Steve Levitt

The us is me and my parents, and the them is the other kids at the school.

The us is all the kids at the school who are being empowered to do great stuff.

And I think if we could transform schools so that every kid felt like who they were was enough and that they should be trying to be who they are instead of trying to be valedictorian, it would change everything.

And that's what gets me so excited about it.

I'm going to surprise you with my answer.

I think both of those groups are exactly right.

If you are an engaged learner and you want to learn something, like you and I, when we're trying to prepare for an interview, there's never been a tool like AI, like Gemini, ChatGPT, for learning quickly when you need to learn something.

If you are unengaged and you are trying to find a way not to learn anything, there has never been a tool as effective as AI.

And I think the problem is, and why both are right, if students are not engaged,

they can get by without learning a single thing.

Where you talked about, oh, but AI lets me think deeply and critically about all sorts of issues without having to learn a bunch of silly facts.

That's true, but you also have a basis for thinking about the world because you've learned a lot of stuff along the way.

It is a tremendous fear and a rightful fear, the idea that the standard way we teach where students are unengaged,

AI has undone that.

And I watch my own kids skirt through life, learning nothing, letting AI do everything for them.

This is why over and over I'm stressing engagement and how when you see the kids engaged, it's so powerful and so emotional as an adult to watch it.

I think it's because engagement has become the thing that is the linchpin to education right now.

Because when kids are engaged,

They're empowered through AI and everything else to learn in a way that you and I couldn't have learned when we were kids because we had to go to the library.

It took forever to get our hands onto the keys to knowledge.