New Delhi, Sept. 30 -- One of the richest men on the planet has decreed that in a world drenched in artificial intelligence (AI), children need not learn math. Skip addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. Forget all of it. If today's AI bubble bursts, he may lose his perch among the world's most powerful individuals and the world may finally laugh at the sheer nerve of that claim. But right now, money and power-which in his case arrive together-turn every sentence he utters into scripture for the AI faithful, however wrong or self-serving.

I have heard a milder version of the same argument, offered in response to a real and urgent crisis: that AI is stunting children's capacity to think, and that widespread use may stop that cap...