Cal Newport

I don't care about your AI-generated college essay.

Take one of these tests.

How much can you focus?

That's what I'm looking for.

Do that one change.

Let me tell you what you could do right now.

I'm thinking about this on the fly.

You want to change the trajectory of this country.

You want to give new opportunities and the ability for our current young generation to have the best chance of thriving in their lives.

Add alongside mandatory SAT testing for college admissions, add cognitive endurance testing.

You get all these kids knowing, oh, my ability to focus and sustain concentration is going to play a role in whether I can go to whatever school I want to go to, be it Georgetown or Dartmouth.

Now suddenly they're going to look at their phone like a liability.

They're going to look at TikTok like the thing that's going to keep them out of the Ivy League.

They're going to look at a book like

like the activity that's going to help set up my future.

And as a side effect, and this might be sort of leveraging a sort of crass instrumentality, but a side effect is these brains are going to be stronger and these are going to be more capable, more thriving, more successful citizens and individuals.

So this is a crisis, but it's also an opportunity.

I'll tell you what we don't need to do is say –

Well, AI is not going away, so why don't we just let all of our kids do everything with AI in school, and then are we high-tech?

Looking around, we're cool, right?