In the final part of his People's Daily essay on AI and education, Shi Yigong argues that AI narrows the distance between people, and between different countries and civilisations, making the achievements of different cultures more accessible than ever before — and that education should use this as a medium for genuine cross-cultural dialogue, helping students see and understand the world's real diversity rather than staying confined to a single vantage point. The phrase he uses, translated as breaking down "cognitive islands," is a useful and slightly unusual image: not a wall to tear down, but an island to connect — the picture of a mind that's isolated not because anything is actively blocking it, but simply because it's never been bridged to anywhere else.

Why "cognitive island" is the right image, not "ignorance"

It's worth sitting with the specific metaphor, because it names something more precise than simple lack of knowledge. A person on a cognitive island isn't necessarily uninformed about the rest of the world — they may know plenty of facts about other countries, other histories, other viewpoints. What they lack is the bridge: the habitual, ongoing exposure to how people elsewhere actually think and reason, as opposed to facts about them learned as content. Facts about a place are compatible with never having genuinely encountered a different way of seeing a problem. A cognitive island is a mind that's well-stocked with information but has never really left home.

Why this matters more, not less, in an AI era

It might seem like global connection is simply a given now — the internet already puts a KS3 student in constant contact with content from around the world. Shi Yigong's argument implicitly pushes back on treating that as sufficient. Exposure to a wide feed of global content is not the same as genuine cross-cultural understanding, particularly when that feed is algorithmically filtered to match what a person already engages with, which tends to narrow exposure to different ways of thinking even while widening exposure to content nominally "from" different places.

His specific proposal — AI as a medium for cross-cultural dialogue, not just a wider content pipe — is a meaningfully different claim: using AI deliberately to help a student engage with a genuinely different reasoning style or cultural framework on a specific question, rather than simply consuming more content that happens to originate elsewhere.

What this looks like in a KS3 context, concretely

This connects to the argument in tearing down subject walls but points outward rather than across: rather than only connecting maths to biology, it's about connecting a UK student's way of approaching a problem to how the same problem might be approached from a different cultural or historical vantage point. In history, this might mean genuinely engaging with how a historical event looks from more than one side, rather than only the perspective the UK curriculum happens to centre. In science, it might mean encountering how a concept was independently discovered or applied in a different scientific tradition. The content coverage doesn't necessarily need to expand — the habit of asking "how might this look different from somewhere else" is what's being built.

Why this connects back to curiosity and empathy

This isn't a separate skill from the four qualities Shi Yigong names elsewhere in the same essay — it's largely an application of curiosity and empathy outward, across cultural and national lines rather than just across individuals. A student who's practised genuine curiosity about why a classmate thinks differently, and genuine empathy for a character's motivations in literature, has the underlying habits needed to extend the same curiosity and empathy to a genuinely different cultural vantage point. Breaking the cognitive island isn't a separate curriculum item; it's the same muscles, exercised at a larger scale.

The honest limit of what AI can do here on its own

It's worth being clear-eyed about this part of the argument: AI making a wider range of perspectives accessible is not the same as a student actually engaging with them. The same risk that applies to global content on social media applies here — a tool can put a different cultural perspective in front of a student without the student doing the harder work of genuinely sitting with it rather than skimming past it. Shi Yigong's argument for AI as a "medium for dialogue" implies active engagement, not passive exposure — which means the real work still depends on how a student (and the adults and tools around them) actually use the access, not just on the access existing.

FAQ

What does Shi Yigong mean by 'cognitive islands'?

He argues AI narrows the distance between people and civilisations, making different cultures' achievements newly accessible, and that education should use AI as a medium for genuine cross-cultural dialogue — helping students see the world's real diversity rather than staying confined to one vantage point.

Isn't global awareness already covered by geography and citizenship lessons?

Formally, yes, as curriculum topics. Shi Yigong's argument is about something more specific: genuine, ongoing exposure to how people elsewhere actually think and reason, not just facts about other countries learned as content to be tested.

Doesn't the internet already expose KS3 students to global perspectives constantly?

Exposure to global content isn't the same as genuine cross-cultural understanding — algorithmically filtered feeds can widen content sources while narrowing exposure to genuinely different ways of thinking. Shi Yigong's argument is about deliberate engagement, not passive exposure.

Source

Adapted from 施一公 (Shi Yigong), "《人工智能时代，教育何为》" ("In the Age of AI, What Should Education Do?"), People's Daily, "大家手笔" column, 3 June 2026.

Duke Harewood · aitutors.me · Updated 14 Jul 2026.