TikTok & AI Have Changed Education Forever - What it means for Teachers, Students & Parents

1. 0:00 – 1:51

   The Role of AI in Education

   1. JMJustine Moore0:00

      Will software in some way replace teachers?

   2. ZCZach Cohen0:02

      Parents want better outcomes.

   3. JMJustine Moore0:03

      What is actually improving retention of information, learning, memory?

   4. ZCZach Cohen0:08

      They're allowing a teacher to be a lot more productive and be 10 times better at their job.

   5. JMJustine Moore0:12

      Will we see more parents, like, I want more of a truly AI-directed education for my kid?

   6. ZCZach Cohen0:17

      It's teachers who are willing to kind of pay and use this in their every single day workflow.

   7. JMJustine Moore0:21

      We need the textbook companies to grow some innovation arms fast. [upbeat music] I'm Justine, and this is Olivia, and welcome back to This Week In Consumer AI. This week we're going to be talking about a very fun trend we've seen recently blowing up all over our social media feeds related to AI in education. And for this topic, we wanted to bring on our subject matter expert here at a16z on education, which is our colleague Zach. Zach, you wanna give a little introduction and talk about your experience in edtech?

   8. ZCZach Cohen0:57

      Yeah, I would love to. I think it's fun to feel invited to a podcast from colleagues.

   9. JMJustine Moore1:01

      [laughs]

   10. ZCZach Cohen1:01

       It's an interesting feeling for sure. Yeah, so quickly, just my background, um, been operating, investing in education for quite some time. So I've been here for a little over two and a half years, thinking about what the next generation of education's gonna look like, uh, with the advent of AI. And then before this was at General Atlantic with one of my coverage areas on the consumer internet group being education. We were investors in Quizlet, Duolingo. We did the Chess.com deal while I was there, so kind of the edutainment, kind of consumerization of education. And then before that, I actually, uh, built and sold an education technology company that was focused on delivering high school computer science education, uh, in most of the Northeast area, and we sold that to actually an education-focused roll-up. You can count how many times I've said education.

   11. JMJustine Moore1:45

       [laughs]

   12. ZCZach Cohen1:45

       Uh, where I worked for a, a couple years as well, rolling up, uh, different a-assets in mostly adult

2. 1:51 – 5:14

   AI Adoption in Schools: Challenges and Progress

   1. ZCZach Cohen1:51

      education and corporate training.

   2. JMJustine Moore1:52

      And I know we have looked at a lot in edtech over the past two years especially. I think-

   3. ZCZach Cohen1:57

      For sure

   4. JMJustine Moore1:57

      ... everyone has this intuitive sense that people are using AI for homework, but even I was surprised, like, seeing some of the data for probably the full first year of ChatGPT, like the .edu users were even larger than the everyone else who was a non-student user, which is pretty crazy. And it does feel like the backlash was also as severe and as immediate, like all of the anti-AI checkers. Are schools still anti-AI? Like how has that evolved?

   5. ZCZach Cohen2:25

      Yeah, it's a good question. I, uh, we had like AI wave, then AI detectors-

   6. JMJustine Moore2:30

      Yes

   7. ZCZach Cohen2:30

      ... and kind of the rock 'em, sock 'em wars of education, and you had like the LA and New York p-City public schools banning AI right away. Um, I think we're super far away from that moment, which I think is really, really strong.

   8. JMJustine Moore2:42

      Yeah.

   9. ZCZach Cohen2:43

      Now, I think we're in different layers o-of far away depending on where you are in education. So if you look at K12, there are still some skeptics.

   10. JMJustine Moore2:51

       Mm-hmm.

   11. ZCZach Cohen2:51

       Um, there's still, I would say like predominantly, like I think like 80% of districts now have like a generative AI team that's going after and looking at procuring kind of new technologies. So not only is there like earmarked budget, there are people who are thinking and proactively looking for it.

   12. JMJustine Moore3:05

       Mm.

   13. ZCZach Cohen3:05

       Um, there's still, you know, friction around what you wanna use it for and how you wanna use it, and maybe there should be a teacher in the loop that has kind of more understanding of how students are using the AI, and maybe that's a good or bad thing, but I think it's a good thing kind of net-net that there'll be more AI in the classroom.

   14. JMJustine Moore3:22

       Yeah.

   15. ZCZach Cohen3:22

       And then higher ed, like you have, you know, Claude releasing Claude for Education.

   16. JMJustine Moore3:26

       Yeah.

   17. ZCZach Cohen3:26

       You have OpenAI releasing kind of education platform, and they're partnering and piloting with like a bunch of universities, and this is like a pretty horizontal platform that will be like fundamental to teachers' and students' experiences. So I think higher ed is leading the pack. Uh, I think they're realizing that this is going to be a tool that people are gonna need to know how to use in their jobs, in their everyday lives. So I've been pleasantly surprised. I know, you know, 18 months doesn't feel like a, does feel like a long time, but in education it's not.

   18. JMJustine Moore3:55

       Yeah. [laughs]

   19. ZCZach Cohen3:55

       Uh, you know, we've taken five, six years to move to cloud, and like most people aren't even there yet-

   20. JMJustine Moore4:00

       Yeah

   21. ZCZach Cohen4:00

       ... in the education world. So I think it's super impressive, and, you know, there's some schools that are like mandatorying AI, mandatory AI usage like in the curriculum. I think Ohio State is one of them. So, uh, I think it will continue to trickle down. I think people are always a bit more careful and wary about technology with the younger ages. But-

   22. JMJustine Moore4:17

       Yeah

   23. ZCZach Cohen4:17

       ... I think we've passed the kinda hysteria moment, are now in kind of the pragmatic moment, um, which is exciting, especially for founders building the space.

   24. JMJustine Moore4:25

       Totally. For sure, yeah. And, and I think you sort of alluded to this when talking about your experience in edtech, but one of the things that's so both interesting and scary about the education market as more outsiders is like, it's not just one industry, right? Like there's public schools, there's private schools, there's charter schools, there's homeschooling, there's supplementary products that parents buy for their kids. Then there's the whole higher ed public and private industry, and then there's like adult education, kind of future learning, re-skilling, all of those sorts of things, which I would imagine is probably gonna be huge in the a-age of AI, automating many jobs and/or enhancing many jobs. Um, I'm curious, have you seen the most adoption among a segment of that market, like parents just buying standalone products for their kids versus school districts?

3. 5:14 – 10:24

   Teachers Leading the AI Revolution

   1. ZCZach Cohen5:14

      I think I was really s... I, I'm still really surprised that this is my answer, which is teachers. Um, it's not actually students. Um, it's teachers who are willing to kind of pay and use this in their every single day workflow. Um, I, I've seen a lot of adoption at students who are, you know, trying to use this for homework helpers, but they're kind of-

   2. JMJustine Moore5:32

      Yeah

   3. ZCZach Cohen5:32

      ... turning off or using it as a, you know, way to get th-their problem set done and then go back, uh, to kind of hanging out. Uh, and adult learners, like their retention maybe has been a bit better or like the completion rates or learning efficacy on Du-Duolingo has like improved with like all the AI features. But-

   4. JMJustine Moore5:48

      Yeah

   5. ZCZach Cohen5:48

      ... I have not seen kind of a native AI player in the adult education space, and maybe that's just because distribution's really hard, and layering on AI to existing strong pedagogy is maybe the right way to do it, or-

   6. JMJustine Moore5:59

      Yeah

   7. ZCZach Cohen5:59

      ... it seems like that is the case now. But with teachers, like the rapid amount of adoption is so high, and that's, a lot of it is because like-90% of the job that they hate is the administrative part-

   8. JMJustine Moore6:09

      Yeah, yeah

   9. ZCZach Cohen6:10

      ... which is grading, feedback, going home, building new assignments, new curriculum. A lot of them have like just been borrowing curriculum year over year. Uh, they've been trying to kind of iterate on one unit at a time, and now they can generate a curriculum per student.

   10. JMJustine Moore6:24

       Yeah.

   11. ZCZach Cohen6:24

       Uh, and I think that's just like it, it's, you know, extremely exciting. I think, uh, like we hopefully will take it farther, and it won't be generating kind of assets that we've already seen in education, like worksheets or multiple-

   12. JMJustine Moore6:35

       Yeah

   13. ZCZach Cohen6:35

       ... choice questions, and like the units will start to become more of an AI experience, but for now, it's been teachers the way of, I think Magic School has over like 5 million users. I think 50% of US teachers has used their tool. Um, most of the most mature AI companies from a revenue standpoint have been selling to teachers bottoms up, which is tremendous. Teachers have a very l- you know, small wall to spend on tools.

   14. JMJustine Moore6:57

       Yeah.

   15. ZCZach Cohen6:57

       And this is just, uh, kind of an outsize return for them compared to the, you know, 15 or 20 bucks a month that they're spending on it.

   16. JMJustine Moore7:03

       This brings up another point when you think about kind of like what's driving student outcomes, which is like there's a couple ways to look at what is working in AI and in tech, and one would be like what is getting the most usage, which to your point is probably still ChatGPT for the end students-

   17. ZCZach Cohen7:18

       Yeah

   18. JMJustine Moore7:18

       ... versus like maybe more focused products. And then there's like what is actually improving retention of information, learning, memory, things like that. Have you seen anything that you've been really impressed by in terms of like what's working in AI and edtech?

   19. ZCZach Cohen7:33

       Yeah. I, I think like the core of the question is the question which is like what is working, which is like what is, what does working mean?

   20. JMJustine Moore7:40

       Yeah.

   21. ZCZach Cohen7:40

       Um, there's the investor side of what it's working-

   22. JMJustine Moore7:43

       Yeah

   23. ZCZach Cohen7:43

       ... which is like what do you want to see when you're investing in a company, right? Which is different than like the learning outcome side. I think from the investing side, um, I care a lot about looking at kind of retention and engagement.

   24. JMJustine Moore7:54

       Mm.

   25. ZCZach Cohen7:54

       Uh, retention obviously because, uh, you have summer months, but you also have students who come on with a test that they have in two days, and is the experience-

   26. JMJustine Moore8:02

       Yes

   27. ZCZach Cohen8:02

       ... good enough that they capture them to work proactively on the app the next time?

   28. JMJustine Moore8:06

       Right.

   29. ZCZach Cohen8:06

       Uh, so you know, we, we look at metrics, uh, such as like cohort engagement to see how students are performing, things like that, or monthly retention, less so like the weekly or yearly retention, which I think could be kind of a red herring, uh, in this market. So I love looking at kind of like the weekly, like how many days in a week is a user using this-

   30. JMJustine Moore8:23

       Yeah
4. 10:24 – 13:53

   Alpha School: A Case Study in AI-Driven Education

   1. JMJustine Moore10:24

      Okay. So to get back to the point about making AI core to the educational experience, that kind of touches on-

   2. ZCZach Cohen10:29

      Yeah

   3. JMJustine Moore10:30

      ... one of the sort of viral social media accounts we've been seeing, and I'm sure anyone in the education space definitely, Zach, has been seeing. I think it's literally called The Future of Education.

   4. ZCZach Cohen10:39

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JMJustine Moore10:39

      Uh, it's an Instagram account. It's run by this, um, woman. Her name's Mackenzie Price, and she runs a school called Alpha School, uh-

   6. ZCZach Cohen10:46

      Yeah

   7. JMJustine Moore10:46

      ... which I believe is a charter school in a few states now, um, and has had these viral Instagram videos blow up by showing how her school, they have two hours of classwork, I believe it is, a day, and it's delivered via AI tutors, like this, these computer programs that are teaching kids at their level, and then they spend the rest of the day on sort of self-directed projects or, or things like that. Would love to know your take as the education expert, Zach, uh, what you've heard about Alpha School or kind of-

   8. ZCZach Cohen11:16

      Yeah

   9. JMJustine Moore11:16

      ... kind of will it work to deploy AI like that?

   10. ZCZach Cohen11:19

       Yeah. Alpha School is like everything I can ask for about what's happening in education. We talk about it. We opine on it, and then we have to just kind of sit here and wait for superintendents and district heads to-

   11. JMJustine Moore11:30

       Yeah

   12. ZCZach Cohen11:30

       ... buy single point solutions in AI every turn of the budget, and then over three to four years, we can have a narrative. I think what Alpha School brings us is what like any labs team would be bringing at a company, right?

   13. JMJustine Moore11:43

       Yeah.

   14. ZCZach Cohen11:43

       So it's like, hey, you know, the Snap Labs team is gonna try out a bunch of new features, and they could deprecate whatever features because they're moving fast and not deploying a bunch of resources, and they have outsized budget to go do this. Then let's see what works, and what works we're gonna take, and what doesn't work we're gonna deprecate, and we're gonna continue to iterate. I think Alpha School is doing that, uh, for private schools now and hopefully for public schools later, which is, you know-The tuition is, you know, $40,000. They're a super well-funded private school. The parent and student base is self-selecting into a group who wants technology in a classroom.

   15. OMOlivia Moore12:15

       Yeah.

   16. ZCZach Cohen12:16

       Uh, these might seem like just small facts, but like all of these in amalgamation change like the outcome of what, you know, something like a school can do.

   17. OMOlivia Moore12:24

       Yeah.

   18. ZCZach Cohen12:24

       Uh, and removes a bunch of friction to al- allow you to move fast. So I think what Alpha School is showing us is like if you try to turn full tilt on AI in education and you bring it into the classroom and you're fine overspending on software, you're fine, uh, spending a bunch of money testing a bunch of different softwares, you can kind of figure out what's working. I think my takeaway here is this is a great signal for where technology is today, that, you know, if you have the privilege to go test it out and figure it out, it will have outsize impact. I think they rank like 99th percentile in a few different assessments.

   19. OMOlivia Moore12:55

       Wow. Yeah.

   20. ZCZach Cohen12:55

       Their students are now like top one, top two percent nation. Like, it is incredible outcomes, but again, this is like the lack of commercialization of a lot of this software.

   21. OMOlivia Moore13:04

       Yeah.

   22. ZCZach Cohen13:04

       Uh, part of that is like what does the integration look like? Part of that is just the cost of software. Um, part of that is like the, uh, you know, software literacy at the school level.

   23. OMOlivia Moore13:13

       Right. Yeah.

   24. ZCZach Cohen13:13

       Uh, so I think Alpha School is, you know, net, net extremely positive signals. I think it's an incredible way to learn, uh, it's leaning into a lot of the old ways that we've talked about learning, which is like self-discovery, self-learning, uh, very limited instruction, and it's working. So, I, you know, I think public schools are, you know, looking at it. Maybe superintendents are saying, "Well, you know, I don't have hundreds of thousand dollars of a software budget."

   25. OMOlivia Moore13:35

       Yeah.

   26. ZCZach Cohen13:35

       Uh, but I think that's okay, right? Like we, we see software gets cheaper. Uh, let you know, the Alpha Schools of the world test out what's really working, and those companies will really benefit from early partnerships from Alpha School. Uh, and to me, it's like paving a way for a lot of companies to see what they're doing. Uh, obviously from like a very privileged standpoint where Alpha School

5. 13:53 – 16:03

   The Future of AI and Human Teachers

   1. ZCZach Cohen13:53

      is.

   2. OMOlivia Moore13:53

      Interesting. Yeah. I think the controversial question there, like when you talk about superintendents don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on software every year, they do spend that on teachers. And so like the, the controversial thing is, you know, will a, will software in some way replace teachers? Will AI replace teachers, or will we still need a human instructor to be delivering the curriculum or, or giving lessons to the majority of students?

   3. ZCZach Cohen14:17

      Yeah. I think no, or very long horizon away. Um, there's still a shortage. There's still teachers who are, you know, swamped with work. Uh, we've been now talking, you know... What we're talking about i- in, in, in the AI world for what consumers can do with AI and what even enterprise are doing with AI, like we are multiple years behind there. Like-

   4. OMOlivia Moore14:37

      Mm-hmm

   5. ZCZach Cohen14:37

      ... the biggest use case of AI right now is generating an answer sheet or a worksheet, uh, assignment. It, it's not even like a unit in a classroom.

   6. OMOlivia Moore14:47

      Yeah.

   7. ZCZach Cohen14:47

      And what I mean by that is like it's actually a really big nuance difference. And one of the reasons why I've had like a little bit of a hard time investing in these early education companies is they're allowing a teacher to be a lot more productive and be 10 times better at their job, have, feel like burnout is a lot lower. Incredible.

   8. OMOlivia Moore15:03

      Yeah.

   9. ZCZach Cohen15:03

      Right? Really, really amazing, but it doesn't mean that the students are interacting with AI in a learning environment. They're actually interacting with the same asset that they would, and they're having the exact same experience. Maybe they're having updated worksheets. Maybe there's some like better memes or better references in-

   10. OMOlivia Moore15:17

       Yeah

   11. ZCZach Cohen15:17

       ... those worksheets 'cause the teachers can update it, uh, weekly, but that's not a d- that's very different than like being in an AI-enabled environment where, you know, you can t- take a history lesson straight from Abe Lincoln's avatar and speak to them-

   12. OMOlivia Moore15:31

       Yeah

   13. ZCZach Cohen15:31

       ... and have a detailed conversation or, you know, create your own world around what you think, uh, you know, you write a creative writing prompt and go create your own world around it or create a game around it. Like, I think those experiences are far away from coming.

   14. OMOlivia Moore15:43

       Yeah.

   15. ZCZach Cohen15:43

       So I think my point here is not to not answer the question, but is to say like, we're so far away from even like AI teaching units.

   16. OMOlivia Moore15:49

       Yeah.

   17. ZCZach Cohen15:49

       I think we're very far from AI teachers. Now, I think what, what will happen is like the amount of active teaching will go away-

   18. OMOlivia Moore15:55

       Mm-hmm

   19. ZCZach Cohen15:55

       ... uh, because I think you can like, have really good active teaching with AI, uh, but I don't think it's going to fully replace a human teacher.

   20. OMOlivia Moore16:02

       Yeah. Super interesting.

6. 16:03 – 18:15

   Deepfake Celebrities in Educational Content

   1. OMOlivia Moore16:03

      I do feel like kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum from Alpha School, which is like very private, very high cost, is this explosion of like free, publicly available, what I would call edtech content, but it looks very different from like the prior best in class, which was like the Khan Academy videos that I learned math and other things [laughs] on-

   2. ZCZach Cohen16:23

      Totally

   3. OMOlivia Moore16:23

      ... and that I love. It's like-

   4. ZCZach Cohen16:24

      That open source animation package is called Madame.

   5. OMOlivia Moore16:27

      Yes.

   6. ZCZach Cohen16:27

      It's still around today.

   7. OMOlivia Moore16:28

      Yeah. [laughs] It's, and now we have like people putting their textbook into NotebookLM and making a podcast. We have, you found a bunch of like-

   8. ZCZach Cohen16:35

      Yeah

   9. OMOlivia Moore16:35

      ... TikTok videos that generate like Sydney Sweeney explaining-

   10. ZCZach Cohen16:38

       This, yeah. There, there's this Instagram account called Unlock Learning.

   11. OMOlivia Moore16:41

       Okay.

   12. ZCZach Cohen16:42

       Um- Yeah. [laughs] And yeah, they, they have, like every video they post gets-

   13. OMOlivia Moore16:45

       Yeah

   14. ZCZach Cohen16:45

       ... million, millions of views, and it's like explanations delivered by like deep fake AI celebrities-

   15. OMOlivia Moore16:51

       Yeah

   16. ZCZach Cohen16:51

       ... of like math and physics content, I think particularly for the AP or IB exams.

   17. OMOlivia Moore16:57

       Yeah.

   18. ZCZach Cohen16:57

       Uh, and it also has like diagrams and graphics that sort of walk you through the explanation.

   19. OMOlivia Moore17:03

       Yeah. And I guess it just makes me think to what extent are we gonna see standalone AI edtech products versus just new formats of, and ways to learn that are kinda delivered across all of the platforms that we already have?

   20. ZCZach Cohen17:16

       Hmm. Yeah. I, I think it's a great question, and I've watched way more educational videos-

   21. OMOlivia Moore17:21

       [laughs]

   22. ZCZach Cohen17:22

       ... than I have in the last like four days than I have in the last 10 years, which again, is like a really good signal that like they're engaging, they feel like brain rot content, but they're actually the complete opposite.

   23. OMOlivia Moore17:33

       Yes.

   24. ZCZach Cohen17:33

       Yeah. Uh, so they ha- they like look, feel, sound, or cut the same way, but they're teaching a really, really, really, really detailed topic, and pretty technical topic, and like they're getting better. Like I remember a year ago it was like Taylor Swift teaching the Taylor series.

   25. JMJustine Moore17:47

       So this is the Taylor series. It's a tool we use in math to turn scary functions into friendly polynomials.

   26. OMOlivia Moore17:54

       Yeah.

   27. ZCZach Cohen17:54

       And now, um, you have like Drake in conversation with Sydney Sweeney.

   28. JMJustine Moore17:59

       So if we square root it, we get the vector's length.

   29. ZCZach Cohen18:02

       And that, guys and gals, is why this expression gives you the length of a 3D vector.

   30. OMOlivia Moore18:07

       Yeah.
7. 18:15 – 20:11

   Personalized Learning Modalities

   1. ZCZach Cohen18:15

      Like, it's all getting a lot more, uh, engaging. What I think is really interesting here, and the thing to focus on, was, uh, I don't know if you remember as a kid you were like, "Oh, like Zach's a visual learner," or like-

   2. OMOlivia Moore18:26

      Yeah

   3. ZCZach Cohen18:26

      ... "Justine likes, like, you know, audio," or-

   4. OMOlivia Moore18:29

      Yeah.

   5. ZCZach Cohen18:29

      Yeah ... "Olivia likes to read and like marinate with her ideas."

   6. OMOlivia Moore18:32

      Yes.

   7. ZCZach Cohen18:32

      And then you kind of get boxed into like a type of-

   8. OMOlivia Moore18:34

      Yes

   9. ZCZach Cohen18:34

      ... learner.

   10. OMOlivia Moore18:35

       Mm-hmm.

   11. ZCZach Cohen18:35

       And that was considered, like, pretty progressive-

   12. OMOlivia Moore18:37

       Mm-hmm

   13. ZCZach Cohen18:37

       ... education. It was like, "Oh, we know what type of learner you are, and we're gonna like cater to it."

   14. OMOlivia Moore18:41

       Yeah.

   15. ZCZach Cohen18:42

       The problem is I'm a visual learner for one thing, but I might wanna listen to a podcast for another and read for another-

   16. OMOlivia Moore18:47

       Yeah

   17. ZCZach Cohen18:48

       ... or watch a Brainrot video for ano- like-

   18. OMOlivia Moore18:49

       Yeah. [laughs]

   19. ZCZach Cohen18:49

       ... it just could be so many different things.

   20. OMOlivia Moore18:51

       Yeah.

   21. ZCZach Cohen18:52

       Or just do 100 problem sets, right? So-

   22. OMOlivia Moore18:53

       Yes

   23. ZCZach Cohen18:54

       ... I think what's happening now is like we're gonna have like a kind of like f-Factioning of like a bunch of different types of learners, where-

   24. JMJustine Moore19:02

       Mm

   25. ZCZach Cohen19:02

       ... depending on the topic and your understanding of the topic-

   26. JMJustine Moore19:06

       Yeah

   27. ZCZach Cohen19:06

       ... you could pick whatever modality you want. And I think that's really, really exciting. And then also depending on how serious you wanna get in the topic, like-

   28. JMJustine Moore19:11

       Yeah

   29. ZCZach Cohen19:12

       ... if you wanna just be conversational around it, and it's not for a test, then, like, maybe Brainrot content is perfect.

   30. JMJustine Moore19:17

       Yeah.
8. 20:11 – 26:16

   AI's Role in School Systems

   1. ZCZach Cohen20:11

      like, there's a few different companies, uh, that are doing really interesting things at the forefront of, like, AI and education.

   2. JMJustine Moore20:18

      Yeah.

   3. ZCZach Cohen20:18

      One of which feels like what the VO3 thing is doing, which, like, you can chat and have a conversation with, you know, Napoleon about history-

   4. JMJustine Moore20:25

      Mm-hmm

   5. ZCZach Cohen20:25

      ... right, things like that. Um, but in order to get school adoption, they have to wedge in with these kind of like more rudimentary tools, which is like the worksheet generators and, like-

   6. JMJustine Moore20:35

      Yeah

   7. ZCZach Cohen20:35

      ... student helpers and feedback. And then once you do that, it's not so easy to get people to use the other mode, because it's a new form of education versus, "Hey, do the same thing, just do it 10 times better." So it's interesting to see, like, the stuff that engages us the most and gets me the most excited-

   8. JMJustine Moore20:52

      Yeah

   9. ZCZach Cohen20:52

      ... even if it's being adopted and paid for by the school, if you look at the usage of those tools compared to the usage of kinda the more rudimentary tools, it's extremely low.

   10. JMJustine Moore21:00

       Yeah. Yeah.

   11. ZCZach Cohen21:01

       Um, so I think there's probably gonna have to be, like, a large, like, PD movement here on, like, how to bring AI not just into your workflow, but into your classroom, and I think that's, like, a really big difference.

   12. JMJustine Moore21:10

       Yeah. It's kinda fascinating to think, too, about, um, if you were to design the school system from the ground up starting in the AI world, like, how it would be different. I ... One of the things that has really interested me about the Brainrot videos is, like, for the first time it feels like it's, um, separating, like, what the content is and who is delivering the content, and then it's optimizing both of those.

   13. ZCZach Cohen21:33

       Yeah.

   14. JMJustine Moore21:34

       So if you look at the comments on these videos, I'm, I'm sure we'll show some of them, it's often people who are like, "I was, like, a physics graduate student, and I got like a 4.0 at this prestigious program, and I'm, like, telling you guys, this is, like, an exceptional explanation, and I've never-

   15. ZCZach Cohen21:47

       Right

   16. JMJustine Moore21:47

       ... understood this content better." And then so, like, you're kind of optimizing for, like, hey, this is how you explain ... This is how you deliver the content in a good way, explain it in a good way, make it understandable. And then, like, here's the, like, Brainrot celebrity. Like, this is a familiar voice.

   17. ZCZach Cohen22:03

       Subway Surfers video on top.

   18. JMJustine Moore22:05

       Exactly. This is an-

   19. ZCZach Cohen22:06

       Yeah, exactly

   20. JMJustine Moore22:06

       ... interesting graphic or image to, like, bring those things together.

   21. ZCZach Cohen22:10

       Yeah.

   22. JMJustine Moore22:10

       Um, which I, which we've pretty much I think only seen with the self-directed AI products today because the traditional schools you can't really separate the content from the teachers is my understanding.

   23. ZCZach Cohen22:23

       Yeah, it's interesting. I think the answer is, like, in my head is probably, like, w- the textbook companies kinda control this dynamic here-

   24. JMJustine Moore22:31

       Yeah

   25. ZCZach Cohen22:31

       ... a lot. Um, they are still the gatekeepers of a lot of content-

   26. JMJustine Moore22:35

       Yeah

   27. ZCZach Cohen22:35

       ... and what gets in and out of the classroom. Now, I think it depends on, like, whether they run with this or not. Uh, I think sometimes they view this as, like, cannibalizing their existing business.

   28. JMJustine Moore22:47

       Right.

   29. ZCZach Cohen22:48

       Uh, sometimes they're like, "Oh, this is extending our existing content, and we have, like, the single source of truth, and AI's really good at augmenting, but not net new creation." So I, I think, like, what- what's gonna happen is really dependent on, like, where the textbook companies and the pu- you know, the publishers spend the next kind of 18 months thinking about net new products. Like, are they going to partner with AI companies? And the AI companies will get distribution, the textbook companies will get kind of a really strong product and technology extension of their existing content that feels like it's slowly losing its value day by day. So, uh, it, it's a weird kind of power dynamic right now. Um, but I think that that's kind of where we are.

   30. JMJustine Moore23:25

       Yeah. We need the textbook companies to grow some innovation arms fast.
9. 26:16 – 30:06

   Future of AI in Education

   1. OMOlivia Moore26:16

      Okay, so s- I don't know, looking a year from now, AI edtech, like, first of all, what, what do you think we're gonna see? Are... Is it a lot of progress? Is it a little bit of progress? And then what would you like to see ideally?

   2. ZCZach Cohen26:28

      Yeah. Oh, so much. Uh, in a year from now, I think we'll see a ton of progress on the higher education side.

   3. OMOlivia Moore26:34

      Mm-hmm.

   4. ZCZach Cohen26:35

      Uh, I, I think this is the year for higher education, this kind of next coming school year, uh, how do higher ed use it? How do the large model companies work with education companies? Uh, the question of, like, are the large model companies going to be good enough, right? Like, is-

   5. OMOlivia Moore26:49

      Yeah

   6. ZCZach Cohen26:49

      ... will there need to be kind of smaller application companies built on top of the large m- large model companies?

   7. OMOlivia Moore26:54

      Right.

   8. ZCZach Cohen26:55

      Uh, I think that's one thing we're gonna learn a lot of. Uh, I think we are going to, in the next 12 months, move from kind of the outside of education, the use of AI, just to make things easier to, like, bring it into the classroom, whether it's, like, adding it to a discussion. I think a lot of the unlocks in voice and real-time is really exciting.

   9. OMOlivia Moore27:11

      Yeah.

   10. ZCZach Cohen27:11

       Uh, so I think the next 12 months will show us a lot. I don't know if it will necessarily, like, birth a massive company in education. I still, still think it will move. Uh, but I think education will look fairly similar though, but I think we'll learn a lot as the market kind of matures.

   11. OMOlivia Moore27:26

       Yeah.

   12. JMJustine Moore27:26

       What I'd love to see from a consumer perspective is the first, like, fully AI teacher influencer, not one of the DeepFake celebrities. I know they're super entertaining.

   13. OMOlivia Moore27:34

       Yeah.

   14. JMJustine Moore27:35

       But it would be kind of fascinating to see, like, what does it look like if you designed the most engaging but also truly informative teacher-

   15. OMOlivia Moore27:42

       Yeah

   16. JMJustine Moore27:42

       ... from the ground up.

   17. ZCZach Cohen27:43

       Totally.

   18. JMJustine Moore27:44

       And, and sort of... I mean, and you alluded to this as well, Zach, like, that might... Like, th- there's probably not one teacher who's that for everyone.

   19. OMOlivia Moore27:50

       Yep.

   20. JMJustine Moore27:51

       Like, you know-

   21. ZCZach Cohen27:52

       For sure

   22. JMJustine Moore27:52

       ... I might learn best from an animated dog, whereas, like, you [chuckles] might learn best from an actual photorealistic teacher.

   23. OMOlivia Moore27:58

       Yes.

   24. JMJustine Moore27:58

       Um, a- and how we can create those sort of, like, adaptive AI-driven characters in real time who can deliver really personalized-

   25. OMOlivia Moore28:06

       Yeah

   26. JMJustine Moore28:06

       ... learning on each student's timeline 'cause we, we sort of touched on this a bit, but I think one of the exciting things that schools like Alpha School are enabling is, like, you can spend as much or little time on a, a subject as you need to learn it, master it, and move on. Whereas in a traditional school system-

   27. OMOlivia Moore28:24

       Yeah

   28. JMJustine Moore28:24

       ... you... almost everyone is moving at the pace of their classroom. Like-

   29. ZCZach Cohen28:27

       Yeah

   30. JMJustine Moore28:27

       ... you're moving at the average pace of the 30 other kids.

Episode duration: 30:12