CLT Symposium Keynote: Curiosity Is the Skill the Machine Cannot Fake: Building Resilient, Questioning Learners in the Age of AI

Generative systems are very good at producing answers and very poor at wanting them. That gap is where teaching still lives. This talk argues that curiosity is the capacity most at risk when assessment rewards fluent output, and also the one that makes students most resilient when that output is wrong. It looks at what happens to questioning once answers become frictionless, and at practical ways of designing courses, assessments and classroom conversations that put the question back at the centre. Speaker Biography: Sam Illingworth is a Full Professor of Critical AI Literacy at Edinburgh Napier University and the founder of Slow AI, a critical AI literacy newsletter and 12-month curriculum. He has given expert evidence to the Council of Europe, the European Commission, and the House of Lords Select Committee on AI literacy, human rights, and democratic governance. His research investigates how people interact with generative AI systems, with current work funded by the Leverhulme Trust. He is the author of 10 books, including Generative AI in Higher Education (Bloomsbury, 2026) and Effective Science Communication (IOP Publishing), which is used in 523 institutions across 66 countries. His work has been featured by BBC, NPR, Wired, BuzzFeed, Nature, and Scientific American, with a media reach of 400 million over the past three years. You can find out more about Sam and his practice at www.samillingworth.com.