Meet the Student With No Teachers, No Homework—Just AI

[00:00] because I go to Alpha High School. I learn all my academic content through an AI-powered platform. In 20 days, I'm going to go fly out to San Francisco to work on my project full time, and I'm able to negotiate with my guides [00:11] If I finish semester A now, [00:13] I can come back from the trip. [00:15] finish semester B and still have my high school credit and get into my dream college. Why in general are people pessimistic? [00:21] about AI, it's because I think they're uncertain. And I think the important thing here is to [00:26] be grounded in rational optimism. [00:28] and understand what will this look like and what is the world that we should be building. [00:47] Dan here, and I want to take a second away from the episode to tell you about Granola. Granola is an AI note taker for your meetings, and I use it pretty much every day. That may sound a little bit weird or a little bit creepy, like transcribe all your meetings. Well, for me, it's actually kind of indispensable as a leader. Every is about 20 people now, and it's really important to me that I understand how decisions get made, how I'm showing up in meetings, and how I can help my team the best way I can. Granola acts a little bit like a leadership log for me so I can see how I've done in meetings, [01:17] Alex, welcome to the show.

[01:32] Thank you. I'm glad to be here. [01:33] So you are a very, very special guest because you are by far the youngest guest we have ever had on this show. You are 17. You go to Alpha High School in Austin, Texas. And you're an every reader. You're a podcast fan. And we talked a little while ago, and I wanted to have you on the show because... [01:54] In talking to you, I was like, wow, I'm [01:56] I'm old. [01:57] Um, and, uh, [02:01] I just hear all of these stories from people from Gen Z, Gen Alpha, younger, who are [02:09] And they're all talking about like, oh, kids hate technology, they hate AI, or they love it, or it's ruining their brains or whatever. And I actually just care a lot about how people your age and older and even younger are actually interacting with this stuff. I think it's such an interesting... [02:26] It's such an interesting question for me. [02:28] So just wanted to have you on the show to talk about, uh, [02:32] like how you're using AI, how you see it, how the people around you see it. [02:39] Alpha School is obviously like a super hot topic these days. So anything you want to tell us about that I think would be really interesting. So yeah, let's get started. Yeah. [02:52] I guess, tell me, how are you using it just like in your day-to-day life? [02:57] Yeah, it's a good question. I think the, so the biggest use case right now, because I go to alpha high school is I have no teachers. I learn all my content, all my, all the content, academic content through an AI powered platform. So when I say this, most people think, oh, you're just talking to chat or chatbot or whatever, but we actually have no AI chatbot tutor in the morning at all. Cause we,

[03:22] have tested and we've seen that [03:24] We either constrict it too much because we don't want people to cheat so much so that it's not helpful, or we don't restrict it enough so that students are just using it to cheat. And so instead, we have an AI in the background of our platform, which I can actually show you guys. And it basically customizes all the content towards us and figures out where kind of our... [03:47] our gaps are in our learning. And they're proprietary alpha apps that-- I'm actually not in any of them because they're not AP classes. And since I'm a senior in high school, I'm only pretty much doing AP classes. But yeah, there's just a mixture of alpha apps. [04:03] Third party apps all powered by AI tailored to each individual student. Wait. Okay. So like walk me through then your day. Like I don't understand. And you're saying we. Are you involved in Alpha School or you just go to Alpha School? I just go to Alpha School. But I say we because every quarter we get a survey and we give feedback on everything. Every day I'm giving feedback to the guides. And so the students are very involved. [04:25] Okay. So let's say it's, what time does school start? 8 a.m.? [04:29] 8:30. 8:30. So you get into school at 8:30. What's your first hour like? [04:33] So actually the first 15 minutes is what we like to call like Tony Robbins for kids. It's like getting energized, doing like a puzzle, whatever. We just want you to kind of transition from home life to school life. And you're in a class with how many people? [04:48] So the total high school is around 50 people. My senior year class is only eight people. So it's pretty small. Okay. And by class, I mean, I'm talking about like, give me the...

[04:58] you're in like a room with you and eight and seven other people and that's your that's your senior class and it's right in the morning and you're all kind of like uh doing your tony robbins thing or like how does it what it like set the scene for me a little bit for sure yeah so what's interesting is in alpha we have houses kind of like hogwarts and so there are like five houses um and they're [05:21] there's one special kind of house that we're experimenting with. [05:25] You're sorted into your houses via personality, progress in your project, things like that. And I can get into the Alpha X project, which is a big part of Alpha High School. But the special house is called Sparta. [05:36] So it's like the Spartans. And then we have a competing house called Athens, so Sparta v. Athens. And it's for the kids who are really working hard on their Alpha X project, which is an Olympic level project that they're trying to be the best in the world in and build a super cool product or service. And so it's for the people who really want to ramp it up. Anyways, I'll sit with my Spartans, you know, my fellow Spartans. And those are all age levels, basically. [06:01] What do you mean by that? Like your fellow Spartans, there's seniors, there's juniors, there's freshmen. [06:07] Yes, exactly. So it's a mix. And so we'll either do a big school opening because there's only 50 of us in the big open space or we'll go into our houses and talk about a book we read or whatever it is. [06:19] That's really cool. Okay. And, uh, okay. Remind me. So this, this 15 minute thing, like, is there, is there a teacher that's guiding it? Is a student guiding it? Is it an AI guiding it? How does it work?

[06:30] All three. It just depends on the day. Sometimes we've had expert AI debates where we debate in AI. There's kind of a guide or a teacher kind of walking us through it. Sometimes it's very student driven. We're like, hey, we just wanted to talk about this today. Like we just found a really cool tweet and we just wanted to talk about it. Sometimes in Sparta we'll have books that we read together. And so we can talk about that. It just really depends. [06:53] And how are teachers involved? And are you calling you call them guides, not teachers? [06:57] Yes, we call them guides, not teachers. The role of, let me set the scene, the role of a teacher right now is like, they're doing five different things. They are talking to parents, they're trying to teach the content, they're trying to grade the papers, they're trying to help people be motivated, they're doing other admin work, they're doing so many different things. And so the goal of Alpha is to just [07:17] you know, create a new role for each individual thing. So there's like a dean of parents to deal with parents. And then obviously the content is taught by AI. And now the role of the guide, which is super important, is just solely focused on [07:30] motivating students, giving them emotional support, and helping them figure out what they want to do and how they want to do it. And so it's super important that we have the guides to kind of facilitate everything and make sure we're on pace to complete our goals. [07:42] Are they topic expert guides? Is there a French class that's taught by a French teacher? Guided by a French teacher? Or is there one guide for the house and whatever you're doing, they're expected to be able to follow you and help you with emotional support and the expert is the AI?

[08:03] Yeah, that's a good question. So it kind of depends and we're still learning things. But in terms of the guides, what are their backgrounds? Usually they have to take an IQ test and things like that. They have to come be with the students. We get to hire and fire guides, which we have done before. And I'm very picky with my guide selection. I say no to most of them. But we have guides who used to be lawyers. [08:26] guides used to be entrepreneurs, guides used to be copywriters, [08:29] And they all have different strengths. And so even though I have one house guide, Cameron, who's my house guide, is really into entrepreneurship and trying to build up entrepreneurship program for Alpha School. I'll go to him for specifically that kind of thing. If I want to maybe vent to one of my guides, I'll go to a different one. [08:45] They all have just unique special abilities. [08:49] Okay, so like let's get further into the day. So you do the 15 minute thing with your house and then what? [08:54] So the first three hours for high school, two hours for the younger kids are just you [09:00] doing your apps and we chunk it into pomodoro timer so 27 minutes of school work and then five minutes break and then one long break uh you can go out to go get coffee from joe's or the grocery store whatever you want to do um and [09:14] During those 27 minutes, you're locked in, usually on one subject, and you're watching a video and taking notes, reading an article, doing a quiz. It's not like, again, it's not chatting with a chatbot. You're actually like reading material, consuming things, trying to learn. Who's telling you which one to do, though? [09:29] So that's... [09:30] every week you'll have a meeting with your guide and you're like, here's where I'm at with all my courses. I'm good at math. So I'm like 88% through my math course and we're not close to the end of the year yet, but I'm really bad at reading and I'm like barely through my AP literature course. And so we'll set custom XP or goals. That's our kind of metric of choice to see what we need to hit by the end of the week to be on track to finish our courses.

[09:53] Interesting. And then you set the goals and then when you sit down, the AI is kind of like, [10:00] Your goal is to get better at reading books. [10:03] how about we do a Pomodoro on XYZ thing? Or are you saying, I know my goal is this, hey, what should I, I'm going to open up the app for reading. I don't know exactly how it works, but yeah, explain how that works. It's even more seamless where it's like, you on the dashboard, there's like course one, course two, APSci, whatever. Can I see it? Can you just show me it? Is that possible? Yeah. Yeah. And just describe what's there for people who are listening so that if you're listening, you understand what's going on. [10:31] Totally. So there's a little dashboard here and it basically has a toggle of all of my courses. And it's a mix of proprietary alpha apps. So if it's a proprietary alpha app, I'll be doing the work inside of this system, which we call TimeBack. And if it's not, it'll take us to the, you know, [10:50] external kind of resource. So right now I'm on AP Psychology. I'm a bit through unit one. And it's just like, here's what you have to do next. So if we show past completed items, we'll see, oh, I've done all these readings. I've done this quiz. The quizzes are super interesting because you start at a 0% and we're trying to work our way up to mastery. That's super important. Mastery-based learning, as you know. And [11:13] Uh, you know, I've, I've been through all these things already mix of again, video reading, quiz video. Um, and now I just have another, you know, video to watch on my AP psychology. [11:22] APs are usually about curation over creation. There's just a bunch of AP resources out there. So our academic teams take the best ones and we'll get the super energetic guy who's already embedded learning science into the videos. And it's similar for, you know, the kind of social sciences, video, lesson, quiz. So as you can see here, this is one of the quizzes.

[11:46] We call it a power pass score. Start at zero, work up to 100. Every time, you know, I get one right or get one, let's just... [11:53] submit one. I got it wrong. My PowerPath score went down. My accuracy went down. And we consider mastery to be above an 80% mastery score. Got it. [12:03] because that's like enough to be able to move on and fill gaps later if it's really a problem. [12:08] This is really interesting. Okay, so I'm looking at this and it reminds me a lot of like, [12:14] I've used Khan Academy before. There's a similar sort of, there's a set of, there's videos, there's quizzes, and you kind of like go down the path, but it wasn't like part of a structure. It was just like you're allowed to do this if you want. [12:28] Yeah. And I'm looking at this and thinking of myself when I was like, "What? [12:32] a sophomore or junior, especially with AI and being like, [12:37] I could agentify this and I wouldn't have to do all the readings and all the stupid videos and whatever. So... [12:46] Tell me about that experience of learning this way and also the experience of being forced to learn this way and then how you, I mean, I think you're being forced. [12:57] I certainly, like there are certain things in AP literature that you're interested in. There's certain things where it's like, I guess I have to just do this to take the test. Yeah. So, yeah, tell me about that. [13:07] Yeah, I want to give you some more context. I this is my second year at Alpha. I used to go to a really like tough magnet school. So I was spending like 12 hours a day on schoolwork and they were all lecture based. And so with lectures, you just have to kind of sit through everything, like you said, no matter if you're interested or not.

[13:25] What's interesting here is I was just in a meeting with one of the academics people and they were like, [13:31] Um, let's set some more goals and tell us the pain points you're having right now. And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm obsessed with AP psychology. I can just breathe through it because it is the most interesting thing to me, um, ever. [13:43] And because it's related to my, you know, my project. And they're like, great, like, let's just do that. But I'm like, oh my gosh, can I just tell you, AP Lit is my least favorite thing in the world. I'd rather do anything than. [13:53] and do APLIT. And they're like, okay, let's set up a motivational model to incentivize you to do so. And so I don't know if I'm hitting the right question here, but for the classes that you're really struggling with, there are incentives for you to actually do them, whether it be money towards your project. It could be food. We do these things called FOMOs where we go out and I think last time we're at some rooftop Christmas thing and we all got hot chocolate and played [14:23] that we can do to incentivize you to do things. [14:25] But also on a more technical level, like, let's go back here. [14:30] You can see when, um, uh, [14:34] you know, how long someone is spending on a lesson. If I get out of the lesson, it'll say lesson paused. And so you can't like they can tell if you're like trying to cheat or something, whatever. But yeah. [14:46] I hope that answers that. [14:48] It does. I'm still like, I don't know. I throw this, I could throw this into chat GPT Atlas and, you know, have it click around and watch some stuff for me while I'm off doing my thing. You never do that. Yeah.

[14:57] No, not at all. Because they can see that as well. Like on my school laptop, I'm not my school laptop right now. They have, you know, a screen share thing and they can see what we're doing on all of our screens. They have a waist meter. So they're watching our faces to see if we're talking with friends or doing something else. [15:12] Interesting. They're very precise. You know, the big thing about Alpha is we want to measure everything to make sure that you're actually getting the experience you deserve. And I will be honest, it's like 90% motivation, 10% ed tech. Like the learning science here is great. All the interleaving, do the different subjects, whatever. You know, where I know about it because I understand why it's optimal for my learning. But the big thing is, oh, in 20 days, I'm going to go fly out to San Francisco to work on my project full time. And I'm able to negotiate with my guides. [15:42] I'm gonna finish semester A now. [15:44] I can come back from the trip, finish semester B and still have my high school credit and get into my dream college or whatever. So it's that flexibility. It's the deal. Also, I will say it is so different for Alpha High School because a lot of us are, you know, teenagers are a funny little species. And we're in our rebellious phase, whatever. We want more autonomy. And there's a bit more flexibility here for the younger kids. You know, they're just on their two hours doing their apps, doing their reading and writing kind of core, core skills. [16:14] workshops. And so motivation is a bit more straightforward there.

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[18:35] hours of your day. What happens after that? [18:37] Yeah. Do you have recess? I mean, I guess you're in high school, so you probably wouldn't have recess, but do you have like free periods? Yeah. Tell me, tell me what, what happens next? [18:44] Because of the Pomodoros and because of the freedom in the afternoon, there's no need for it, at least for high school. For the younger kids, the five-minute Pomodoro things are their recess. And yeah, we should also get into some of the workshops. But for high school, it's very interesting. We have kind of, I'd say like three distinct tracks where people are going down. [19:14] we have the Ivy League track. So these are the kids who really want to get into [19:18] the best college in the world. [19:19] Aren't those the same? [19:20] They're a little bit different because for the Alpha High Honors track, maybe you want to become a pilot or maybe you want to, you know, do something that's like non-traditional, but it doesn't really, you know, mesh well with the getting to dream college kind of thing. And so [19:38] There's different programming there. And then for the third one, this is like the entrepreneurship track. You really want to go hard on your business, build a startup, raise money, whatever it is. [19:50] Do people your age care about college? I used to, like, as I said, I used to go, I feel like I've been in very two distinct bubbles. So I try to be aware of that. And in my old school, the bubble and, you know, groupthink was the only reason you're in high school is to get into a good college. And the bubble here is more nuanced. And it's like...

[20:12] Does it make sense for you to go to college? I can kind of walk you through my thinking about how I'm thinking about it. I talk to others about it, but yeah, sure. For me, there's kind of like, [20:21] three distinct paths I see myself taking. And my goal right now is to optimize for [20:26] having all decisions possible when it's time to make the right decision. So the three distinct paths are number one, [20:33] go to like one of the best universities. So for me, my top two are Harvard and Berkeley right now. The second path is go to like an alternative university. So I don't know if you've heard of Minerva or University of Austin, which is like right down the street. I know University of Austin. I thought that shut down. [20:50] No, they kind of revamped it actually. They're now my version free, whatever. But it's a bit different from Alpha, but there's like a nice pipeline there. [20:57] And that's a really interesting option. And there's scholarships and things like that to cover living. So basically my university would be free. And then the third path is like, you know, Teal Fellowship, go all into my idea, whatever it might be. [21:10] And so I don't know what the right choice is because I'm kind of in the stage where I'm trying to [21:15] bring my project from like something I'm doing in school to like become real world, raise real money, build a team, things like that, which I fully believe I can do. And the people around me fully believe I can do. It's just like, does it make sense for me at the right time? [21:29] Yeah. [21:30] Interesting. Okay. And then what about [21:33] the people around you [21:35] Mm. [21:36] Yeah, so I'm going to give you some case studies. I have a friend who has two million on TikTok.

[21:43] And she's like two million followers. And she is. [21:49] starting to do brand deals and is making like 10, 15K per brand deal. [21:54] And she's really cool. She has a great message with her audience, a lot of resonance, very positive, very mission-driven. And so she is really interested in like – [22:03] turning influence into ownership before her project idea was like Y Combinator, but for influencer girls. [22:10] because distribution is king now. And so she's still experimenting with ideas, but she wants to go to-- she got it to Stanford. She wants to go to Stanford and kind of figure out what the right move is for her. [22:22] Why does she want to go to Stanford if she's already like pretty much, I mean, maybe she feels like this is not necessarily her career path, but yeah, what's the calculus of going to Stanford? [22:30] From what I understand, she loves being an influencer, but she also really, really wants just like the college experience, like being with your best friends, whatever it is, going to parties, whatever it is. And so she just wants to have a lot of fun. And I think for my other friend, she's building an AI powered teen dating coach. She has like 70,000 users. [22:53] She's actually doing lots of different projects. And she's doing her own thing. She's figuring things out. But she also got it. Stanford wants to go there. She also wants to [23:00] you know, college experience. Her sister goes to Stanford and she loves it. And so, you know, they're going to end up there and doing their thing. And we don't know what will happen, you know, a year or two down the line. [23:13] How do you feel about...

[23:16] Like when I was your age, I, [23:19] Which at this point was 15-ish years ago. [23:25] It there were there were starting to be people being like, you don't need to go to college, but it was still like very much. This is the this is the thing you have to do. [23:32] if you want to have any sort of life at all. [23:35] And now I feel like what I'm hearing from you is. [23:42] you can do that and it's still appealing for people and there's like many more different options depending on what you want um but there can be sometimes [23:49] having more choices can be [23:51] hard, especially if you're young and you don't actually know who you are and what you want. So how does that feel for you? [23:58] At times, extremely overwhelming. I think I've been trying to be intentional about [24:05] you know, surrounding myself with [24:07] people who have very diverse perspectives. So for example, [24:10] My family is very traditional. Both my parents are dentists. They all, you know, their path and my brother is doing the same thing. Go to school, get a degree, get a job. Then I have like the best person that comes to mind is Danielle from 1517. Her whole thing is like we're backing dropouts. And, you know, the institution is what is what's causing problems in young people and crushing curiosity and things like that. And so, yeah. [24:33] Yes, it's overwhelming, but it's also super exciting because I get to be around all these different kinds of people and learn and see what's right for me. And so I think for me, it's like I have to test to see what's right for me. [24:43] You know, there are some things in life you just have to do. You can't like be told by other people, um, how to think about it. Um, you just have to see what's right for you. And, uh,

[24:52] I think that's kind of what I've taken away from it. [24:55] Okay, interesting. And then tell me about your generation. And this can be people you're around, and also just your feeling about, [25:02] all the different people of your age that you're exposed to in whatever way it could be, on social media or whatever. What's their view of AI? [25:16] It's such a hard estimate because algorithms are giving you some random shit. Like, I just don't know. But here's my guess. Here's my guess. [25:23] I think that half of [25:27] like Gen Z is pessimistic about AI. [25:30] A quarter is just uncertain. [25:33] And a quarter is, I think, are pretty optimistic about it. [25:40] Um, [25:41] And I think [25:42] even though half of the people are like hating on AI, still 75%, maybe 70% of people are, [25:49] are using AI have used AI once. And I can go down those rabbit holes. Let me know what you think is interesting. Because I've seen lots of statistics [25:58] I saw one recently saying, super tied into my project, 72% of teens have used AI for companionship at least once. [26:07] 52% of teens are using AI for companionship pretty much every single day. [26:11] And so I totally believe that's true. And, [26:15] It's just very interesting times. [26:18] Interesting. [26:21] Wait, so are you Gen Z or are you Gen Alpha?

[26:24] Gen Z. Gen Z is aged right now 16 to like 24-ish. That's interesting. I thought it was a shift a little bit. Okay, so you're Gen Z. All right, got it. And when you think about the... [26:37] It's kind of interesting if you're like, I hate AI and I use it all the time. What is that about? [26:43] Yeah, I think there's different reasons people hate AI. I was actually just talking about this with my friend last night. [26:50] So, you know, the big worry for Gen Z, I think, is environmental concerns, actually. The second big, big worry is- And by that, you mean like global warming, energy use, all that kind of stuff? Energy use, water use, yep. Energy consumption, mainly. The second big one, this might be bigger, I'm not sure, is job uncertainty. [27:10] The third big one. [27:11] And these are for people who are, I think, like a bit more, have a bit more metacognition or like, um, [27:18] I'm just worried about it replacing humans or taking away from humanity, AI art, things like that. And from what I can tell, most of Gen Z is just very pessimistic about the future. [27:30] extremely pessimistic, or at least for the ones who are super aware and online and things like that. [27:33] And so it's hard to make the generalization, but that's what I've seen. But people use AI because it's easy to cheat or help write your essays for college or whatever it is. [27:44] Also, there's a huge loneliness crisis, and people want to use it for companionship, and it's easy and seamless and frictionless. [27:52] Do you think that social media rotted your generation's brain?

[27:56] Yes, 100%. But I want to give social media some credit because I only hear like, "Social media is bad, da-da-da." I have been like... So this past two weeks was winter break. And I wanted to run a little experiment. [28:10] I was like training my algorithms to be a bit more like educational. I also am like interested in this new kind of, [28:17] emerging field question mark around like human just like human humanity because i like my hypothesis with the you know ai pessimism is there's going to be a huge like humans versus ai thing a lot of people are like usa versus china i think it's humans versus ai um and so i'm curious about this new little bubble of information human studies human studies whatever it is um and so i was training my and there's different things for you know i'm on pretty much all social media it's [28:47] things like that. My Instagram is now very focused on like, [28:51] people trying to build brands that are very human and people like being like sad about AI or. What do you do? You just like, you just like six or seven things and, and in the category that you're trying to, trying to do. Yeah. [29:03] even more aggressive where it's like click not as interested in some things but okay so social media is first of all the the thing i want to give credit for is uh transfer of ideas or matt really matt ridley calls it idea sex so you know the ideas of creating new knowledge i think that's really interesting but the thing you have to be careful of is constant [29:23] just like information overload versus like actually processing it. So that's something I caught myself on. The second big thing is this is how we talk with each other. So my friend who's building the AI teen dating coach, dating, she's running a study with a big psychologist. And she's like, dating now is not...

[29:39] you go out on a date, whatever. There's a very clear formula. You meet someone somehow, or you get referred or whatever, you get their snap. So you snap, [29:47] You just like send them pictures and then you start Snapchatting them, chatting them on Snap. And then you message them and then you call them and then you FaceTime them and then you see them in person. And so the way in which we're communicating now, the way we communicate with some people is send me an Instagram reel. And that's our form of connection. And some people might view it as bad. There's less oxytocin release. I've looked into the studies there. But it's also the way that we are connecting with each other. We're laughing together. It's part of the optimism and joy we get in life. And so I think that's very interesting. [30:17] But you said also, so I think that's a very compelling picture. And I do like the reason I asked the question is I think there's probably some balance to be had, like the overwhelming narrative is that it's negative. Speaker 1: [30:30] when you think about what the negative things are, [30:32] maybe for you or people you're around that are your age, like what do you think they are? [30:36] Yeah, so biggest one I've seen in my life is... [30:40] you know, me not catching myself in terms of being overstimulated by everything. [30:45] or overwhelmed or just like my attention [30:48] is not good because obviously you're just dopamine heads forever. It's so addicting. I find myself scrolling still. [30:55] The second big thing, other than the neuroscience, just your brain is becoming more mushy. The second big thing is you are comparing yourself to people online. [31:06] I've seen a lot of things. There's a funny video of like nature influencers who are like setting up their camera and making them look like they're walking through nature or, you know, people saying, my life as a 24 year old girl in New York City getting coffee, da da da. So there's lots of comparison. I think those are the two big ones.

[31:26] Do you read books? [31:28] uh yes i've i've no actually no that's my answer i am not a big book reader never have been i hated reading ever since i was young um [31:39] the only function of [31:41] I have a lot of friends actually who read for fun still, which is really interesting, but much, much less than it was literally five years ago, four years ago. Um. [31:49] And the reason I read books is because I want to see... [31:53] Um, [31:54] you know, people's interesting thoughts. It's not for the story, it's for the content. And what I've now noticed is there, I think there are some books that are good to read. Like I'm trying to, I'm going to read the Bible probably later this summer and Republic and, you know, [32:07] classic philosophy books just for fun. But also people like Michael Gibson's Paper Belt on Fire, like I just want to hear his thoughts about it and then ask him questions to deepen, you know, those kinds of things. But now you can find everyone's takes on Twitter. You can ask ChatGPT to summarize the most important points. You can get a book, open it up, take a picture, say expand on this with ChatGPT. So it's like, it's just not generative and dynamic. And so it's a static piece of knowledge. And I think the value I get personally from it is the content itself, not the writing, [32:37] and not trying to increase my attention span. You know, I can do that in other ways. And so... [32:42] I at least have Grok voice mode with me while I'm reading it or something like that. [32:47] And when you have, I do that too, by the way, I love, I love doing that. I actually built like a little custom app for this. Um, yeah, I'll send you the test flight. Um, but for the friends that you have that are readers, why do they read and, and what makes them different?

[33:05] - Ooh, I have lots of different types of reader friends. I think some read in spite of AI. Like they're like, I don't want to become that. Some read because they just love the story. [33:18] Um, some read cause they just did it as a kid and it's like a habit of theirs. Um, some of my friends read cause, and I've done this to like, um, optimize their sleep. Like I read a page of book before bed. Like those are the main reasons. It's not. [33:33] I don't think we think very deeply about it, actually. I think it's just like... [33:37] you either read or you don't. And our form of reading, actually in alpha, we should go into like what we do in the afternoon. Like we're required to read. We're required to read the research about our field. And we're required to go beyond that research that we've read to create insights of our own. And so reading is still a big part of it. In my classes, I still, you know, I'm [33:57] required to read Great Gatsby and things like that. And so the reason I said no is just because [34:02] Most people, when they think of reading, it's like someone out on, you know, under a tree reading a book like that doesn't really happen anymore. [34:08] And the difference is you're just reading with your AI companion. [34:12] That's me personally. I think most people don't read with AIs that are young. They're reading just because they enjoy it. [34:20] Mm-hmm. And people who are not reading at all, what is the thing that's replacing that? Is it video games? Is it social media? Is it like chatting with your AI? Or [34:33] Let's say for this, there's maybe there's two big categories. One is.

[34:37] story, like consuming stories or being parts of stories. And then another one is maybe just pursuing stuff that you're interested in, like really getting deep into, into like a subject that you care about maybe like, what are the replacements for, for reading? And I'm just saying this cause I like, I love books. And so it's like, it's a dagger to my heart that young people are reading less. And I'm just, I'm also interested. If you're using AI to code, you know, the pain, too many terminal pains, multiple agents running at once, copy pasting context [35:07] and trying to remember which branch has what. The bottleneck isn't writing code anymore, it's coordinating agents. [35:12] Intent is a developer workspace built for orchestrating agents, not just running them side by side. It starts with a living spec that updates as agents make progress, so every task stays aligned with no manual coordination. Intent works best with Augment's Augie and their context engine, but you can also bring Cloud Code, Codex, or OpenCode. Intent is what comes after your IDE. Try it yourself at augmentcode.com/intent. That's augmentcode.com/intent. Build with intent. And now, back to the episode. [35:42] go into here. So how are people replacing reading? So for the entertainment side, it's obviously TV shows usually, video games, gossiping with friends. There's some really fun AI entertainment applications. So [35:56] Like the Charlie Kirk song, that's an AI song that went super viral. Like just people... [36:02] I think like embracing culture, talking about culture is a big part of our entertainment, which is due to social media, which most people see as a bad thing, which could there are some bad elements of it. But I think it's really interesting and really cool.

[36:14] And so that's really interesting. The other thing that's really interesting is how people are using AI for entertainment. I'll just cover it quickly. I found Sesame's model when it first came out a year ago. And I was like, this is so cool. I showed it to one of my friends. This friend is very fun and energetic and funny. And she started gaslighting one of the Sesame AI models into thinking it was Barack Obama. And we were just having a really fun time just talking to this Sesame AI, gaslighting it, feeling it out, just having fun with it. And she made a YouTube video [36:44] I think made a TikTok that went pretty well or whatever about it. And there's so many things like that that are being done with AI. But in terms of entertainment, that's the first part of how people are kind of replacing reading. In terms of how they're consuming content, like educationally or trying to learn, [37:01] Yeah, from what I've seen, it's like you can just... [37:04] like you're curious about something, go ask your LGBT, go ask one of the AIs. [37:08] I use deep research pretty much every day to learn stuff. I'm obsessed with [37:13] By the way, the way I got introduced to you was I saw your podcast with Dwarkech, and I have been obsessed with my... [37:20] the way I learned for probably a year or two ever since I joined Alpha, because it's so nuanced and complex. And I think that [37:29] There's just some very interesting ways people are using AI in the framework of [37:33] capturing or curation or lots of different things there. [37:36] That's fascinating. [37:38] Wait, so you use deep research... [37:40] Because I don't really use it anymore because I feel like most of the answers, if you put on thinking, are pretty...

[37:45] Pretty good. What do you use Deep Research for? Yeah. So I was on a walk with my friend yesterday and I was, we were talking about AI and climate and I was like, I actually don't know much about water usage. I watched one Hank Green video. So I was like, okay, let me just pull it out and it'll generate while I'm walking. [38:00] Um, [38:02] two days ago, I just use it every day to like, there's an, I think I've done a lot of research in my space and I really want to go super deep in like just very specific things. So I think the use case for me is like, I can just put it on. And then when it's time for me to do my research for the day or whatever it is, I just read through it and I'm like, oh, this is interesting. I don't care about this. This is interesting. And then I'll go deeper with any LLN. Are you using ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini or like, what's your, what's your go-to? [38:29] Literally two days ago, I tested all for deep research. All have very different strengths and weaknesses. Grok has a pretty bad deep research, so I didn't use that. But Grok has a great voicemail. I just use all of them for different applications. Notebook LM is... [38:46] one of the greatest things i've used in a long time and i think it's going to be insanely adopt like insane adoption in in schools because it is crazy powerful um yeah [38:56] Okay, actually, this is really interesting to me. If you and this is based on your own usage patterns, I know that you use them for different use cases. But if you had to rank [39:04] all of the AI applications, if you had to rank all of the AI applications, like Claude, ChatGPT, let's put Claude code in a separate category, Notebook LM, Gemini, Grok,

[39:17] Rank all of the AIs from S tier to F tier. Okay. Okay. Hold on. I'm going to start with the foundation models and then we'll go to the AI apps. Great. So for the foundation models, number one for me is Claude because I am a, my whole project is around creating models that are not sycophantic for my specific use case. And I am just, I called email Daria, by the way, and he like gave me some advice and stuff. So I'm so biased because I'm like, this cool guy is like, you're talking to me, but I just like have so much trust in. [39:46] the leaders of Anthropic and I watched the founders table video that they had. And so I just respect their research, the way they're approaching whatever. And I love artifacts so much. Like, that's like the number one, my favorite thing of any LLM. My second favorite right now is ChatGPT. I think their deep research is the best for me and my specific use case. And it's my, as their [40:16] I think [40:17] It's hard. Gemini and Grok are kind of tied, but Gemini is slightly above just because I love Demis Hissabas. And also because Gemini 3 is really cool. And I think there are some, I just like think TPUs are cool. And I think they have a lot of data. And I just trust, I just think Google is going to be great. And it is, I barely use it right now, but I think it's cool. And Grok is cool because they're just going crazy and trying things. And I don't know. But that's the one I use the least. In terms of applications, [40:47] So at Alpha, we also do hackathons. And so our first one was using Cursor and Vercel, whatever, to build a video game. And so I'm not someone who's like super, super technical coding all the time. Cursor is pretty awesome, though.

[41:02] Um, [41:03] But it's hard to-- I use so many apps. Granola is like my favorite right now. Whisperflow is my favorite right now. [41:09] There's a new app called Sublime. Have you heard of this? I love Sublime. I bought the Lifetime. I went on a call with Sari and I was like, hey, can you tell me about your thing? And then I bought the Lifetime because I think it's so cool. [41:21] I think I have a folder in Sublime with all the AI tools out there that I've tried. And those are the ones that are really sticky. I'm obsessed with AI hardware. I've tried the Limitless Pin, Pocket, pretty much all of them. And I'm really excited for Stream, the new ring. I just pre-ordered that. That, I think, is going to be my go-to. I'm excited for Taya Necklace. That's really cool. [41:46] Not a fan of Friend, but I don't know. There's so many. I'm probably missing so many, but those are some of the ones that I use and I'm so passionate about it. I like it. I love that Claude got the S tier. That's really, really interesting. Dario, if you're listening, you're doing a good job. [42:00] Yeah, yes, 100%. [42:03] what are the like what are the weird things like the weird little apps or corners of the internet that [42:11] kids your age are using or into right now that I probably wouldn't have heard of. [42:15] Oh, that's such a good question. [42:18] Oh. [42:21] Hmm. [42:22] I don't think it's like apps in particular from what I understand. I think actually interesting case study is Finch. Have you heard of Finch? [42:32] Finch is like a habit self-care kind of app and it's kind of like Tamagotchi. You have a little

[42:39] pet and if you do habits you can like give them clothes and stuff. If you look at the trend of teenagers and what they're using, it's very like I think they're obsessed with [42:50] with these character things and labubus and squishmallows and jelly cats and things like that. [42:56] Hence what [42:58] We can get into my project later, but that's just a trend I've noticed. The corners of the internet are usually on social media. So I always use BookTok as an example, TikTok for books. So that's still very alive and there are Gen Z people there. [43:10] I know about that one. I'm talking about the weird, the weird stuff. Oh gosh. I just think it's like, [43:17] It's just random trends. It's like there's no stickiness, which is interesting. It just moves so fast. It's like we're now we were talking about 6-7 and now I don't even know what we're talking about. It's hard to keep up with. So I used 6-7 earlier in this interview and I didn't know if you noticed. You just like six or seven things and I was waiting for the reaction, but [43:47] of trained my brain where I'm like if someone like I'm never gonna say six seven because it is dead it's old and I just have this terrible negative association with it but but the this like Gen Z slang I feel like is kind of like there's always been slang but it's like [44:01] new like there's a lot more there's and it's more um it's it's decentralized right like there's no one person creating the culture yes like the kardashians and whatever and the celebrities people are looking up to and uh we should talk about insecurity because i think that's what's the driver of a lot of this stuff but it's just it depends on what corner of the internet you are and i think it all comes down to like

[44:22] culture. Like we're made to read this, like forced to read this book at Alpha called 10 to 25. It's a great book. It's all about how 10 to 25 year olds are motivated, what they're motivated by. And the number one thing is they're motivated by status and respect. They're trying to figure out their place in the world. We're going to get existential real quick here. They're trying to figure out their place in the world and who they want to impress and whatever it is. And so pretty much every decision they make is oriented around that. And [44:48] I think it's just there's just going to be this insane explosion of culture in the next in 2026 with this, you know, now decentralized creators. There's so many small little creators that have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands followers on YouTube, whatever that people follow. And it's just it's so nuanced and just depends on the person. [45:08] I would love for you to send me if you have a couple of those where you're like, this person is small, but I watch them all the time or they're blowing up. I would love to hear. [45:17] who those people are. I can interview some of my friends, ask them as well. [45:20] Yeah, definitely. Definitely do that. Um, [45:24] Okay. You mentioned this sort of libubu trend, the plushy trend. And I know that relates to your project. You want to tell us the project that you're working on and frame for us what a project is at Alpha School. Yeah, let's go back. So this is the reason I transferred into Alpha. [45:41] I transferred in as an 11th grader. And in my ninth and 10th grade years, [45:45] I was exposed to AI before ChatGPT blew up just because one of my teachers was so awesome. So I saw Midjourney OpenAI's Playground before it became Chat and like all these different things. And so...

[45:56] I was super passionate about AI, was building projects, whatever, heard about Alpha and heard about this thing called an Alpha X project. And basically what it is, is a super big Olympic level project that shows that you are the best in the world. You are literally the best in the world at what you do and provides a very unique experience. [46:15] It's built on a unique insight that you have about the world to serve a certain population. So it's usually a startup. But as you've heard, I have influencer friends. I have friends who are building musicals, lots of different varieties of projects. And at the beginning of your alpha kind of career, you are sat down with your guide and you go through the, I'm sure you've heard of Ikigai process, what you're good at, what the world needs, what you can make a living off of, and what you're interested in. [46:45] a niche of expertise that you want to go deep into. We find an insight, we find a way to solve a problem or whatever it is. And we start trying to build the product, build the service. [46:57] build our audience, build distribution, and become the world's greatest expert in our field and create genuine insights. And I can go into those three verticals, but those are the three things you're kind of tested on. And what's your project? [47:10] So yeah, so I came in being, I'm a very problem oriented person. I want to solve a huge problem. That's my goal. And so my analysis was, if I want to solve a big problem over the next 10 years, it has to be super emotionally connected to me. And so there were kind of two big problems I wanted to solve.

[47:40] By the way, I... [47:41] I'm the number one ed tech hater because there's a new ed tech company every month and they all die, but we can go into that too. And then the other problem that's super near and dear to me is mental health. A lot of my family members have been in inpatient hospitals because of their mental health problems. I've struggled with my mental health in my old school. A lot of my friends texted me at 2 a.m., 3 a.m. I was the friend who would text back and help them through things. And so I was like, I see this huge gap in education. [48:05] in teenagers in particular, young people in particular, you have these insecurities, these day-to-day problems that can compound into real problems later on, like with my parents. And they're going to either friends to solve their problems, which doesn't really work. They just validate them. Or they go to parents or therapists, which they give them good advice, but it doesn't resonate. And now they're going to AI companions and 52%, like I said, use them every day. We've already seen two suicide cases. I just got sent a news report. [48:32] segment about an AI toy giving misinformation to eight-year-olds. And I was like, this is not what it should be. Someone who is like actually ingrained in the culture and the generation needs to be building this. And so I decided to build Barry, which is an AI stuffed animal for teens day-to-day problems. They talked about it for five to 10 minutes a day. The goal is to build the muscle of self-awareness. So it's not [48:54] Like you're dependent on it. You're, you know, built up to learn about yourself and cope and, you know, deal with your problems in the right way. But it's also super fun. My goal is to be the next Build-A-Bear. I'm partnering with influencers to have custom versions. It's super soft. It's weighted. It's cooling. And yeah, I'm just super excited about where we're going with it. How do I get one?

[49:12] you can pre-order I'll send you the link send me the link and we'll put the link in the show notes for anyone who wants one [49:18] Yeah. So I, yeah, let me know what you want to go into. Cause I could talk about this for literally days. Well, we have a few minutes left. So what's the, what's the last burning thing that you want to talk about that you feel like we haven't covered, but you think people should know? [49:32] So I think the big thing is, you know, why in general are people pessimistic about AI? It's because I think they're uncertain and they just don't know what is the future, what's going to be left. If humans are going to be left, will AI replace humanity? Will AI replace individual humans? What is it going to look like? And I think the important thing here is to [49:55] be grounded in rational optimism and understand what, what, what will this look like and what is the world that we should be building? And so I was telling you earlier, I'm super obsessed with this idea of this humanity studies, human studies and, and understanding, you know, [50:12] what will be uniquely human in the age of AI? And I think there's a couple things that are super core, I think, here. The first is... [50:21] What is something that an AI can never replace, at least in the state they're at right now? It's human connection, vulnerability, emotional intelligence, [50:31] you know, all, [50:32] appreciation, gratitude, loving nature, things like that. Things that are just very near and dear to humanity. And so I, you know, I wish I could write angel checks because there's a lot of these tools that are just like really going deep into these. So Sublimes is all about human curation. I've asked AI to make me a playlist on Spotify or to give me the top 10 experts in my field. And it's pretty bad. It's terrible, actually. It doesn't, it can't capture, you know, the taste

[51:02] that's going to be something that's uniquely human for, for my product. It's, [51:05] AIs will never replace having someone you can talk to, like a human that you're talking to, but it can help you build the skills or it can help you give you the right information to work on your mental health. It can give you the space to practice vulnerability. And I'm just so obsessed with this idea of what is going to be uniquely human and how can we allow humans to do what humans do best and replace all the boring jobs so that people can [51:33] create art or whatever it is. So I think... [51:36] When I was talking to my friend yesterday about this, she was like, I'm just so pessimistic about the future. I think the world's going to end in maybe 2000 years. I don't know. But I just feel like everything is over. And it's hard to express this. It has to be grounded in this rationality, but I'm just so optimistic about the future. And I really hope that I can share that with other people, too, because it is just so exciting. And I'm so excited to be live right now. [51:59] I love this. What a, what a pleasure. Um, I, you're making me excited and, uh, we're very lucky to have people like you in the, in the next generation, um, to, to show us the way. Um, and it's, it's good to see that the kids are going to be all right. Yeah. Um, Alex, thank you so much for joining. If people want to, uh, get in touch or, uh, [52:22] your product, where can they find you? [52:24] Yeah, Twitter is the main one for probably you guys, but I'll give you all my socials and [52:29] And yeah, totally reach out to me too. I love talking to people.

[52:33] Awesome. Um, [52:35] Thanks for joining. [52:36] Of course. Thanks, Dan. [53:06] and laughter that will leave you on the edge of your seat. [53:09] craving for more. It's not just a show, it's a journey into the future with Dan Shipper as the captain of the spaceship. [53:16] So do yourself a favor, hit like, smash subscribe, and strap in for the ride of your life. [53:22] And now, without any further ado, let me just say, Dan, I'm absolutely hopelessly in love with you.