Can AI Replace Teachers? Inside the $40M Company Using AI Tutors to Teach 200% Faster | #233

Joe Liemandt (0:00)

If we're going to recreate school that's going to get our kids ready for the AI age going forward, first principles, what would you do? The first and most important, which is the most radical, should we say is.

Peter Diamandis (0:12)

US high schoolers at our historic lows in reading, math, and science. Americans today perceive college as far less important. Today, college graduates, they're the longest being unemployed. That's not sustainable.

Joe Liemandt (0:26)

We've known for 40 years how kids could learn 2, 5, or 10 times faster. Unfortunately, it doesn't work in a teacher in front of a classroom model.

MacKenzie Price (0:35)

We've really figured out how to use technology to deliver these really incredible learning results and do it in a fraction of the time.

Peter Diamandis (0:43)

Is everything perfect? What do you guys worry about? I love what you're doing. I just understand what's the flip side of the equation here?

Joe Liemandt (0:49)

You know, the biggest issue. Now, that's the Moonshot, ladies and gentlemen.

Peter Diamandis (0:58)

Everybody, welcome to Moonshots. Today, we're going to be speaking about the future of education and the role of AI in education. And this is not just for K through 12 university. It's also for re-skilling, right? Something that this rapid pace of AI is going to require every major company to start doing soon enough. This is a topic that we've been very outspoken about here on Moonshots, specifically how secondary and post-secondary education is failing us. It's failing our kids. It's not preparing them for the near-term, let alone the medium-term horizon. We're going to be diving into a new education model called Alpha Schools. I'm a fan that's gotten rave reviews and discussed the pros and cons of AI-driven education. Today, we're joined by the leadership of Alpha Schools, Mackenzie Price and Joe Lamont. Mackenzie is the co-founder and CEO of Alpha Schools. It's a K-12 program built around a two-hour learning model that she helped to pioneer. Prior to Alpha Schools, Price was for 17 years in the lending business and also working at Trilogy, a Stanford grad with a degree in psychology. She began questioning traditional schooling when she saw her own kid begin to lose enthusiasm for learning. I'm also proud that Mackenzie is an Abundance 360 member.

Alright, and Joe Lamont is the founder and CEO of ESW Capital and Trilogy, a billionaire entrepreneur who is actively playing a central role in funding and scaling Alpha Schools and playing the role as the principal, which I find incredible. He's built his fortune by buying and systematizing software companies, a playbook he's now applying to education. So, first off, welcome Mackenzie, welcome Joe, good to have you guys.

MacKenzie Price (2:46)

Thanks for having us, Peter. We love talking to education and we're excited to be here.

Peter Diamandis (2:51)

And of course, I've got my much smarter, much more brilliant Moonshot mates, Salim Ismail and DB2. Guys, welcome to the party here.

Dave Blundin (3:02)

And let me start by saying thank you for your service because you don't see a lot of highly, highly successful people turning back to work on K-12 education. There's no real big money in it. And it's purely a work of good in the world. So thank you so much for, for working on it.

Peter Diamandis (3:18)

Yeah, for sure. What I'd like to do is actually kick off by sharing a few slides that show the state of education in America today. And it's not that great. So let's, let me share these here. So here we go. This is unfortunate and very shocking. So US high schoolers at our historic lows in reading, math and science, only 35% of seniors in high school, 12th graders are at or above the reading proficiency level. This is down from 40% in 1992

Only 22% of seniors are math proficient and only 31% are proficient in science. And this is going into a world where math and science and reading is so fundamentally critical for us. On the flip side of secondary education going towards college, here's some other numbers that are seriously troubling. And these blow me away, but they're very real. So Americans today perceive college as far less important. So back in 2010, 75% of Americans thought that college was important for your kids. That has dropped down from 75% to 35%. And as a result of this, we're beginning to see college is going bankrupt. At the same time, tuition has grown 893% since 1983 As we're demonetizing and democratizing everything else, the cost of going to college is going up. And then here's the killer, that today college graduates are the group that are out of jobs the longest. They're the longest being unemployed. And so for me, that just cannot, that's not sustainable, right? I mean, Joe and McKenzie, you wanna lean into those challenges right now?