Hard Fork – "A.I. School Is in Session: Two Takes on the Future of Education"

Host: Kevin Roose & Casey Newton
Guest: Mackenzie Price (Alpha School), D. Graham Burnett (Princeton)
Date: September 5, 2025

Overview

This back-to-school episode explores how artificial intelligence is transforming education, from K-12 to higher ed. Hosts Kevin Roose and Casey Newton interview Mackenzie Price, co-founder of Alpha School (a private K-12 network that uses AI-driven personalized learning), and D. Graham Burnett, a Princeton historian reflecting on what AI means for universities and the humanities. The episode also features voices from students, sharing first-hand how AI has reshaped their learning experiences.

Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. K–12: Rethinking School with Alpha School & AI

Guest: Mackenzie Price, Co-founder, Alpha School
(Timestamps: 04:15–28:00)

Alpha School Model

• Replaces the traditional classroom with a schedule where students:
  • Spend 2 hours/day on personalized online lessons powered by AI
  • Devote the rest of the school day to hands-on, group “life skills” projects led by adults called "Guides," not teachers.
• AI produces personalized lesson plans based on each student’s needs, both identifying learning gaps and adapting content to individual interests (e.g., inserting a student as the hero in a story, combining math with sports stats).
• No homework—students finish academics by lunch.

Mackenzie Price:
“Kids are crushing their academics in only two hours a day... After that, it's project-based collaborative life skills—entrepreneurship, financial literacy, teamwork, communication.” (05:30)

Why This Model?

• Mackenzie was motivated by her kids losing curiosity and enthusiasm in traditional settings.
• Sees “one size fits all” as the core problem, leading to boredom and disengagement.
• Aim: foster intrinsically motivated, self-driven learners, flipping the teacher’s role from “lecturer” to “motivational guide.”

Quote:
"What we're trying to create is self-driven learners who have the life skill of learning how to learn."
— Mackenzie Price (14:15)

How Alpha’s AI Technology Works

• Personalization through Generative AI: Each student’s progress is tracked, with AI filling in knowledge gaps and aligning lessons with personal interests.
• Vision models assess engagement—measuring accuracy, speed, and interaction with resources; students are coached on how to learn better.

Motivation & “Alpha Bucks”

• Incentives: Invented a “school currency” (Alpha Bucks) for students to earn and spend, teaching financial literacy and boosting engagement.
• Criticisms addressed:
  • Selection bias: Recognized, but Alpha is expanding with lower-cost and even free schools.
  • Edtech skepticism/fad: Price insists motivation and human connection are at the heart—AI just allows for extreme personalization and efficiency.

Mackenzie Price:
"Ed tech is never the answer in and of itself... 90% of what creates a great learner is a motivated student." (21:08)

Vision of the Future

• Predicts AI will let students reach expertise levels at younger ages.
• Learning is not obsolete in the AI age, but will focus more on using knowledge creatively (where humans excel, not AI).

2. Higher Ed: AI and the Future of the Humanities

Guest: D. Graham Burnett, Professor, Princeton University
(Timestamps: 31:54–52:55)

AI’s Disruption in Universities

• AI outputs are now indistinguishable from human work. This fundamentally challenges plagiarism detection, normal assignments, and even the value of “writing papers” as an exercise.
• Professors must radically rethink assignments and even the mission of higher education.

Graham Burnett:
“These technologies emulate human thinking, analyzing, and expressive powers, and do so with sufficient sophistication as to make their output indistinguishable from human work... a bunch of the ways we’ve operated to educate students are off the table.” (32:53)

Transformative Assignments

• Burnett tasked his students to converse with a chatbot about the history of attention and synthesize the dialogue. He found it profoundly revealing: students explored ideas more deeply, without the social dynamics of traditional settings.
  • For some, AI was a freeing intellectual partner; one student “got to be inside her intelligence in a way that felt kind of new” (37:33).

Institutional Reaction & Challenges

• Universities are defensive: Worrying about enforcement, plagiarism, and how to adapt, not transformation.
  • "The concern is, all my assignments are now useless..." (39:44)
• Burnett is hopeful and skeptical about higher education’s response: Universities could embrace deeper, “soulcraft” work—but economic realities may push them to drop the humanities.

The Nature of Learning in an AI Age

• Reading long texts (“long-form immersive literacy”) is vanishing; education will shift toward discussion, performance, and active engagement with excerpts, not whole books.
• AI accelerates the end of “textuality” in university learning—oral/interactive methods and new types of schools may arise.

Graham Burnett:
“This is not a technical test. This is real. Gather up what you’ve got... this is going to be the crucible for the kind of work you say you care about.” (52:14)

3. The Student Perspective: How AI is Changing Learning

(Timestamps: 53:23–71:48)

Examples & Reflections from Students

• Keith (Princeton): Uses AI to fill gaps in lecture explanations:
  “You kind of use AI to fill in the gaps between when you lost focus or lost understanding.” (54:49)

  • Hosts reflect: This is an unprecedented superpower for current students.

• Greta (MIT): Developed advanced AI-driven study workflows, including quiz and summary generation, integration with her notes, and problem set ideation.

  • Automates learning, not just answer-getting.
  • Kevin Roose: “Students should be teaching the teachers how to use these tools effectively.” (59:05)

• Claire (Fordham): Worries about “corners being cut” and about false plagiarism accusations driven by AI detection tools.

  • “I think AI in education is terrifying because it leads to examples like these where people are wrongly accused...” (62:13)
  • Hosts: Criticize unreliable AI-plagiarism detectors, stress need for fundamental changes in assignments.

• Pia (Germany): For a U.S. student studying in German, AI was invaluable as a translation aid, helping with both academic writing and adapting to a new language environment.

• Vikram (Michigan):

  • AI is “just so normalized… like the internet.”
  • Peer pressure: “If you’re not using AI, you’re just kind of behind.”
  • Raises the issue of equity: Should schools pay for everyone’s premium AI access?
  • Hosts debate: At what point does reliance on AI mean learning less deeply? Are we simply in a “halfway” era before AI does all the work?

Hosts’ Key Observations

• AI dramatically amplifies motivated students but allows for easy shortcuts by those less motivated—motivation remains the biggest factor, not the presence of AI per se.
• The “why” of education—personal growth or job prep—is more in question than ever as AI shapes what students actually do to earn grades.

Notable Quotes & Moments

• Mackenzie Price:
  • "Your kid does not have to sit in class all day long in order to get... excellent in academics." (11:44)
  • "If a kid is not thriving, it's our fault. We're doing something wrong. And what we're missing is that motivation part." (16:06)
• Graham Burnett:
  • “I was watching a generation feel out the emergence of a kind of alien, familiar, ghost, God, monster child. And that was intense...” (34:00)
  • “Long-form immersive literacy is coming to an end as a widespread cultural phenomenon... Now what we can do is give people short sections from books and ask them to do stuff with those short sections—dramatize them, discuss, perform, enact, sing them.” (47:37)
• Student Greta (MIT):
  • “[Gemini] will take all of the notes uploaded, generate a full summary... then it creates a 10-question quiz so I can make sure I’m still understanding the material.” (57:50)
• Hosts on Academic Integrity:
  • Kevin: “You cannot ask an AI system, ‘Did you generate this?’ and have it give you a verified, reliable answer. There is no way at scale to determine whether something was written by AI or not.” (62:13)
• Hosts on AI’s ubiquity:
  • “If you’re not using AI, you’re just behind.” (Vikram, 68:26)

Segment Timestamps

• Introduction & Overview: 00:32–04:05
• Interview – Mackenzie Price (Alpha School): 04:15–28:00
• Interview – Graham Burnett (Princeton): 31:54–52:55
• Student Voices: 53:23–71:48

Tone and Style

The hosts blend curiosity, skepticism, and humor, inviting thoughtful but accessible perspectives on AI’s impact. Guests are enthusiastic and candid—Mackenzie Price champions disruption, Burnett is reflective and sometimes darkly optimistic, students are practical and creative.

Conclusion

AI’s role in education is rapidly evolving. Alpha School offers a radical new model for K-12, prioritizing motivation and personalized learning. In higher ed, AI forces a rethink of academic work, literacy, and even the purpose of universities. Students are both riding the wave and feeling its risks. Across all levels, motivation, adaptability, and redefining the shape and goals of education are more vital than ever—as AI becomes not just a tool but a protagonist in the learning journey.