‘What if I told you this school had no teachers?’: Is AI schooling the future of education

Source Domain: www.cnn.com

Chatty, bright-eyed children surrounded US Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon as she walked with them through an airy building in Texas.

Part of a 50-state tour, this stop last year was at an unusual institution: the Austin campus of Alpha, a chain of private schools that educates students from grades K-12 using AI to speed-teach core academic subjects in just two hours a day.

They emphasize learning through AI rather than human teachers. There’s no homework and no textbooks — just software that students use each morning to learn, with human “guides” for motivation and classroom support.

A typical day starts just before 9 a.m. with a group activity that introduces a life skill to be taught during the day.

Students then sit down in front of laptops, plug in headsets or even virtual reality sets, and learn academics through an AI tutor. The two-hour curriculum includes four 30-minute sessions in math, science, social studies and language, and 20 minutes of additional learning concepts, like test taking skills.

The rest of the day is spent on workshops such as financial literacy, communication or problem solving.

“There is so much to do, so much opportunity that I’m just seeing here,” McMahon declared during her visit, at a roundtable with students and MacKenzie Price, one of Alpha’s founders and its public face.

Much has been made of the promise of artificial intelligence for every facet of life, and education is no exception.

The Trump administration has said that it wants to pioneer new uses of AI in schools, and McMahon has held up Alpha, whose network spans over a dozen locations across the US, as an exemplar of where education should be headed.

Founded with the backing of a tech billionaire in…

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