Estonia’s ambassador: The AI race is about who learns to use it best

Estonia’s next test of digital government is not whether artificial intelligence can replace people. It is whether citizens, students and public servants can learn to use it well enough to stay ahead.

In a new episode of Cyber Focus, Estonian Ambassador Kristjan Prikk said the country’s approach to AI grows out of the same mindset that helped make Estonia a global leader in digital government: use technology to make public life simpler, more accessible and more resilient.

“When it comes to use of AI … we are not starting from a blank sheet,” Prikk said.

The clearest example is education. Estonia’s AI Leap initiative brings together the Estonian government, OpenAI, major Estonian universities and other partners like Stanford University to give high school students access to an AI tool designed around a Socratic model of teaching.

The goal, Prikk said, is to avoid giving students one correct answer. It is to help them reason through problems, understand options and develop better judgment.

“This is an education program that has technology component rather than technology program that has some education component,” Prikk said.

The initiative also includes training for teachers. Prikk said Estonia is not telling teachers exactly how to use AI. Instead, they’re helping teachers understand how it can help them prepare for class, engage students, grade work and improve feedback.

That framing makes Estonia’s approach notable. Rather than viewing AI primarily as an efficiency tool for government or a productivity tool for workers, the country treats AI literacy as a national competitiveness issue. 

“We believe that our kids will not lose [their] jobs to AI,” Prikk said, “but rather they may risk losing their jobs to other kids who know how to use AI better than them.”

The same strategy extends into public services. Estonia has already moved much of its government interaction online, and Prikk said the country is applying machine learning to that existing infrastructure so citizens do not have to search across government websites to figure out whether they need a permit, qualify for a tax credit or are eligible for a public service.

“People should not waste their time browsing through different government websites,” Prikk said.

Estonia is also looking inward at the bureaucracy itself. Prikk described a push toward what he called “government AI,” aimed at removing low-value administrative work and preserving human judgment for the places where it matters most.

In some cases, he said, government processes include extra steps to reduce human error, laziness or corruption. AI can help streamline those steps while keeping public servants focused on work where people still add value.

“As we say in Estonia, you cannot bribe a computer,” Prikk said.

In the full Cyber Focus episode, Prikk also discusses Estonia’s post-Soviet digital transformation, the 2007 cyberattacks, Ukraine’s cyber resilience, public-private cooperation in wartime, Estonia’s support for Ukraine through the Tallinn Mechanism and IT Coalition, and the cyber priorities NATO must address in the years ahead. You can find it and other Cyber Focus episodes wherever you get podcasts or at McCraryInstitute.com.