a lifetime. She’ll make lifelong friends and learn about teamwork, strategy and competitive drive, human pleasures and struggles that machines will never know.

And while machines can already do mathematics, math is more than operations, equations and data. It underpins our lives and the natural world – we’ve spent millennia uncovering its secrets. Whether it’s her career focus or just on her periphery, math will serve my daughter in profound ways. Artificial intelligence won’t change that.

Then there’s my son, 7. He’s heavily into Lego and starting to explore tablet and app games such as Minecraft and Terrarium. We limit his screen time, because physical connection with the people around us is critical. But I do want to encourage his interest in understanding how things work. These concepts are transferable beyond the digital world and they open the door to many education and career paths. There’s great beauty and value in design. Perhaps he can be our next great architect.

Speaking of education, I’m far from certain our children will ever take traditional postsecondary paths. Humans will always benefit from formal training and academic learning, but less often on campuses. Education is steadily moving online, becoming more personalized and entwined with work.

We don’t necessarily need universities to develop ourselves in this way. You certainly don’t need a PhD to do product design for Microsoft and startups, as I’ve done. Instead, study people. Think about their motivations. Develop taste. A sense of psychology. Cross-train. Build your own learning plan, tailored to next career steps. In the same way, our children’s educations will become more customized and piecemeal, less about prepackaged degrees. Their learning will be lifelong, not over at 22.

Some already grasp this. Educators, who are working to erase the boundaries between school and work. Business leaders, who are cross-training staff continuously. And entrepreneurs, who are working to fill the gaps. (Excellent examples include Sharpest Minds and WeCloudData, Canadian startups that guide promising students and engineers into their first data-science jobs.)

We have to think about the implications of this new world. Machines may free our children and grandchildren to focus on what makes them human, but if the result is less demand for human paid labour, many people will struggle to replace work’s meaning and compensation. We must experiment with universal basic income and other safety nets. How else will we sanely navigate careers through near-continuous training and job changes?

These are the questions I’m asking as our children return to school, and I hope I’m not alone. Their futures require our full attention. We can't lose sight of humanity in our teaching.

The one thing machines will never replace us at is being human. That could be the most important lesson our children can learn.

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