“Early training in AI will demystify this technology and prepare America’s students to be confident participants in the AI-assisted workforce, propelling our nation to new heights of scientific and economic achievement.” This is how The White House motivated President Donald J. Trump’s signing of an executive order to advance AI education for American youth earlier this week.

But is a Task Force “fostering interest and expertise in AI technology from an early age” really what the next generation needs most? Or is there something more urgent for young Americans to demystify and foster an early interest and expertise in?

“Our future depends on our ability to engage with the rest of the world, and right now Americans have a very tough time doing that,” said Marty Abbott, the executive director of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in 2019. A 2018 study suggests that Abbott is right: While an average of 92% of European students study at least one foreign language in school, only 20% of K–12 students in the United States are enrolled in foreign language classes.

According to the Committee for Economic Development, a non-partisan, non-political, non-profit independent research organization, this one-way linguistic and cultural isolation from the world community has significant implications for the future opportunities of American K-12 students as they exit school. And the fact that U.S. students lack the linguistic and cultural skills of their peers in other nations has a negative impact not only on national security, but on the nation’s ability to progress economically in the global marketplace: “From small businesses to multi-nationals, the ability to effectively communicate in the languages and cultures of international consumers, business partners, and employees is crucial” (CED, 2006).

Other studies show that bilinguals outperform their monolingual counterparts on cognitive tasks that require ignoring irrelevant information, task switching, and resolving conflict. In other words, early training in AI may enable American students to utilize artificial intelligence. But early training in a foreign language enables their peers in other countries to tap into their own thinking skills, activating a range of other skills that are crucial for people, nations, and the world to benefit from AI.

A scientific paper of the cognitive benefits of being bilingual highlights that bilingual people often perform better on tasks that require the ability to:

The paper concludes that even for very young children, navigating a multilingual environment imparts advantages that transfer beyond language. And older bilingual people enjoy improved memory and executive control relative to older monolingual people, which can lead to real-world health benefits.

Across the political spectrum, fears have been expressed that American students will fall behind other nations, particularly China, as technology becomes more advanced and integrated into the workforce. And if the question is ‘How do we make AI part of every child’s upbringing?’, signing an executive order to advance AI education for American youth can indeed seem like the right answer.

But the question shouldn’t be ‘How do we make AI part of every child’s upbringing?’ Rather, political and corporate leaders should ask themselves, ‘How do we cultivate the skills everyone needs to navigate an uncertain future with rapid changes in technology, geopolitics, health, climate, etc.?’ Being able to adapt to change, focus on what’s relevant, switch between tasks, manage conflict, and recognize systems that may be different are all important aspects of the answer to this question. And maybe AI is too. But while we have lots of research showing that learning a foreign language fosters these cognitive, neural, and social skills in children and young adults, we don’t know how AI will impact our ability to navigate the future.

We have teachers who worry we’re going to have a generation that follows AI blindly and that their students will be taken advantage of “by employers, landlords or the government” if they don’t know how to think critically on their own. But as always with the future, we don’t know if they will be right. All we know is that we get what we ask for. And when we ask for AI education, we get AI education. Even when there is something far more urgent for all of us to navigate the future.