This paper shares an approach in using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to assist in reviewing and updating of the CDIO Syllabus, reflecting the continual improvement nature of the CDIO Framework to keep abreast with changing educational landscape. The advent of GenAI and its rapid adoption across all spectrums of industries and educational institutions necessitates that faculty prepare graduates for the workplace of the future. Two main drivers for change are identified: first, to reaffirm the role of humans in an AI dominated world; and second, to equip them with new competencies required for effective human–machine collaboration. The first concern arises from the rapid advancement of GenAI technologies which has fuelled fears that machines already surpassed humans in terms of intelligence and encroached upon traits that were once perceived as uniquely human, such as creativity, empathy, complex reasoning. This had important implications for the second concern, when humans and machines have to work together to derive maximum benefits leveraging on technological advancement supported by human oversight of work done by machines. The human-machine collaboration in particular holds great promises in addressing sustainability issues and sustainable development challenges. The CDIO Framework with its 12 Core Standards and an updated CDIO Syllabus lend itself readily to aid curricular redesign to address these challenges. The proposed revised CDIO Syllabus will incorporate skills and attitudes: (1) from AI Literacy Framework for Students from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; (2) from core human capacities that are distinct from GenAI no matter how sophisticated the algorithm driving GenAI behaviour develops, (3) needed for harnessing the “missing middle” – a collaborative space where human judgment, creativity, and empathy merge with the speed, pattern recognition, and scale of AI systems to achieve unprecedented productivity and performance gains, (4) required to support the development of a sustainability mindset. The rest of the paper discusses the relative merits of having a separate heading for human-AI collaboration compared to distributing them into relevant parts of existing heading, limitation of the approach used and plans for moving forward.
