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- [00:00]
Alex
Because I go to Alpha High School, I learn all my academic content through an AI powered platform. In 20 days, I'm going to go fly out to San Francisco to work on my project full time, and I'm able to negotiate with my guides. If I submit finish semester A now I can come back from the trip, finish semester B and still have my high school credit and get into my dream college. Why in general are people pessimistic about AI? It's because I think they're uncertain. And I think the important thing here is to be grounded in rational optimism and understand what will this look like and what is the world that we should be building.
- [00:48]
Dan
Dan here and I want to take a second away from the episode to tell you about Granola. Granola is an AI note taker for your meetings and I use it pretty much every day. That may sound a little bit weird or a little bit creepy, like, transcribe all your meetings. Well, for me, it's actually kind of indispensable. As a leader, Every is about 20 people now, and it's really important to me that I understand how decisions get made, how I'm showing up in meetings, and how I can help my team the best way I can. Granola acts a little bit like a leadership log for me so I can see how I've done in meetings, what situations came up in a particular week, and how I can do better next time. If you're trying to improve as a leader and scale your company, try Granola as your AI powered notepad. For meetings, head to Granola AI Every code every to get three months free. And now back to the episode. Alex, welcome to the show.
- [01:32]
Alex
Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
- [01:34]
Dan
So you are a very, very special guest because you are by far the youngest guest we have ever had on this show. You are 17, you go to Alpha High School in Austin, Texas, and you're, you're an every reader, you're a podcast fan. And we talked a little while ago and I wanted to have you on the show because in talking to you I was like, wow, I'm, I'm old and I just hear all these stories from people from Gen Z, Gen Alpha, younger, who are, and they're all talking about like, oh, kids hate technology, they hate AI or they love it or it's ruining their brains or whatever. And I actually just care a lot about how people your age and older and, and even younger like, are actually interacting with this stuff. I think it's a, it's like, it's such an Interesting. It's such an interesting question for me. So just wanted to have you on the show to talk about like how you're using AI, how you, how you see it, how the people around you see it. Alpha School is obviously like a super hot topic these days. So any, anything you want to tell us about that I think would be really interesting. So yeah, let's, let's get started, I guess. Tell me how are you using it just like in your day to day life?
- [02:58]
Alex
Yeah, it's a good question. I think the, so the biggest use case right now because I go to Alpha High School is I have no teachers, I learn all my content, all my, all the content, academic content through an AI powered platform. So when I say this, most people think, oh, you're just talking to chatgpt or Chatbot or whatever. But we actually have no AI Chatbot tutor in the morning at all because we have tested and we've seen that we either constrict it too much because we don't want people to cheat so much so that it's not helpful, or we don't restrict it enough so that students are just using it to cheat. And so instead we have an AI in the background of our platform, which I can actually show you guys, and it basically customizes all the content towards us and, and figures out where kind of our, our gaps are in our learning. And they're, they're proprietary alpha apps that I'm actually not in any of them because they're not AP classes. And since I'm a senior in high school, I'm only pretty much doing AP classes. But yeah, yeah, there's just a mixture of, of alpha apps, third party apps, all powered by AI, tailored to, to each individual student.
- [04:07]
Dan
Wait, okay, so like walk me through then your day. Like, I don't under, I don't understand. And you're saying we. Is, are you involved in Alpha School or you just go to Alpha School?
- [04:16]
Alex
I just go to Alpha. Say we because every quarter we get a survey and we give feedback on everything. Every day I'm giving feedback to the guides and so the students are very involved.
- [04:25]
Dan
Okay, so let's say it's, it's what, what time does school start?
- [04:28]
Alex
8am 8:30.
- [04:30]
Dan
8:30. So you get into school at 8:30. What's your first hour like?
- [04:34]
Alex
So actually the first 15 minutes is what we like to call like Tony Robbins for kids. It's like getting energized, doing like a puzzle, whatever. We just want you to kind of transition from home life to school.
- [04:44]
Dan
Life and you're in a class with how, with, with how many people.
- [04:49]
Alex
So the total high school is around 50 people. My senior year class is only eight people, so it's pretty small.
- [04:54]
Dan
Okay. And, and, and by class I mean I'm talking about like give me the. You're in like a room with you and eight and seven other people and that's your, that's your senior class and it's right in the morning and you're all kind of like doing your Tony Robbins thing or like how does it, what, like set the scene for me a little bit?
- [05:12]
Alex
For sure, yeah. So what's interesting is in Alpha we have houses kind of like Hogwarts. And so there are like five houses and they're like. There's one special kind of house that we're experimenting with. You're sorted into your houses via personality, progress in your project, things like that. And I can get into the Alpha X project, which is a big part of Alpha High School, but the special house is called Sparta. So it's like the Spartans. And then we have a competing house called Athens. So Sparta V. Athens. And it's, it's for the kids who are really working hard on their, their Alpha X project, which is an Olympic level project that they're trying to be the best in the world and build a super cool product or service. And so it's for the people who really want to ramp it up. Anyways, I'll sit with my Spartans. You know, my fellow Spartans, some are.
- [06:00]
Dan
Those are all age levels basically.
- [06:02]
Alex
What do you mean by that?
- [06:03]
Dan
Like your fellow Spartans, there's seniors, there's juniors, there's freshmen.
- [06:08]
Alex
Yes, exactly. So it's a mix. And so we'll either do a big school opening because there's only 50 of us in the big open space, or we'll go into our houses and talk about a book we read or whatever
- [06:18]
Dan
it is that's really cool. Okay, remind me, so this 15 minute thing, is there a teacher that's guiding it? Is a student guiding it? Is it an AI guiding it? How does it work?
- [06:31]
Alex
All three? It just depends on the day. Sometimes we've had expert AI debates where we debate. In AI, there's kind of a guide or a teacher kind of walking us through it. Sometimes it's very student driven. We're like, hey, we just wanted to talk about this today. Like we just found a really like cool tweet and we just wanted to talk about it. Sometimes in Sparta we'll have book books that we read together. And so we can we can talk about that? It just really depends.
- [06:54]
Dan
And how are teachers involved? And are you calling. You call them guides, not teachers?
- [06:57]
Alex
Yes, we call them guides, not teachers. The, the role of. Let me set the scene. The role of a teacher right now is like they're doing five different things. They are talking to parents, they're trying to teach the content, they're trying to grade the papers, they're trying to help people be motivated, they're doing other admin work, they're doing so many different things. And so the goal of Alpha is to just, you know, create a new role for each individual thing. So there's like a dean of parents to deal with parents. And then obviously the content is, is taught by AI. And now the role of the guide, which is super important, is just solely focused on motivating students, giving them emotional support and helping them figure out what they want to do and how they want to do it. Um, and so it's super important that we have the guides to kind of facilitate everything and make sure we're, we're on pace to, to complete our goals.
- [07:43]
Dan
Are they like topic expert guides? So like, if you're, Is there like a French class that's like taught by like a, like a French teacher, like guided. Guided by a French teacher? Or is there is like one guide for the house and, and the, whatever you're doing, they're expected to kind of be able to follow you and help you with emotional support. And the expert is like the AI?
- [08:03]
Alex
Yeah, that's a good question. So it kind of depends. And we're still learning things. But in terms of the guides, what are their backgrounds? Usually they, you know, they have to take an IQ test and things like that. They have to come be with the students. We get to hire and fire guides, which we have done before. And I'm very picky with my guide selection. I say no to most of them. But we have guides who used to be lawyers, guides who used to be entrepreneurs, guides used to be copywriters, and they all have different, you know, strengths. And so even though I have one house guide, Cameron, who's my house guide, is, you know, really into entrepreneurship and trying to build up the entrepreneurship program for Alpha school. I'll go to him for specifically that kind of thing. If I want to maybe vent to one of my guides, I'll go to a different one. They all have just, you know, unique special abilities.
- [08:50]
Dan
Okay, so like, let's get further into the day. So you do the 15 minute thing with your house and then what?
- [08:55]
Alex
So the first three hours for high school, two hours for the younger kids are just you doing your apps. And we. We chunk it into pomodoro timer. So 27 minutes of school work, and then five minutes break, and then one long break. Uh, you can go out to go get coffee from Joe's or the grocery store, whatever you want to do. Um, and during those 27 minutes, you're locked in, usually on one subject, and you're watching a video and taking notes, reading an article, doing a quiz. It's not like, again, it's not chatting with a chatbot. You're actually, like, reading material, consuming things, trying to learn.
- [09:27]
Dan
Who's telling you which one to do, though?
- [09:29]
Alex
So that's every week you'll. You'll have a meeting with your guide, and you're like, here's where I'm at with all my courses. I'm good at math, so I'm like 88% through my math course. And we're not close to the end of the year yet, but I'm really bad at reading, and I'm like, barely through my AP Literature course. And so we'll set custom XP or goals. That's our kind of metric of choice to see what we need to hit by the end of the week to be on track to finish our courses.
- [09:54]
Dan
Interesting. And then you. You set the goals, and then when you sit down, the AI is kind of like your goal is to get better at reading. How about we do a Pomodoro on XYZ thing? Or are you saying, I know my goal is this. Hey, what's. What should I like, I'm going to open up the app for reading. I don't know exactly how it works, but. Yeah, explain how that works.
- [10:16]
Alex
It's. It's like, even more seamless where it's like you on the dashboard, there's like, course, one course to apc.
- [10:22]
Dan
Can I see it? Can you just show me it? Is that possible? Yeah.
- [10:25]
Alex
Yeah.
- [10:26]
Dan
And just describe what's there for people who are listening so that if you're. If you're listening, you can you understand what's going on?
- [10:32]
Alex
Totally. So there's a little dashboard here, and it basically has a toggle of all of my courses, and it's a mix of proprietary alpha apps. So if it's a proprietary alpha app, I'll. I'll be doing the work inside of this, the system, which we call time back. And if it's not, it'll take us to the, you know, external kind of resource. So right now I'm on AP Psychology. I'm. I'm a bit through unit one and it's just like, here's what you have to do next. So if we show past completed items, we'll see. Oh, I've done all these readings. I've done this quiz. The quizzes are super interesting because you start at a 0% and we're trying to work our way up to mastery. That's super important. Mastery based learning. As you know and you know, I've been through all these things already. Mix of again, video reading quiz, video. And now I just have another video to watch on my AP Psychology. APs are usually about curation over creation. There's just a bunch of AP resources out there. So our academic teams take. Good morning, take the best ones and we'll get the super energetic guy who's already embedded learning science into his videos. And it's similar for, you know, the kind of social sciences video lesson quiz. As you can see here, this is one of the quizzes we call it a power path score. Start at zero, work up to 100. Every time I get one right or get one, let's just submit one. I got it wrong. My power pass score went down, My accuracy went down. And we consider mastery to be above an 80% mastery score because that's enough to be able to move on and fill gaps later if it's really a problem.
- [12:09]
Dan
This is really interesting. Okay, so I'm looking at this and it, it reminds me a lot of like, you know, I've used Khan Academy before. There's a similar sort of, you know, there's a, there's a set of, there's videos, there's quizzes and you kind of like go, go down the path. But it wasn't like part of a structure. It was just like, you're allowed to do this if you want. Yeah. And I'm looking at this and thinking of myself when I was like a sophomore or junior, especially with AI and being like, I could, I could agent. Agentify this and I wouldn't have to do all the readings and all the stupid videos and like, whatever. So tell me about that experience of, of learning this way and also the experience of being forced to learn this way and then how you. I mean, I think you're being forced. I certainly, like, there are certain things in AP literature that you're interested in. There's certain things where it's like, I guess I have to just do this to like take the test.
- [13:05]
Alex
Yeah.
- [13:05]
Dan
So, yeah, tell me about that.
- [13:08]
Alex
Yeah, I want to Give you some more context. I. This is my second year at Alpha. I used to go to a really, like, tough magnet school, so I was spending like 12 hours a day on schoolwork and they were all lecture based. And so with lectures you just have to kind of sit through everything like you said, no matter if you're interested or not. What's interesting here is I was just in a meeting with one of the academics people and they were like, set some more goals and tell us the pain points you're having right now. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I am obsessed with AP psychology. I can just breeze through it because it is the most interesting thing to me ever and because it's related to my, you know, my project. And they're like, great, like, let's just do that. But I'm like, oh, my gosh, can I just tell you? AP lit is my least favorite thing in the world. I'd rather do anything than do AP Lit. And they're like, okay, let's set up a motivational model to incentivize you to do so. And so I don't know if I'm hitting the right question here, but for the classes that you're really struggling with, there are incentives for you to actually do them, whether it be money towards your project. It could be food. We do these things called fomos where we go out and I think last time we're at some rooftop Christmas thing and we all got hot chocolate and played games together. And so there are these fun things that we can do to incentivize you to do things. But also on a more technical level, like, let's go back here. You can see when you know how long someone is spending on a lesson. If I get out of the lesson, it'll say, lesson paused. And so you can't, like, they can tell if you're like trying to cheat or something, whatever. But yeah, hope that answers does.
- [14:49]
Dan
I'm still like, I don't know. I throw this. I could throw this into ChatGPT Atlas and, you know, have it click around and watch some stuff for me while I'm off doing my thing. You never do that?
- [14:57]
Alex
Yeah, no, not at all. Because they can see that as well. Like on my school laptop, I'm not my school laptop right now. They have, you know, a screen share thing and they can see what we're doing on all of our screens. They have a waste meter. So they're watching our faces to see if we're talking with friends or doing something else interesting. They're very precise. You know, the big thing about Alpha is we want to measure everything to make sure that you're actually getting the experience you deserve. And I will be honest, it's like 90% motivation, 10% edtech. Like the learning science here is great. All the interleaving, do the different subjects, whatever. And you know where I know about it because I understand why it's optimal for my learning. But the big thing is, oh, in, in 20 days I'm going to go fly out to San Francisco to work on my project full time and I'm able to negotiate with my guides. If I submit finish semester A now I can come back from the trip, finish semester B and still have my high school credit and get into my dream college or whatever. So it's that flexibility. It's the deal. Also, I will say it is so different for Alpha High School because a lot of us are, you know, teenagers are funny little species and we're in our rebellious phase, whatever. We want more autonomy and there's a bit more flexibility here. For the younger kids, you know, they're just on their two hours doing their apps, doing their reading and writing kind of core, core skills. And then in the afternoon they're doing their workshops and so motivation's a bit more straightforward there.
- [16:17]
Dan
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- [18:06]
Alex
It's a great question. And this is also flexible. You can sit with your house, which is most people. What usually most people do. And so you're with your, your good friends in your house, and you're quiet and you're just working. And then during the five minute break, you can talk. Sometimes you can, like, I'm in a separate room right now to take this, you know, podcast meeting. And so you can just go to a booth or a room and work by yourself or if you need to meet with someone, go somewhere else. But yeah, in general, the general space is super quiet during the Pomodoros.
- [18:33]
Dan
Okay, so that's the first couple hours of your day, your first three hours of your day. What, what happens after that? Yeah, do you have recess? I mean, I guess you're in high school, so you probably wouldn't have recess, but do you have like free periods? Yeah. Tell me, tell me what, what happens next?
- [18:45]
Alex
Because of the Pomodoros and because of the freedom in the afternoon, there's no need for it, at least for high school. For the younger kids, the five minute Pomodoro things are their recess. And yeah, we should also get into some of the workshops. But. But for high school, it's very interesting. We have kind of, I'd say like three distinct tracks where people are going down. So there's not really a name for them, but we have like the Alpha High regular track. So these are the kids who generally want to do well on their SAT scores, their APs, whatever. We have the Ivy League track. So these are the kids who really want to get into the best college in the world.
- [19:20]
Dan
Are those the same?
- [19:22]
Alex
They're a little bit different because for the Alpha High Honors track, maybe you want to Become a pilot or maybe you want to, you know, do something that's like non traditional, but it doesn't really, you know, mesh well with the getting to dream college kind of thing. And so there's different programming there. And then for, for the third one, this is like the entrepreneurship package track. You really want to go hard on your business, build a startup, raise money, whatever it is.
- [19:51]
Dan
Do people your age care about college?
- [19:54]
Alex
I used to, like, as I said, I used to go. I feel like I've been in very two distinct bubbles. So I try to be aware of that. And in my old school, the bubble and, you know, groupthink was the only reason you're in high school is to get into a good college. And the, the bubble here is more nuanced and it's like, does it make sense for you to go to college? I can kind of walk you through my thinking about how I'm thinking about it. I talk to others about it. But yeah, sure. For me, there's kind of like three distinct paths I see myself taking. And my goal right now is to optimize for having all decisions possible when it's time to make the right decision. So the three distinct paths are, number one, go to one of the best universities. So for me, my top two are Harvard and Berkeley. Right now the second path is go to like an alternative university. So I don't know if you've heard of Minerva or University of Austin, which is like right down the street.
- [20:48]
Dan
I know, University of Austin. I thought that shut down.
- [20:51]
Alex
No, they kind of revamped it actually. They're now my tuition free, whatever. But it's a bit different from Alpha. But there's like a nice pipeline there and that's really interesting option. And there's scholarships and things like that to cover living. So basically my university would be free. And then the third path is like, you know, teal fellowship. Go all in on my idea, whatever it might be. And so I don't know what the right choice is because I'm kind of in the stage where I'm trying to bring my project from like something I'm doing in school to like become real world, raise real money, build a team, things like that, which I fully believe I can do and the people around me fully believe I can do. It's just like, does it make sense for me at the right time?
- [21:31]
Dan
Interesting. Okay, and then what about the people around you?
- [21:37]
Alex
Yeah. So I'm going to give you some case studies. I have a friend who has 2 million on TikTok and 2 million followers. And she is, you know, starting to do brand deals and is making like 10, 15k per brand deal. And she's really cool. She has a great message with her, her audience, a lot of resonance, very positive, very mission driven. And so she is really interested in like turning influence into ownership. Before, her project idea was like, why Combinator? But for influencer girls? Because distribution is king now. And so she's still like experimenting with ideas, but she wants to go to, you know, she got it to Stanford. She wants to go to Stanford and, and kind of figure out what the right move is for her.
- [22:22]
Dan
Why does she want to go to Stanford if she's already like pretty much? I mean, maybe she feels like this is not necessarily her career path, but. Yeah, what's the, what's the calculus of going to Stanford?
- [22:31]
Alex
From what I understand, she loves being an influencer, but she also really, really wants just like the college experience, like being, being with your best friends, whatever it is, going to parties, whatever it is. And so she just wants to have a lot of fun. And I think for my other friend, she's building an AI powered teen dating coach. She has like 70,000 users and she's, she's actually doing like lots of different projects and she's like doing her own thing. She's figuring things out, but she's, she also got it. Stanford wants to go there. She also wants the, you know, college experience. She, she, her, her sister goes to Stanford and she loves it. And so, you know, they're going to end up there and doing their thing and we don't know what will happen, you know, year or two down the line.
- [23:14]
Dan
How do you feel about, like when I was your age, which at this point was 15ish years ago, it, there were, there were starting to be people being like, you don't need to go to college. But it was still like very much this is the, this is the thing you have to do if you want to have any sort of life at all. And now I feel like what, what I'm hearing from you is you can do that and it's still appealing for people and there's like many more different options depending on what you want. But there can be, sometimes having more choices can be hard, especially if you're, you're young and you don't actually know who you are and what you want. So how does that feel for you?
- [24:00]
Alex
At times, extremely overwhelming. I think I've been trying to be intentional about, you know, surrounding myself with people who have very diverse perspectives. So for example, my My family is very traditional. Both my parents are dentists. They all, you know, their path, and my brother is doing the same thing. Go to school, get a degree, get a job. Then I have like the. The best person that comes to mind is Danielle from 15, 17, who. Her whole thing is like, we're backing dropouts and the institution is what's causing problems in young people and crushing curiosity and things like that. And so, yes, it's overwhelming, but it's also super exciting because I get to be around all these different kinds of people and learn and see what's right for me. And so I think for me, it's like I have to test to see. There are some things in life you just have to do. You can't be told by other people how to think about it. You just have to see what's right for you. And I think that's kind of what I've taken away from it.
- [24:55]
Dan
Okay, interesting. And then tell me about your generation. And this can be people you're around and also just your feeling about all the different people of your age that you're exposed to in whatever way it could be, you know, on social media or whatever. What's their view of AI?
- [25:16]
Alex
It's such a hard estimate because algorithms are giving you some random shit like, I just don't know. But here's my guess, here's my guess. I think that half of Gen Z is pessimistic about AI. A quarter is just uncertain, and a quarter is, I think, are pretty optimistic about it. And I think even though half of the people are hating on AI, still 75%, maybe 70% of people are, are using AI, have used AI once. And I can, I can go down those, those rabbit holes. Let me know what you think is interesting because, you know, I've seen lots of statistics. You know, I saw one recently saying super tied into my project. 72% of teens have used AI for companionship at least once. 52% of teens are using AI for companionship Pretty much every single day. And so I totally believe that's true. And just very interesting times.
- [26:18]
Dan
Interesting. Wait, so are you, Are you Gen Z or you Gen Alpha?
- [26:25]
Alex
Gen Z. Gen Z is aged right now 16 to like 24ish, kind of. That's.
- [26:31]
Dan
Oh, interesting. I thought it was, I thought it was a shift a little bit up. Okay, so you're Gen Z. All right, got it. And when you think about the, the. There's this, there's. It's kind of interesting if you're like, I hate AI and I use it all the time. What is that about?
- [26:44]
Alex
Yeah, I think that there's different reasons people hate AI. I was actually just talking about this with my friend last night. The big worry for Gen Z, I think is environmental concerns. Actually the second big big worry is.
- [26:59]
Dan
And by that you mean like global warming, energy use, all that kind of stuff.
- [27:02]
Alex
Energy use, water use. Yep. Energy consumption mainly. The second big one, this might be bigger, I'm not sure. Is job uncertainty the third big one? And these are for people who are, I think, like a bit more, have a bit more metacognition, are like, you know, I'm just worried about it replacing humans or human, like taking away from humanity, AI, art, things like that. And from what I can tell, most of Gen Z is just very pessimistic about the future. Extremely pessimistic, or at least for the ones who are super aware and online and things like that. And so it's hard to make the generalization, but that's, that's what I've seen. But people use AI because it's easy to cheat or help write your essays for college or whatever it is. And I think also there's a huge loneliness crisis and people want to use it for companionship and it's easy and seamless and frictionless. So yeah.
- [27:52]
Dan
Do you think that social media rotted your generation's brain?
- [27:57]
Alex
Yes, 100%. But, but I want to give social media some credit because I only hear like, social media is bad. Dad. I have been like, so this past two weeks was winter break and I wanted to run a little experiment and I was like training my algorithms to be a bit more like educational. I also am like interested in this new kind of emerging field question mark around just like human humanity because I like my hypothesis with the, you know, AI pessimism is there's going to be a huge like humans versus AI thing. A lot of people are like, USA versus China. I think it's humans versus AI. And so I'm curious about this new little bubble of information.
- [28:36]
Dan
Human studies.
- [28:38]
Alex
Human studies, whatever it is. And so I was training my. And there's different things for, you know, I'm on pretty much all social media is just to learn. And so my YouTube is very focused on podcasts or things like that. My Instagram is now very focused on like people trying to build brands that are very human. And people like being like sad about AI or what do you do?
- [28:58]
Dan
You just like, you just like six or seven things and, and in the category that you're trying to, trying to
- [29:03]
Alex
do even more aggressive where it's like, click, not interested in some things. But okay, so social media is first of all, the thing I want to give it credit for is transfer of ideas. Or Matt really, Matt Ridley calls it idea sex. So, you know, the ideas of creating new knowledge. I think that's really interesting. But the thing you have to be careful of is constant, just like information overload versus like actually processing it. So that's something I caught myself on. The second big thing is this is how we talk with each other. So my friend who's building the AI teen dating coach dating, she's running a study with a big psychologist and she's like, dating now is not. You go out on a date, whatever. There's a very clear formula. You meet someone somehow or you get referred or whatever. You get their snap. So you snap. You just like send them pictures and then you start snap. Chatting them, chatting them on snap. And then you message them and then you call them and then you FaceTime them and then you see them in person. And so the way in which we're communicating now, the way we communicate with some people is send me an Instagram reel. And that's our form of connection. And some people might view it as bad. There's less oxytocin release. I've looked into the studies there. But it's also the way that we are connecting with each other. We're laughing together. It's part of the optimism and joy we get in life. And so I think that's very interesting.
- [30:18]
Dan
But you said also, so I think that's a very compelling picture. And I do like the. The reason I asked the question is I think there's probably some balance to be had. Like the overwhelming narrative is that it's. It's negative. When you think about what the negative things are, maybe for your people you're around that are your age, like, what do you think they are?
- [30:36]
Alex
Yeah. So big. Biggest one I've seen in my life is, you know, me not catching myself in terms of being overstimulated by everything or overwhelmed or just like my attention is not good because obviously you're just dopamine heads forever. It's so addicting. I find myself scrolling still. The second big thing, other than like the neuro science, like just your brain is becoming more mushy. The second big thing is you are comparing yourself to people online. I've seen a lot of things. There's a funny video of like nature influencers who are like setting up their camera and making them look like they're walking through nature or, you know, people saying, my life as a 24 year old girl in New York City getting coffee, da da, da. So there's lots of comparison. I think those are the two big ones.
- [31:27]
Dan
Do you read books?
- [31:31]
Alex
Yes. No. Actually, no. That's my answer. I am not a big book reader. Never have been. I hated reading ever since I was young. The only function of, I have a lot of friends actually who read for fun still, which is really interesting, but much, much less than it was literally five years ago, four years ago. And the reason I read books is because I want to see, you know, people's interesting thoughts. It's not for the story, it's for the content. And what I've now noticed is there, I think there are some books that are good to read. Like I'm trying to. I'm going to read the Bible probably later this summer and Republic and you know, classic philosophy books just for fun. But also people like Michael Gibson's Paper Belt on Fire. Like, I just want to hear his thoughts about it and then ask him questions to deepen, you know, that. Those kinds of things. But now you can find everyone's takes on Twitter. You can ask ChatGPT to summarize the most important points you can get a book, open it up, take a picture, say, expand on this with ChatGPT. So it's like, it's just not generative and dynamic. And so it's a static piece of knowledge. And I think the value I get personally from it is the content itself, not the writing, not understanding how it's whatever. And not my not trying to increase my attention span. You know, I can do that in other ways. And so I at least have Grok voice mode with me while I'm reading it or something like that.
- [32:48]
Dan
And when you have, I do that too, by the way. I love, I love doing that. I actually built like a little custom app for this.
- [32:54]
Alex
Oh, I'd love to try it.
- [32:55]
Dan
Yeah, I'll send you the test flight. But for the, the friends that you have that are readers, why do they read and what makes them different?
- [33:05]
Alex
Ooh. I have lots of different types of reader friends. I think some read in spite of AI. Like, they're like, I don't want to become that. Some read because they just love the story. Some read because they just did it as a kid and it's like a habit of theirs. Some of my friends read because. And I've done this to like optimize their sleep. Like I read a page of book before Bed, like, those are the main reasons. It's not. I don't think we think very deeply about it, actually. I think it's just like you either read or you don't. And our form of reading actually in alpha, we should go into, like, what we do in the afternoon. Like, we're required to read. We're required to read the research about our field, and we're required to go beyond that research that we've read to create insights of our own. And so reading is still a big part of it. In my classes, I still, you know, you know, required to read Great Gatsby and things like that. And so the reason I said no is just because most people, when they think of reading, it's like someone out on, you know, under a tree reading a book. Like that doesn't really happen anymore.
- [34:09]
Dan
And. And the difference is you're just reading with your AI companion.
- [34:13]
Alex
That's me personally. I think most people don't read with AIs that are young. They. They. They're reading just because they enjoy it.
- [34:22]
Dan
And what. And. And people who are not reading at all. What is the thing that's replacing that? Is it video games? Is it social media? Is it like chatting with your AI? Or let's say for this, there's maybe there's two big categories. One is story, like consuming stories or being parts of stories. And then another one is maybe just pursuing stuff that you're interested in, like, really getting deep into. Into, like a subject that you care about. Maybe, like, what are the replacements for that for reading? And I'm just saying this because I like, I love books. And so it's like, it's a dagger to my heart that young people are reading less.
- [34:57]
Alex
Yeah.
- [34:58]
Dan
And I'm just. I'm also interested if you're using AI to code, you know, the pain. Too many terminal panes. Multiple agents running at once, copy, pasting context between them and trying to remember which branch has what. The bottleneck isn't writing code anymore. It's coordinating agents. Intent is a developer workspace built for orchestrating agents, not just running them side by side. It starts with a living spec that updates as agents make progress, so every task stays aligned with no manual coordination. Intent works best with Augment's Augie and their context engine, but you can also bring cloud code, codex or open code. Intent is what comes after your IDE. Try it yourself@AugmentCode.com intent that's AugmentCode.com intent. Build with intent. And now back to the episode.
- [35:41]
Alex
Yeah, yeah, I mean, There's a lot to go into here. So how are people replacing reading? So for the entertainment side, it's obviously TV shows, usually video games, gossiping with friends. There's some really fun AI entertainment applications. So, like the Charlie Kirk song, that's an AI song that went super viral. Like, just people, I think, like, embracing culture, talking about culture is a big part of our entertainment, which is due to social media, which most people see as a bad thing, which could. There are some bad elements of it, but I think it's really interesting and really cool, and so that's really interesting. The other thing that's really interesting is how people are using AI for entertainment. I'll just cover it quickly. Like, you know, I found Sesame's model when it first came out a year ago, and I was like, this is so cool. I showed it to one of my friends. This friend is, like, very fun and energetic and funny, and she started gaslighting one of the Sesame AI models into thinking it was Barack Obama. And we were just having a really fun time just talking to this Sesame AI, gaslighting it, like, feeling it out, just having fun with it. And she, like, made a YouTube video and I think made a TikTok that went pretty well or whatever about it. And there's so many things like that that are. That are being done with AI, but in terms of entertainment, that's the first part of how people are kind of replacing reading in terms of, like, how they're consuming content, like, educationally or trying to learn. Yeah. From what I've seen, it's like you can just, like you're curious about something, go ask about. Go ask one of the AIs. I use deep research pretty much every day to learn stuff I'm obsessed with. By the way, the way I got introduced to you was I saw your podcast with Dwarkesh, and I have been obsessed with the way I learn for probably a year or two, ever since I joined Alpha, because it's so nuanced and complex. And I think that there's just some very interesting ways people are using AI in the framework of capturing or curation or lots of different things. There's.
- [37:37]
Dan
That's fascinating. Wait, so you use deep research? Because I don't really use it anymore because I feel like most of the answers, if you put on thinking, are pretty. Pretty good. What do you use deep research for?
- [37:47]
Alex
Yeah, so I was on a walk with my friend yesterday, and we were talking about AI and climate, and I was like, I actually don't know much about water. Usage. I watched one Hank Green video, so I was like, okay, let me just pull it out and it'll generate while I'm walking. Two days ago, I, I just use it every day to like there's an. I think I've done a lot of research in my space and I really want to go super deep in like just very specific things. So I think the use case for me is like I, I can just put it on and then when it's time for me to do my research for the day or whatever it is, I just read through it and I'm like, oh, this is interesting. I don't care about this. This is interesting. And then I'll go deeper. With any LLM.
- [38:26]
Dan
Are you using ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini or like what's your. What's your go to?
- [38:30]
Alex
Literally 2 days ago I tested all for deep research. All have very different strengths and weaknesses. Grok has a pretty bad deep research, so I didn't use that. But Grok has a great voice. I just use all of them for different applications. NoteBookLM is one of the greatest things I've used in a long time and I think it's gonna be insanely adopt, like insane adoption in schools because it is crazy powerful.
- [38:56]
Dan
Yeah, okay. Actually this is really interesting to me if you. And this is based on your own usage patterns. I know that you use them for different use cases, but if you had to rank all of the like AI. AI application. If you had to rank all of the AI applications like Claude. ChatGPT. Let's put Claude code in a separate category. Notebook LM Gemini, Grok rank all the AIs from S tier to F tier.
- [39:21]
Alex
Okay, okay, hold on. I'm going to start with the foundation models and then we'll go to AI apps. Great. So for the foundation models, number one for me is Claude because I am a. My whole project is around creating models that are not sycophantic for my specific use case. And I am just. I cold emailed Dario by the way, and he like gave me some advice and stuff. So I'm so biased. Cause I'm like this cool guy is like responding to me, but I just like have so much trust in the leaders of Anthropic and I watched the founders table video that they had and so I just respect their research, the way they're approaching whatever and I love artifacts so much. Like that's like the number one, my favorite thing of any LLM. My second favorite right now is ChatGPT. I think their deep research is the best for me and my, like my specific use case and it's my as their first mover advantage. It's just I go to it whenever I have a question. Usually my third. I think it's hard. Gemini and Grok are kind of tied, but Gemini is slightly above. Just because I love Demis Hasabis and also because Gemini 3 is really cool and I think it. There are some. I just like think tpus are cool and I think they have a lot of data and I just trust. I just think Google's gonna be great and it is. I barely use it right now, but I think it's cool. And Grok is cool because they're just going crazy and trying things and I don't know. But that's the one I use the least in terms of applications. So at Alpha, we also do hackathons and so our first one was using Cursor and Vercel, whatever to build a video game. And so I'm not someone who's like super, super technical coding all the time. Cursor's pretty awesome though. But it's hard to. I use so many AI apps. Granola is like my favorite right now. Whisper Flow is my favorite right now. There's a new app called Sublime. Have you heard of this? I love Sublime. I bought the Lifetime. I went on a call with sorry and I was like, hey, can you tell me about your thing? And then I bought the Lifetime because I think it's so cool. I think I have a folder in Sublime with like all the AI tools out there that I've tried and those are the ones that are really sticky. I am obsessed with AI hardware. I've tried the Limitless Pin Pocket, pretty much all of them. And I'm really excited for Stream. The new ring. I just pre ordered that that I think is going to be my go to. I'm excited for Tie. A necklace. That's really cool. Not a fan of friend, but I don't know, there's so many. I'm probably missing so many, but those are. Those are some of the ones that I use and I'm so passionate about it.
- [41:55]
Dan
I like it. I love that. That Claude got the S tier. That's really, really interesting. Dario, if you're listening, you're doing a good job.
- [42:01]
Alex
Yeah. Yes, 100%.
- [42:03]
Dan
What are the, like, what are the weird things, like the weird little apps or corners of the Internet that kids your age are using or into right now that I probably wouldn't have heard of?
- [42:16]
Alex
Oh, that's such a Good question. Oh, I don't think it's like apps in particular, from what I understand. I think actually interesting case study is Finch. Have you heard of Finch? Finch is like a habit self care kind of app. And it's kind of like Tamagotchi. You have a little pet and if you do habits, you can like give them clothes and stuff. If you look at the trend of, of teenagers and what they're using, it's very like, I think they're obsessed with, with these character things and labubus and squishmallows and jelly cats and things like that. Hence what we can get into my project later. But that's, that's just a trend. I've noticed the corners of the Internet are usually on social media, so I always use like book talk as an example. TikTok for books. So that's still very alive. And there are Gen Z people.
- [43:11]
Dan
I know about that one. I'm talking about the weird, the weird stuff.
- [43:15]
Alex
Oh gosh. I, I just think it's like, it's just random trends. It, it, it's, it's like there's no stickiness, which is interesting. It just moves so fast. It's like we're now we're, we were talking about 6, 7 and now I, I don't even know what we're talking about. It, it's hard to keep up with.
- [43:30]
Dan
So I used 6, 7 earlier in this interview and I, I didn't know if you noticed you just like six or seven things. And I was, I was waiting for the reaction, but I was disappointed.
- [43:47]
Alex
See, I've trained my brain where I'm like, if someone like, I'm never gonna say 6, 7 because it is dead. It's old and I just have this terrible negative association with it. But, but the, this like Gen Z slaying I feel like, is kind of like there's always been slang, but it's like new. Like there's a lot more. There's. And it's more, it's, it's decentralized. Right. Like there's no one person creating the culture. Yes. Like the Kardashians and whatever and the celebrities people are looking up to. And we should talk about insecurity because I think that's what's the driver of a lot of this stuff. But it's just, it depends on what corner of the Internet you are. And I think it all comes down to like culture. Like we're made to read this, like forced to read this book at alpha called 10 to 25. It's a great book. It's all about how 10 to 25 year olds are motivated, what they're motivated by. And the number one thing is they're motivated by status and respect. They're trying to figure out their place in the world. We're going to get existential real quick here. They're trying to figure out their place in the world and who they want to impress and whatever it is. And so pretty much every decision they make is oriented around that. And I think there's just going to be this insane explosion of culture in the Next in, in 2026 with this, you know, now decentralized creators. There's so many small little creators that have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousand followers on YouTube whatever that people follow. And it's just, it, it's so nuanced and just depends on the person.
- [45:09]
Dan
I would love for you to send me if you have a couple of those where you're like, this person is small but they're. I watch them all the time or they're blowing up. I would love to, to hear who those people are.
- [45:19]
Alex
I can interview some of my friends, ask them as well.
- [45:21]
Dan
Yeah, definitely, definitely do that. Okay. You mentioned this sort of Labubu trend, the plushie plushie trend and I know that relates to your project. You want to tell us the project that you're working on and frame for us what a project is at Alpha School.
- [45:36]
Alex
Yeah, let's go back. So this is the reason I transferred into Alpha. I transferred as an 11th grader and in my 9th and 10th grade years I was exposed to AI before ChatGPT blew up just because one of my teachers was so awesome. So I saw Midjourney OpenAI's playground before it became chat and like all these different things. And so I was super passionate about AI, was building projects, whatever. Heard about Alpha and heard about this thing called an Alpha X project. And basically what it is is a super big Olympic level project that shows that you are the best in the world. You are literally the best in the world at what you do and provides, you know, a very unique, you know, it's built on a unique insight that you have about the world. World to serve, you know, a certain population. So it's usually a startup. But as you've heard, I've influencer friends, I have friends who are building musicals, lots of different like varieties of projects. And at the beginning of your Alpha kind of career you are sat down with your guide and you know, you go through the, I'm sure you've heard of Ikigai process. You know, what you're good at, what the world needs, what you can make a living off of and what you're interested in. And we kind of narrow down a niche of expertise that you want to go deep into. We find an insight, we find out, you know, maybe a, a way to solve a problem or whatever it is and we start trying to build the product, build the service, build our audience, build distribution and become the world's greatest expert in, in our field and create genuine insights. And I can go into those three verticals, but those are the three things you're kind of tested on and what's your project? So yeah, so I came in being I'm a very problem oriented person. I want to solve a huge problem. That's my goal. And so my analysis was if I want to solve a big problem over the next 10 years, it has to be super emotionally connected to me. And so there were kind of two big problems I wanted to solve. The first was the education crisis because that was deeply intertwined with me. That's why I transferred, so I could like help Alpha full time or do something like that, try and build an education startup. By the way, I and the number one edtech hater because there's a new edtech company every month and they all die, but we can go into that too. And then the other problem that's super near and dear to me is mental health. A lot of my family members have been in inpatient hospitals because of their mental health problems. I've struggled with my mental health in my old school. A lot of my friends, you know, texted me at 2am, 3am I was the friend who would text back and help them through things. And so it was like, I see this huge gap in teenagers in particular, young people in particular, you have these insecurities, these day to day problems that can compound into real problems later on. Like with my parents. And they're going to either friends to solve their problems, which doesn't really work, they just validate them or they go to parents or therapists, which they give them good advice but it doesn't resonate. And now they're going to AI companions and 52%, like I said, use them every day. We've already seen two suicide cases. I just got sent a news segment about an AI toy giving misinformation to 8 year olds and I was like, this is not what it should be. Someone who is like actually ingrained in the culture and the generation needs to be building this. And so I decided to Build Barry, which is an AI stuffed animal for teens day to day problems. They talked to it for five to ten minutes a day. The goal is to build the muscle of self awareness so it's not like you're dependent on it. You're built up to learn about yourself and cope and deal with your problems in the right way. But it's also super fun. My goal is to be the next Build a bear. I'm partnering with influencers to have custom versions. It's super soft, it's weighted, it's cooling. And yeah, I'm just super excited about where we're going with it.
- [49:11]
Dan
How do I get one?
- [49:13]
Alex
You can pre order. I'll send you the link.
- [49:15]
Dan
Send me the link and we'll, you know, we'll put the link in the show notes for anyone who wants one.
- [49:19]
Alex
Yeah, so I, yeah, let me know what you want to go into because I could talk about this for literally days.
- [49:24]
Dan
Well, we have a few minutes left. So what's the, what's the last burning thing that you want to talk about that you feel like we haven't covered but you think people should know?
- [49:33]
Alex
So I think the big thing is why in general are people pessimistic about AI? It's because I think they're uncertain and they just don't know what is the future? What's going to be left if humans are going to be left? Will AI replace humanity? Will AI replace individual humans? What is it going to look like? And I think the important thing here is to be grounded in rational optimism and, and understand what, what, what will this look like and what is the world that we should be building. And so I was telling you earlier, I'm super obsessed with this idea of this humanity studies, human studies and understanding, you know, what will be uniquely human in the age of AI And I think I just like, there's a couple of things that are super core I think here. The first is what is something that an AI can never replace place at least in the state they're at right now. It's human connection, vulnerability, emotional intelligence. You know, all appreciation, gratitude, loving nature, things like that. Things that are just very near and dear to humanity. And so I, I, you know, I wish I could write angel checks because there's a lot of these tools that are just like really going deep into these. So Sublimes is all about human curation. I've asked AI to make me a playlist on Spotify or to give me the top 10 experts in my field. And it's pretty bad. It's terrible, actually. It doesn't. It can't capture, you know, the taste or whatever we call it. And so that's going to be something that's uniquely human for my product. It's, you know, AIs will never replace having a, like, you know, someone you can talk to, like a human that you're talking to. But it can help you, you know, build the skills or it can help you, give you the right information to, to, to, you know, work on your mental health. It can give you the space to practice vulnerability. And I'm just so obsessed with this idea of what is going to be uniquely human and how can we allow humans to do what humans best do best and, and, you know, replace all the boring jobs so that people can create art or whatever it is. So I think when I was talking to my friend yesterday about this, she was like, I'm just so pessimistic about the future. I think the world's going to end in maybe 2,000 years. I don't know. But I just feel like everything is over. And I, and it's hard to express this. It has to be grounded in, you know, this rationality. But I'm just so optimistic about the future and I really hope that, you know, I can share that with other people too, because it is just so exciting and I'm so excited to be alive right now.
- [52:00]
Dan
I love this. What a, What a pleasure. I. You're making me excited. And we're very lucky to have people like you in the, in the next generation to, to. To show us the way. And it's. It's good to see that the kids are going to be all right.
- [52:16]
Alex
Yeah.
- [52:17]
Dan
Alex, thank you so much for joining. If people want to get in touch or pre order your product, where can they find you?
- [52:25]
Alex
Yeah, Twitter is the main one for probably you guys, but I'll, I'll give you all my socials and, and yeah, totally reach out to me too. I love talking to people.
- [52:33]
Dan
Awesome. Thanks for joining.
- [52:37]
Alex
Of course. Thanks, Dan. Oh, my gosh, folks, you absolutely, positively have to smash that, like, button and subscribe to AI and I. Why? Because this show is the epitome of awesomeness. It's like finding a treasure chest in your backyard, but instead of gold, it's
- [52:58]
Dan
filled with pure, unadulterated knowledge bombs.
- [53:01]
Alex
About ChatGPT GPT Every episode is a roller coaster of emotions, insights and laughter that will leave you on the edge of your seat, craving for more. It's not just a show, it's a journey into the future with Dan shipper as the captain of the spaceship. So do yourself a favor, hit like Smash, subscribe and strap in for the ride of your life. And now, without any further ado, let
- [53:25]
Dan
me just say, Dan, I'm absolutely, hopelessly
- [53:27]
Alex
in love with you.