In the article “More AI, less enrolment is a dangerous combination”, Anita Bosman and Klaas Brongers describe a worrying trend: young people are choosing not to study ICT because of AI. Meanwhile software is rapidly penetrating every corner of society, and the shortage of ICT professionals is structural.
Their suggestion to make ICT education more attractive is well-taken. But it is easy to miss the mark. Adding a healthy dose of AI to the curriculum and explaining that ICT really does matter for society is not going to be enough. Because the underlying fear is left unaddressed: that AI makes programmers redundant. As long as that perception persists among students, parents and careers advisers, little will change.
What we need is a new narrative. Not “learn to code despite AI,” but “build the future with AI as your tool.”
At Firda we are working on that narrative. We call it the Digital Maker: a creative problem-solver who uses a broad set of tools — code, neural networks, language models, and their own creativity — to build solutions alongside AI across all kinds of sectors. From a robot that picks apples to a healthcare app that helps patients. Someone with deep ICT knowledge, combined with experience and interest in other fields: healthcare, agritech, logistics, robotics.
AI does not replace the programmer. AI makes the programmer more powerful and more versatile. But you have to tell that story, and it has to match what young people actually encounter in their training.