C (5:00)

Nice. Well, congratulations on that success. This is a topic that we have never covered really before in however many episodes we've done of the podcast up to this release. And I'm particularly interested in it because I'm father of five space and I don't have an answer for what that path of adoption needs to look like for my own children. I've been particularly interested in some of the stories that are Coming out in the media now about some of these AI assisted schools. Our headquarters is in Austin, Texas. I think there's actually a school here that's getting some recognition for what it's doing. And I'm fascinated with. To me, as a professional in the space, I get it. It's obvious that AI has the potential to be better suited to the individual student. So with that being the case, I guess let's start with a couple of things. First off, for the other parents or aunts and uncles out there, what would you suggest be kind of the protocol for the introduction of generative AI to children?

D (6:07)

Kids like to play, so within the safest realm that you can let them play. So I have a 4 year old and now 9 year old. Geez. And myself, my. And both my wife and I are big into starting businesses. So my wife runs almost half a dozen daycares. I run these schools and other things. So she wanted to be in with that. She's like, okay, what do you want to do? She decided she wanted to do a 3D printing business, right? But she did. She's okay at 3D modeling, but she's like eight when she started it, right. So there's only so much you can do. So we introduced a generative model for coming up with 3D meshes, right. That then she could kind of poke in with the thing, right. Like, okay, come up with your brand, figure it out. Oh, you need a logo. All right, let's work together on ChatGPT or, or, or dall E, right? And come up with something that way. Like what is a problem that you are do not have the skill necessary at the moment to have an okay solution to. Right. And how can we use the tools that are available to be able to do it? Right. And it's the same as any other tool, right. If, if I'm using a penny hammer to knock in a nail and I'm okay with that, my 4 year old is going to have a hard time using that thing, right. She'll need a sledgehammer that's light enough for her to hold. So she just doesn't miss every time. Right. So I will find whatever tool it's necessary for her to help me build, you know, our chicken coop or whatever, right. Generative AI tends to be the same thing with little kids. I see is have them start with a purpose before you just throw it at them. So they're trying to. They want. Oh, the latest thing with the nine year old has been she wants. She takes singing lessons, right. And she Couldn't find a song that she wanted to. To sing outside of the one from K Pop, Demon Hunter, that's been going absolutely insane and I can't listen to anymore. Right. So. All right, here's a great. There's this thing called Suno. Right. Let's use Suno. Come up with like, talk about your day. Right. We'll go talk about your day. We'll put that into Sono. It'll generate lyrics for you in a. In a background sound. Okay. Now, how do you. Does this not sound quite how the way you want? Are you looking for more upbeat now? More downbeat? Let's diagnose and debug what the output of this was. Right. And try and gear it more towards what you're looking for. Right. And that gives them the. The agency to be able to play with it and not just assume that everything it gets it. That it gives to you is correct. Right. It's a, you know, generative AI is a conversation that you should have. Not a just give me this and I get whatever you give me. Right. So that allows them to play with it just like any other toy. Right. Any other tool and they'll understand it better. That's. That's would be my recommendation.

C (8:58)

Couple of takeaways. I love. I love the idea of the kind of the gamification or giving it like a reason why we're sitting down in front of the keyboard today.

D (9:05)

Yeah.

C (9:06)

Second would be. You're involved in that process as well.

D (9:10)

Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For a couple of reasons too. Right. Like, it's new. It's only a couple years old. Right. You know, we heard the. The great thing about Grok turning into Mecca Hitler the other day. Right. So like there is. Stuff's going to go weird.

C (9:26)

Yeah.

D (9:26)

And I'm not. I'm not necessarily going to shelter my kids from that because that's a reality. Obviously, if there's something that's vastly lewd like that'll like all within certain appropriateness. And every parent should choose where that is. Right. But like, oh, that's not what I was expecting. I wonder why it's doing that. That's kind of funny. Let's figure it out. And that gets them involved in how do we research why it's doing what it's doing. Right. This is, you know, you can't get your kid to sit there and read or watch the news for latest current events, have it happen to them. They'll be a little bit more interested to actually go out and research on their own what's going on. Right. So it puts the power. Again, it's all about putting power in their hands. Right. And you to be just like in every other aspect of their life, a supporting role model. Right. That's there to push them and nudge them forward and also make sure they don't get smacked in the face by a car. Right.

C (10:19)

So the, the interest level of kids, especially with the, you know, screens being everywhere these days, isn't guaranteed.

D (10:31)

Nop.

C (10:31)

Beyond making it interesting for them.

D (10:34)

Like.

C (10:34)

Like, what has the engagement been like from your daughter? Was it instantly adop? Like she adopted this and was like, this is a lot of fun or was there some. I don't get it.

D (10:42)

With some things, yes. With some things, no. With some things it took time. So she was. We're big fans of anime in this household. Right. So she was watching Avatar the Last Airbender, arguably not anime, but that's a different conversation. And she thought it would be really cool to make a VR game that. Where she could be a water bender because she's like, oh, I want to learn water bender. Right. So she did it for a little while, but the difficulty level, even with the assistance and me who's, you know, teaches game development. Right. At least, at least part of the day. Right. It was a little bit too much for her. Even though her interest level was there, it was just too hard and she fizzled out. Right. We found another thing, Wushu. So now she takes kung fu and learns tai chi. Similar thing. Right. But as she's doing it now, she has more interest coming back to it later because she's starting to understand coding a little bit more. Right. Or the other aspect be, oh, I can use my phone to take a motion capture of you doing these things. And now we can throw it into a game that someone else is making. Right. Or she can go into Roblox and have it as an anime thing. Right. So I would never recommend forcing it because there's nothing that makes a kid hate something more than being it done against their will. Right. It kind of saps the love of it. Right? Right. But realize like they're going to go at their own speed. Right. And if you're using it around them and they're seeing cool stuff, or you poke at them every now and it's like, oh, you want to make lemonade? You, you know, you can draw on your thing. Lemonade, 5 cents. Or you can design the board out and we'll print it. Right? Your choice doesn't matter to me. Right. And maybe just play There and show them, oh, check this out. Isn't this cool? Right? Engage and play with them. That is. That's tends to be the winning formula. Just don't expect to hit a home run every time. It would be you. You can't do that with anyone, adults or kids. Right. So. So take the niche when you get it.

C (12:38)

But so it kind of sounds like that's what you should be doing regardless of the activity with your kids. It's kind of introducing them to them, supervising them, coaching them along and then moving forward. You know, one of the, I guess one of the bigger questions about AI and education is what should the educators do? And in particular, you know, I've heard across the spectrum, obviously I referenced the school in Austin that's encouraging it highly. But there's some schools that are like, it's off limits. And yes. You know, I thought about this a lot recently because somebody asked me and my response to them was that schools should be encouraging the usage of it. Is it cheating? I don't know. But it doesn't matter because this tool is going to be something that they need to learn how to use. And the sooner they get good at conversing with the models, the sooner that they will be more viable as, you know, an employee, a business owner or whatever. So how do you address this kind of conundrum of the old way of learning and this new paradigm that that isn't going to stop.

D (13:49)

Yeah. So there are a couple of ways I can, I can go about referencing this. The computer science way is all the people that learned punch cards were looking at the people that were starting to code using, you know, basic and they said, you're cheating. No, everyone wants to have bit level addressing capability. You know, you'll never do it as good as me. This is cheating. Right. And then they were wrong. And then the, the people that came in with C. Right. Said it. It was the same battle. Right. And now we get right. So it. Every, every single level looks at what they're doing. Remember, it's really hard to change. Right. In order for you to change, the. The pain of saying where you are tends to have to be greater. Right. Than the pain of doing something else. And there's a lot of fears like, oh no, what about my job will get replaced. I have to fight this even subconsciously. I'm fighting it because I'm worried about it personally. Right. So there's that aspect of it and to which that I would say your job as a teacher is about the kids, how you feel about it. Doesn't necessarily matter. I have the same thing with politics in school, right? I can be and start out sting all of my political beliefs and everything to the kids, but all that does is bully all the kids that that think differently, right? My job is to be there, encourage the kid to turn into the best version of themselves. Even if it's something that I would hate. That's like, obviously there's ed caches you should. If the kid's taking knife up and starting to chase people, you should probably stop them, right? But within all normal, what we would consider realms of what we would see in our day to day lives, let them be who they are. I personal anecdote on that. I went to school in the 80s and 90s, right? And in middle school I really, I really was a horrible student. Like a straight F student, right? I really, really, really loved robots. I saw this thing called Robot Wars Mark Thorp did in San Francisco. Great guy. Used to bug him all the time on AOL Instant Messenger. Anyways, he, he created this amazing thing. I could build a robot and have it beat up another robot. I was a little nerdy kid. I couldn't beat anyone up by myself. But I still like martial arts, right? So I figured out a way to get my in my teacher to say, okay, you can build this. You just have to make sure you get through our curriculum first. So I did a year's worth of curriculum in a month. There's a good sweet deal for him because his administration still required that. And I started building my robot successfully, by the way. Psychotron, great robot. Now imagine you're a principal and you just hear Megadeth blasting in the hallway, followed very, very short and closely by a robot with spikes coming out of it and the head of Bill Clinton with a beanie spinning, right? Like, I got suspended, quite literally. I got kicked out of school for doing that, right? In my mind, that was the thing that led me to my career, right? What that educator said, no, this is not a place for. That was the thing that led me to the place that school was supposed to lead me to. Where my inevitable career is, right? They could not, it's not unreasonable that they could not see that this would be a future that would exist and that I would have a head start in over everyone else if I was just allowed to follow that, right?

C (17:09)

Yeah.

D (17:10)

So you're right. Now, if change is exponential, the teachers of a grade school kid, right? Look at this podcast, people. If you said, hey, I'm going to go on the Internet and talk to Strangers. And that's how I'm going to make my living in the 90s. Right. They would have laughed you off the street. Right. It is impossible for you to understand what the world that your child, that your children in your, in your school or at home will look like, what the jobs will look like. Right. What'll be in FAD when they graduate. Right. So like have an open mind. Right. AI is currently being utilized in almost every single field. Right. I got a friend whose refrigerator has chatgpt in it.

C (17:57)

Wow.

D (17:57)

Right. You, it's just where it's going to be. Right. And you could be that traditionalist that says we have to use pen and paper to do absolutely everything and you have to write it individually by yourself. Right. But as a business owner, I care about time to market.

C (18:15)

Yeah.

D (18:16)

Right. So there will be a place for the people that want to sit there and practice their handwritten calligraphy. Yeah, right. There is a million dollar business out there doing wedding napkins. Right. But if you're not the person that's willing to go and push and make that your thing, you want an actual stable job. Right. Then the businesses need to focus on making money. So what is, what as a school are you preparing your student for? Right.

C (18:44)

You know, kind of my, my thoughts on this were we had sponsored a national conference for EOs, if anybody listening is familiar with that. And we were excited to release this kind of, this new executive curriculum for teaching AI. And I followed what MIT was doing and what the business schools were doing. And it was a multi week kind of cohort.

D (19:09)

Right.

C (19:09)

You learn this on week one, you do some exercises, you come back on week two. And when we would talk to executives and we'd say, yeah, it's a 10 week program, they'd kind of go, right. Like in an age of instant gratification.

D (19:23)

Expectations, it costs some money. That's 10 weeks.

C (19:26)

Yeah. And there's obviously the investment of that. And the response that we kept getting was, can we do it in a day, can we do it in two days? And I said, you know, let me think about that. And kind of what I came to was that the old paradigm of learning required immersion in the subject for an extended period of time and practice and experience and you know, the apprentice level and then you, you elevate and all that. So that in the situations where my subject matter expertise was required, I was able to instantly recall on demand. Right. That's the old paradigm based on the way that we look at things now. New paradigm is that I don't even need to know the information. I just need to know how to get the information. And recall is not part of that equation when you're using generative AI if you know how to communicate with it. So you know, the result of that was we ended up creating a two day curriculum and people said well wait a minute, I signed up for a 10 week program. Are you going to make me an AI expert in two days? Yeah. My answer was no. And I don't know that I could make you an AI expert in six months. But what I can do is make you an expert level user of AI. Right. And that for me personally was a huge paradigm shift because it, it really, it, there was a line between the old way of becoming an expert and what the definition of an expert today looks like. And it looks like that, that's, that thesis is tracking with kind of how you're talking about this today. Refreshing to see now I know that there are parents out there and they're asking like, well what is my school's plan? I'm an, I'm a user. What are they going to say about my children using it? Yeah, like how do I address this if my school is, has got a policy where it's like AI is not for the classroom or something like that.

D (21:22)

Like I as a parent that is super into business and super into tech, right. Didn't focus on getting a school that had a huge amount of business or tech courses because I had the resources to be able to fulfill that. So therefore I looked for a school that could scaffold in, in a way that we couldn't. Right. So, so a lot more of the social emotional stuff because we're busy. So we try but like there's only so much time, right? So, so I'd say worst case scenario, if you can't get anyone in the administration, if you're into it, you're like that is bonding time, right? Like that's, that's a great chance to have your kid be interested in the thing that you're interested in. And that's really hard to do, especially as they get older. Right. So, so that's one PTO is your best way to go also. So parent teacher organizations tend to have a bit of sway with what goes and they tend to be the loudest in the room. So they can, if nothing else, offer extracurricular type stuff that will be able to help as well. This is, I take having been. It's weird. My wife loved school and college. For her it was the exact. We have basically the same outcome in our careers, in our lives. Right. Our first, I think there's our third date. We founded a nonprofit together. Like that's how in sync we are on all of these things. Right. In education. Right. But we both got their different ways. Right. So I would say that I look at school primarily as way to augment in the things that I as a parent, cannot teach them or cannot give them myself. Right. Okay. And because of, because of that, it allows me to say, all right, school is really good for a thing. Right. And everyone, every parent worries that their school is giving them stuff that they don't want them to give. Right. So have those conversations with the child. Oh, my teacher says that I can't use ChatGPT because it's cheating and it's writing my essay for me, even though I am like inputting all of this stuff and all of my ideas and all it's doing is just making me sound better and. Right, because you say it's important to sound better. Right. So having those conversations so that the kid can inevitably make their own decision, kind of see all the sides of it. That's indispensable for your kid to be able to go out and into the world and make smart decisions based off of the data that they have when they're on their own. Yeah, right. You can yell at, you can yell at schools all you want, but they are like the administration that's making the decisions are not at ground level, so they don't understand the ground truth. The teachers are so ridiculously overworked that they don't have time to learn the new technologies and play with it. Right. They're working. They teachers have summers off, but they work all summer. It's like interesting, right? Yeah, I'll say. I've never been more tired in my life than when I was a full time teacher. Yeah, right.

B (24:37)

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C (25:37)

You know, it's such a, an interesting situation because do I want my kids to be able to have an offline conversation with somebody and be able to contribute their perspectives based on the things that they've learned? Sure. However, for commercial contribution.

D (26:00)

Yeah.

C (26:02)

Their inability to be like expert level users of what is no doubt in my opinion going to be the predominant technology that is everywhere. Like, like the balance of those two things is a little tricky. Yes. And I, I get it that teachers, you know, they're not technologists.

D (26:25)

No.

C (26:26)

And the, they're also not in industry.

D (26:29)

Right. The majority of teachers are, have been teachers for the majority of their life. Yeah. Right. So they, they technically have no idea what industry looks like. Like by, by default. Right?

C (26:43)

Yeah, that makes sense.

D (26:44)

So, so like that's different when it comes to college, but even then, not necessarily so. Right. Because they have, generally speaking are there because they're doing research and that research is grant paid.

C (26:59)

Yeah.

D (27:00)

Right. So they've probably never tried starting a company. Right. For one, they probably haven't been under the, oh, I might get fired not because I don't have tenure, but because like I gotta make payroll. I gotta make payroll. Right. I gotta get, I have this deadline for this product that has to go out or although the company goes out of business. Right. And that is a particularly difficult place to be in as a, as an employee, a high level employee at a job. Right. So like I would argue, teachers, teachers at the moment are in a position where they're better at teaching the social emotional skills, the teamwork skills, the how to be you skills than they are ever going to be at teaching the real world industrial skills. There is a small caveat around that. Around trade school, the best teachers I've ever had was at my technical trade school, which was my high school. Right. Because they all did the work and they were like, don't listen to that guy. Trust me, this is what happens in real life.

C (28:04)

I want to ask, do you think that, that, that what the school experience in five years, 10 years is going to be, isn't going to be as much about educating you on topics outside of EQ and socialization and things? Do you think that everybody will just assume that, oh, if you want to learn something, you go use AI if you want to learn something fact based?

D (28:27)

I guess so what we found is it's Difficult to. A kid doesn't have the, the. The frontal part of their brain cooked well enough to be able to really drive themselves. Right. But before we said, hey, this is the Dewey Decimal System. Yeah. Look up the card that has the information that you want and go look in the book that's 10 years old to find the information you want.

C (28:55)

Yeah.

D (28:56)

Right. And that worked really well in the 80s and 90s because the change of. Or sorry, just the change of change. Right. Was slow enough that it could handle that pace. Right. The modern book is AI right. The modern lesson. I remember in the 90s we had this thing called Windows on Science. They were on laserdiscs. Right. And that was the new thing. Everyone got the grant to get them. They are a record player like record size CDs that you put in and they'd have videos where you could actually see the condors flying versus looking at a black and white hand drawn picture in a book from the 80s. Right. So like it was a. Another level of immersion. It was. Which allowed for more in depth understanding. Right. AI and education can be the same thing for. I am curious to go in more depth about this. Why do I need to know the Pythagorean theorem? Right. What's its use cases. Right. What? You know the. Not even just as an information gathering technique. Right. But a, a computer system can understand what the actual attention span and the actual understanding and comprehension levels are for each individual student. Right. If I might. Teachers speaking in front of 30 kids. I can only speak at one speaker skill level. Yeah, right. I. And like I try not to do that but I'm running around like mad. Which is absolutely terrible for the shy kid that doesn't raise their hand or I don't know about. Right. That's struggling in something. It requires only the loud kid to get all the attention because they're the loudest and I notice them. Right.

C (30:36)

Yeah.

D (30:37)

So. So it tends to equalize the playing field when you have something that truly understands what you're doing. And that's like all the AI tutors and stuff like that. I think AI tutors are nice but I think they are a, a side conversation to how AI should be used in education. Right. I, I wonder the prospect. I, I wonder the sanity in having every single person learn the exact same thing.

C (31:05)

Agreed. Yeah.

D (31:06)

Right. Like sure. Competency is like knowing. Know addition is really good. Right. Knowing basics from all over the place is good but a lot of times you can learn those basics in different ways. I can learn the Pythagorean theorem In a map building course, I can learn it in an architectural course, I can learn in woodshop by trying to make an angle bracket for my shelf. Like there's. I learn it in computer game programming for figuring out 3D vectors for my, for my character's movements. Right. There's unlimited ways of using that information.

C (31:40)

So we might be finding a situation where the concept is learned by the individual through different modalities or experiences based on what engages them the most.

D (31:53)

Correct. And now imagine that you have a system that can cross reference every place that that that skill or that competency or that tool is being used. Right. Now you're able to say, oh, two things. One, I need to learn this because I need to learn it, right? What is the shortest path for me to learn this using concepts I already understand. So it can relate like a amazing teacher would. Right. Hey, little Timmy, you love robots, right? Think about the ball being thrown by the robot. Like, how do you learn to throw that thing? Write out a recipe for that. Now we can look and apply that to baking a cake. Yeah, right.

C (32:36)

So many questions here, man. Like, yeah, so I know in the learning process we can get into the biology of education. New neural pathways and connections are created in the brain.

D (32:49)

Yes.

C (32:49)

Through that inquisition on the topic.

D (32:53)

Yes.

C (32:53)

If, if that inquisition isn't. I'm not saying that the existing school model is, is, you know, the, the best or anything like that, but how is that going to impact, I guess, neural development? I mean, I don't even know if that's a topic you want to talk about.

D (33:11)

No, that's fine. So, so the brain learns when it's being referenced a couple of different ways when needs to reference something that already exists in order for it to take hold. Right. It's extremely hard to, to learn extremely new, novel concepts. It's even harder if those concepts are purely ethereal. Right. So like, it, like it's extremely hard to understand quantum mechanics because it. We can't. We have no ability of imagining what that looks like. Right. So we come up with like Schrodinger's cat and all these other things as models to be able to help solidify that stuff. Right. We know what a cat is. We know what a box is. We kind of know what undead looks like. Right. So, so that's first part. So having a system that can understand what you kind of already know and reference new concepts to those will make your knowledge acquisition substantially faster. A great way to see this is ask a, ask a newbie that's never danced before to learn Something and then ask someone that's been dancing for 30 years to learn the same dance. The 30 year old doesn't matter if they've never seen it before, they'll get it faster. Right?

C (34:14)

Yeah.

D (34:16)

The, the hard part with younger kids is they don't have a lot of direction. And they also have, their direction tends to change very, very rapidly. Right. So having something that keeps them going and guiding them so that they can build up that, that time on task as well as the resiliency when something doesn't quite go right. Right. And make that part of the game. Right. If you play a video game and you lost your level, you usually don't, I mean, sometimes you throw the Xbox out the window, but usually you don't usually say ah. And you start trying harder. Right. So being able to model it kind of more off of that, so it builds resilience and you get. It's hard for a teacher to do this because they have to have all the right answers. Right. But if you individualize and you have it so that everyone can kind of work on the right place, that means they're allowed to fail and not fail behind such a crazy paradigm.

C (35:06)

Because you know, instantly my mind goes to, well, give the teacher AI so that they can. But then you're, you're still missing the whole fact that that reality, how we interact with each other, how we collect and use information, that paradigm is shifting significantly. So would it help a teacher teach in a traditional way? Yes, yes. Student would lose, like they wouldn't be getting the reps, they wouldn't be getting the 10,000 hours. And using the tool that is going to be the dominant device.

D (35:41)

And not even just that the teacher's got to use it different. Sam Altman came out and said this was an interesting thing that he was noticing is the people that are my age, like in their 40s. Right. Use it kind of like a replacement for Google. Right. People there in their 20s to 30s. Right. They're using it as a, as a, as an interactive agentic thing that is helping them do their tasks. That's more closely with how I use it. Right? Yeah. Kids that are like 12 and 15 are using it as an operating system for their life.

C (36:10)

Yes.

D (36:11)

Right. So like I am old, I, my ways are dead. Like it or not, I no longer, the way I do things no longer matters and will no longer serve the kids. Right. So as a teacher, and again, I'm a little bit further on the adoption side than probably most are, I would be fascinated to see how my kid If I said, hey, this thing can do anything you want, right? How would you use it and then let them play with it by introducing it thing by thing, Right. The other hard part is how do you explain this can do anything? Well, that's a lot, right? The way I like to think of it, I'm going to use an anime reference, but AI is a lot like magic in anime, right? So if you've seen, like, there's a lot of it's, AKA anime is out there at the moment where you, like, you. You get hit by a bus and you come into a new world as a fantasy character that has magic and they usually have leveling systems, right? Yeah. In. In order for you to use the magic in these. In these worlds, you have to understand precisely what it is you're trying to use it for, right? So if I can. The people that came from another world had an advantage because they were in a world that had bullets. They're in a world that had, you know, sushi, that had cars, right? So they're now in this, you know, fictitious medieval world that has never seen those things. They can use the exact same magic to be able to make all these truly incredible things that no one ever thought or saw before, simply because they know how to envision whatever they want to have. And the clearer your vision is, the clearer the thing that you can create is, the better that thing will be, right? So. So when you're using AI, right, anyone can go into ChatGPT and say, make me a funny yeti video. Yeah, right. But it will not come out anything like those viral things that are coming out. Because the vision that that guy had when he made it was so ridiculously clear. The prompt was like, it's like 12 paragraphs long or something like that where he engaged everything, right? Like so, like, if you go up to the kid and you'll be like, this is. This is truly magic. It's truly a great tool you can. You can use. But everyone has the same level to it, right? Whatever. The clearer you have it will make whatever you want to the clarity of your vision. So spend some time thinking about how. How you want to make that thing, right? And that's. That's how we taught computer science always, right? There's the. My favorite exercise in middle school was I'm a robot. Get me from my desk to the door, out the door, into the exit, right? So they'd say I was like, oh, get up, walk five steps, right? And I would walk different size steps for every single kid, right? Oh, Turn left. I would start spinning around like a ballerina, right? Yeah. Sometimes the program would crash because I'd be walking over tables and eventually I'd get to the railing and I didn't want to go over the railing. Right. So like they learned through practice that, oh no, I'm doing very specifically exactly what you tell me to do. Right. AI is the same thing. It's just more open ended. Right. And you don't have to sit there hammering out code the whole time to get to do it. It's conversational and my brain is going.

C (39:25)

In so many directions. This is a topic that again, we. I run a business. I don't think too much about AI and education, but I want to shift gears a little bit and I don't know that you have all the context for the questions I'm going to ask, but I'm very intrigued about. And I think the school is in Austin, but it's an AI driven school.

D (39:46)

But four hours or two hours of, of learning a day, I think they say, right?

C (39:51)

Yeah, yeah. But it's still a full school day. They're only spending two of those hours though on the learning. What is the rest of that time being spent?

D (39:59)

See. Okay, so. So me and my wife, again, she's an educator as well, more traditionally educated one than I am, go back and forth about this particular school quite a bit. When I first heard about it, I was like, oh, that's fascinating. They were able to condense the amount of learning required to get through their standardized test into two hours instead of eight hours, which means that the kids are learning more individually at their own pace, and it's working. They're able to get that process going. I nerded out about that. At first I saw that, I thought, oh great, it's great. Right. And then because I'm developing systems to try and do that as well. Right. And then I was like, but they're still teaching for that test, aren't they? Right. So. So are all they doing is trying to do the same thing everyone else is doing, but faster. Right. That seems like a terrible waste. Right. Like, I personally think that a four year college. Right. Is a terrible, terrible waste of time. If you had something else you could do. But if you need four years specifically to do it is a great use of that time. Right. If you could have done it shorter, do it shorter because you have other crap you could be doing. Right. If I. Half the cost, half the time, I can be out in the industry actually learning how to apply my knowledge much quicker. Right. So if they're just taking off the time, right, and they're not allowing them to explore and do anything more, Right. And they're not changing the paradigm of what they're actually learning, then you, you've like stopped short, right? You have this amazing technology, this amazing skill, you have this amazing capability within your kids. Then they're in. You're still telling them, only do what we tell you to do. Right?

C (41:53)

But here's the, here's the kind of the, the curveball there. These kids are scoring like almost within the first year of this school. Like those kids were in the top nationally at the top percentile or so when it came to performance compared to individuals who were learning traditional ways.

D (42:12)

Yeah, absolutely. That makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. But what are they doing with it? Right? So if they were, if they were advertising to me, our kids get through, you know, instead of shortening it for the, for, for the purpose of shortening it and getting better, all right, we're doing that for the purpose to allow them to either get through it faster, right. So that they can do something with that knowledge, or we're scaffolding all of the, the baseline books that they have to get through so that they can then apply that knowledge to, to an industry to, to create their own things. Right. We, at the school I used to teach at, they had a STEM fair where they do a shark tank every single year. And kids, yeah, some of the kids actually built products that they went off and prototyped for and had an industry. Right. If they were going out and making collaborations, if they're spending their time going off and teaching other kids, right. Like if there are pathways for them to then go off and use that knowledge or to start the next year earlier. Yeah, right. And yeah, it's, I feel like it's just like solved the, it solved a problem without necessarily knowing why they were solving the problem.

C (43:32)

You know, this is interesting because our chief AI officer, his name is Adam Lyons, he's homeschooled his kids. His 15 year old has already graduated from high school because he was able to consume the content at a pace that made sense for him. They live out on a ranch. There's no distractions, that sort of thing. Right now, in a, in a school, though, if I'm advancing like that, what am I going to be the 13 year old senior in high school? Like, what is my social like? Yes, intellectually and mentally, I could be capable of it. Emotionally and socially, I'm not ready for what the peers who did it the traditional way are Doing this is correct.

D (44:13)

And they're, that's why they're at such an advantage. They have their own school. They can do whatever the hell they want. Right. We had at. I've Got a Message. So the school I taught at that particular one was for gifted kids. I've taught at every school of every type. But, but that one that I keep referencing was for gifted kids. We had a third grader that could do calculus. Right? Yeah. All of our kids, we had a graduate of mine that by sixth grade had all of my industry certifications and, and by sophomore year in high school had won a quarter million dollars for solving an interesting problem in AI. He won a, like a collegiate competition. Right?

C (44:49)

Yeah.

D (44:49)

So like they're doing stuff, right? They're, they're going out into their community and they're finding a way to apply what they learned. Right. Okay. This is. So I have a, I have an ed tech that I'm, that I'm developing that is trying really hard to be the cross section between traditional education and industry. Right. Because those twos are very, very disjointed at the moment. Right. So the problem with, with, with traditional school is they're learning stuff, but they don't have any context to why they're learning that stuff.

C (45:21)

Yes.

D (45:21)

Right. And then the industry is like, well, these are the kids we're getting, so I guess we'll take them. And then we're going to on average spend a year to two years upskilling them so that they're actually useful. Right. And it's the kids that went off and did the projects and the stuff like that on their own and they started their own GitHub, right. With, with kind of cool stuff or they went off into a robotics thing and started competing or whatever. Those are the kids that tend to get the jobs now, not the ones with the senior degrees in anything. Right. So like they have their own school. You can scaffold the, the social emotional part however you want. Yeah, right. And to be honest, there is not a single enterprise that I've ever worked for where everyone was at the same level and that everyone was the same age.

C (46:12)

Yeah.

D (46:13)

Right. So again, if you go back to what are you teaching these kids to do? Part of it is to get through the early childhood social emotional stuff that is hormone based and brain development based and all that other stuff. Right. Which is damn hard. Right. Like, like you're, you're, you're biologically dumb to some things on purpose.

C (46:36)

Yes.

D (46:36)

Right. So like that, that does need to happen and teachers there's no one better than teachers at doing that part. Right. But I don't think it's necessarily wrong for, for a three year old to feel comfortable, not three year old, a third grader to feel comfortable because having a conversation with a college student at their level, right. I think it's awkward for that college student at the moment. Absolutely it is. Right. But if I go into industry, right, there's two problems that's going to happen. I am the 20 something year old kid that knows everything, technically that's the latest greatest thing. But have no experience. You're the 70 year old one step out the door that has enough experience that I could never, it'll take me decades to get that right. If we can talk as peers about the exact same thing, that company grows, right. Immediately. Right. That, that conversation grows. But generally speaking, we, we sit the, the junior level guy in a room over there, we throw some random crap at them to see if they break and want to quit and then we don't engage them in those conversations. So it takes two years for them to get into a place where they're actually contributing. Because whereas seniors afraid to talk to them, there is juniors scared to talk to us.

C (47:55)

Yeah, right.

D (47:59)

My, my wife has last bit on that, but my wife has. Schools are called global children's school, right? So at all times there's English, Spanish, Russian being taught, spoken to these kids from three months on from native speakers. And they come in and we had the idea with this is these kids are going to be in a global world no matter what, right. I during COVID all of my people that were working with me were in different countries. One of them was in a different country every week, right. So like I have to be used to having these conversations culturally with these guys and still get work done, right. So we formed a school based around multicultural immersion to be able to help that. Right. And then, and I take care of the tech immersion side of things, right. Like these kids, like I see it in my kid. My, my 6 year old has wushu. She is happy learning and figuring out Chinese and talking with these kids and immersing themselves in that culture. We go over here to Russian ballet. She does the exact same thing and she feels confident in there, right? It's like all of the, all of the advantages of being an army brat with just being comfortable in any, any culture without all of the trauma of being ripped out of your house and changing locations every three years, right? So like allow that immersion to happen. It's, it's where they're going to be eventually anyways, right? Yeah.

C (49:27)

I'll tell you, you know, Dave, I, I, I came into this first. I feel like we've only scratched the surface, and I'll tell you why. I came into this interview today thinking that it was pretty cut and dry, like they need to introduce AI into the schools. But this conversation has, I don't know, certainly opened my perspective on what is this, what is this? The, what's, what's the answer to this AI and education situation? The old system. I think most people, if you really let them look under the hood, they would say, hey, this existing education system is broken. It's preparing people for something like a world that doesn't exist anymore. But it's not as easy as just throwing AI into a classroom or giving it to the teacher. And I don't know, there's a lot to unpack here.

D (50:26)

Plato, so Plato was a great example, right? He just sat there and thought, thought a whole lot. And they had like Socratic debates and whatnot all day long about these things, right? Like, they call it stoicism because you're just sitting on the porch, right? I think having a meaningful conversation and taking the time to really not just say, oh, God, there's a new tool. Let's throw it in as quickly as possible, right? But having is like, what are we actually preparing these kids for, right? And how much of that do we, can we not understand, even exist? Like, we can't even imagine yet, right? So, like, my teaching methodology more recently revolves around how do I give them the scaffolding so that no matter what it looks like, right? They can figure it out as they go, right? It's not a skill or competency education anymore, right? Because they can get that from anywhere in a moment's notice better than any person that we can see, right? It's a, a human skills because I can't build a rocket ship by myself very easily, right? And I might have to talk to someone else to bake me a cake one day or raise me a, a seed fund, right? Seed round, right? So, like, I need the human things. And that's really, you can learn that from humans better than anyone because you have to practice, right? But it's also like a looking at the landscape, predicting the, the near future, and then having the resilience to say, oh, God, not again. Right? There's a new tool I gotta dive in. My job is to learn as fast as is to produce because the quicker I learn, the faster I produce, right? I, I got everything, man. I've got. My meetings are on Firefly AI. So I. They take the meetings for me and they give them to my people so I don't have to talk to them. And tried to funnel what I remember through the meeting. I'm writing a book, and I'm using this little guy here as a little AI recorder. It records me, says exactly what I want. I feed it into an LLM that organizes it because I have the worst ADDA and known demand. So when I talk, it doesn't make any sense to anybody, including me, right? And then I do a summary of it that's using my own prompt that then sends it off to my editor and my wife, who that then says, does this fit within the context of the book? Or. Or should I just scrap this and then I'll put it there and I'll start writing right. Based off of those notes. Right? See, I. The only way I can get this stuff done right, is to have, like, I tried writing a book before, it took me two years, and I barely, you know, barely graced two. Two paragraphs, right? This thing I'm on, nine chapters in a month, right? And obviously I then have to go and then personalize and make it so that it's me, right? And there's still the ownership of that, but just the process of getting it going has been exponentially accelerated, right? So, like. But that's only existed for. This thing's been out for less than a year, right? So, like, being okay with jumping in and teaching your kids to be okay saying, oh, here's this new, new thing. Is it actually useful to me before I start playing with it? Right? And if it is useful to me, I'll play with it, figure it out, and then at least I'll have those reps to know what I like and don't like, Right?

C (53:44)

Like I said, man, this. Like, I came in here thinking, oh, this is going to be an easy topic, but over the course of this conversation, I've got more questions than I do answers now. And I appreciate you sharing this perspective. I mean, because it's. I would imagine that any parent today that's listening to this podcast especially is wondering how this is going to impact their kids.

D (54:06)

Yeah.

C (54:07)

And I don't know that. That we have the answer today, so.

D (54:11)

I don't think we'll ever have the answer.

C (54:14)

As we wrap up, are there any, I guess, advice or final thoughts about this?

D (54:21)

Yeah. To parents, I would say play, right? Your kids are still your kids. So play. Don't be scared of it. Don't be yelling out, they took our jobs. Like, don't, don't worry about that at the moment. It's, it's for your kid, not for you. So do the scary thing. If you expect them to do the scary thing, you owe it to them to also do the scary thing. Right. And that'll be tricky, right. So just recognize that it's tough. And it's kind of supposed to be.

C (54:49)

Parents that have some interest in diving a little bit deeper into this. What would be some resources or where can they find out more about what you guys are doing? Because it sounds like you are. Maybe you haven't figured it out, but you're in the process for sure.

D (55:02)

We're trying. We're definitely trying to. So you can find me at Guild G U I L D Hall H A L L learning dot com. That's our school. And also you'll see our products coming out on there. So we have a new one called Dojo, which is an AI assisted learning platform that doesn't. It makes all the lessons for you ad hoc and also tracks your pathways to match it with different skills, just like we were talking earlier. But we also have studios and the kids can come in and learn to make anything they want. We have full machine shops, wood shops, VR equipment, art and design, jewelry rooms, everything. So we're here to help them learn to use the tools to help them successfully make their futures.

C (55:45)

Well, I'm glad you're doing this. It sounds like it's even more needed than I thought. And such a fascinating topic that isn't going to be easily put in a box. And I appreciate you taking the time with us today and kind of blowing my mind a little bit. So be my shower thoughts for the next few weeks, I think. Thanks again, Dave, for taking the time out for joining us today. And again, I really appreciate the perspective that you shared from such, you know, like you're doing the thing and that's awesome to see. So thank you so much.

D (56:20)

I appreciate it.

C (56:22)

Okay, everybody, thank you for joining us for this episode. Again, like I said, I thought we could have probably gone on for another hour here, but this is where we're at. So go noodle on that and we'll see you on the next episode.

A (56:39)

Thanks for tuning in to Using AI at Work. Don't forget to subscribe for more conversations about how to use AI at work. And a special thank you to our sponsor, Chief AI Officer for empowering businesses with AI education and training.

C (56:52)

Training.

A (56:53)

Visit their website for a free AI readiness assessment and AI strategy guide to help you get started using AI at work. That's www.chiefaiofficer.com. so thanks to our producer Evan Desaulnier for making this episode possible. Follow us on Twitter at the handle usingaiatwork and visit www.usingaiatwork.com for free. Resources Resources to help you harness AI in your role.