Marc Andreessen on AI Education

AI raises the individual's ceiling

00:00we have a 10-year-old and so you know we and we actually homeschool and so we we we think a lot about this. Um, so I think the way to think about the impact of AI on on people on specifically people as individuals. I think it's it's it's actually, you know, a lot of people just focus on kind of this, you know, this kind of very I would say straightforward and or overly simplistic view of just literally job gains, you know, job losses, which we could talk about, but there's two specific things at the level of like an individual person, an individual kid. So I think it's pretty clear that AI is going to take people who are good at doing things and it's going to make them very good at doing things, right? And so it's going

00:34to be a tool that's going to sort of raise the average kind of across the board. And you know, look, you see that playing out already. You know, anybody who's in a position where they need to, you know, write something or design something or write code or whatever, if they're if they're pretty good at it today, they use they use AI and all of a sudden they're very good at it. And so there there's sort of that aspect to it. And I think that the the way the education system at large is going to is going to kind of teach AI is is going to be based, you know, hopefully a lot on that. But then there's this other thing that's happening which we're also starting to see and we're really seeing it particularly in coding right now. Um

01:04where the really great people are becoming like spectacularly great, right? Um and so you just you kind of use it use the term you think about like the supermpowered individual, right? So the individual who is like really good um at coding or really good at making movies or really good at making songs or really good at designing you know making art or whatever whatever those things are or or you know or podcasting or you know hopefully venture capital you know if if you're very good at it and you can really harness AI you can become spectacularly great uh and like super productive right and you know I'm sure you have a lot of friends in this in this category as well but like you know the the really really good coders are

01:44experiencing this right now my friends who are really good coders are like, "Oh my god, all of a sudden I'm not twice as good as I used to be. I'm like 10 times as good as I used to be." And so I think at the at the unit of like n equals one of like an individual kid, I think the question is kind of how do you get them in a position where they're kind of this kind of supermpowered individual such that they're going to be really kind of deep in whatever it is they're going to do, but they're going to they're going to be deep in a way that's going to let them fully use the power of AI to be not just great, but to be like spectacularly great. Um, and and I think that that that's that's going to be the real, you

Agency and taking initiative

02:15know, that that that that that's the real opportunity and that, you know, at least that's what we're shooting for and that's what I would encourage parents to shoot for. >> So, what I heard there is essentially agency, this word that we see on Twitter all the time is building uh agency, them not waiting for someone to tell them what to do, figuring out what to do. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, this this this this thing with this this term agency that's become very very um you know, very popular um certainly California for the last couple years. It's really interesting because it's it's I had a lot of trouble with this early on because I'm like agency, what are they talking about? And what what they're kind of talking about is like, you know,

02:41initi, you know, initiative, you know, um you know, willingness to, you know, you could just do things. Um you know, uh what is it? Uh the the demo has the great term live player. Um you know, you you you can be like a primary participant in events. And at first I was like, well, yeah, like that's kind of obvious, right? like of course and and and then I'm like oh actually it's not so obvious anymore because kind of your your point I think so much of our society is based on like there are all these rules and everybody gets taught kind of by default you're supposed to follow all these rules right and then everybody if you like break the rules like everybody gets freaked out it's like oh my god he broke the rules and so

03:19like we we we have somehow worked our our way our way kind of you know I don't know psychologically sociologically you know kind of into a state in which I guess the natural assumption for a lot of people is you know the thing that you for example the thing you want train kids to do is like follow all the rules. Um, and you know, you could argue that kind of you know, for example, the you know, the school system, the K through2 school system or whatever has gotten kind of more and more focused on that over time. And it's like, yeah, it's like no, you you should actually and again, especially at unit unit n equals 1, like of your kid, it's like and look, there's there's something to be had. We

03:47I just had this conversation with my 10-year-old last night, actually. I I I rolled out uh [snorts] uh the concept of uh you know, in order to lead, you must first learn to obey, right? In order to you know, issue orders, you must learn how to follow orders. and you know you kind of trying to keep keep him with some level of structure in his life and not just and not just pure agency but yeah I mean and so look you know some rules are important and so forth but yeah no look there there is like a huge pre there there's just a huge premium in life on being somebody who is able to like fully take responsibility for things fully take charge run an organization lead a project create something new um and you know maybe yeah

04:22that that has been maybe a little bit diminished in our culture over the last 30 years it you know it's it's healthy you know that that you know that that there's now a term for that that that is coming back back into vogue and then and then and again that's how I view AI for kids is like okay AI should be the ultimate letter on the world for a kid with agency to be able to say okay I can actually be a primary contributor right whether that's I can be a primary contributor in everything from you know developing new areas of physics to writing code to being an artist uh you know to writing you know to writing novels like you know whatever that thing is I I can fully participate in the world I can really change things and I

AI as the philosopher's stone

04:56and I that that feel that The combination of that idea combined with this technology feels very healthy to me. >> What is that quote about? Give me a lever and I'll move the world. >> And I'll move the world. Yeah, that's exactly right. Well, so it's actually funny you mentioned that. So the the um the uh the early kind of scientists including like Isaac Newton were super obsessed with with you know this concept of alchemy, right? It's like you know they you know they you know they developed like you know Newton he's like developed Newtonian physics and he developed like calculus and all these things but the thing he was really obsessed with was alchemy which was the thing he could never get to work right

05:25and and and alchemy was the transmutation of lead into gold which meant the transmutation of something that was very common which was lead into something that was very rare and valuable which was gold. And you know they there was this the he spent you know decades trying to figure out this thing called the philosopher stone which would be basically the the machine or the process that would would be able to transmute the rare you know the common thing into the rare thing led into gold and he never figured it out and you know it's incredibly frustrating nobody ever figured that out and now we literally with AI have a technology that transfers sand into thought [laughter] >> just blew my mind >> right the the the most common thing in

06:00the world which is sand converted into the most rare thing in the world which is Right. And and so AI is it is it is the it is the philosopher stone. Like it it is that it it actually is that and it's just this incredibly powerful tool. [snorts] Um and and that's where I that's where I get so excited. I mean and again this is what we're doing with our 10-year-old which is like all right a primary thing that we want to make sure to to do is to make sure that he knows fully how to leverage and and get and get benefit out of the philosopher stone, right? Which is uh you know which is to say AI and that that and then you know that's certainly central to everything we're teaching him. You know, there's there's this meme going around

06:31that um you know, Silicon Valley people don't let their kids use computers. And I I just I I there may be a handful of people who are like that. I I don't you know, I don't know. Um I I think it's more honestly the other way around, which is uh the you know, the more you're kind of plugged into stuff in Silicon Valley, the more important it is to make sure that your kids actually fully understand this and know how to use it. And that's certainly the mode that we're in. And that's that's certainly the mode that I would encourage parents to think about. >> I did not know your kid was homeschooled. That is super interesting. There it's almost a statement on, you know, education in today's day. Maybe is

Homeschooling and n equals 1

06:59there any thoughts there? I'm just for folks that maybe aren't in your tax bracket that want to help their kids be successful, maybe homeschool, maybe not. What what advice would you have? >> This is the challenge and again this this kind of goes to how you're you know kind of your original question which is education there's two completely different ways to talk about think about education. The way that's usually thought about and talked about is kind of at the level of like a nation, right? So, so you know it's like a national level issue or maybe a state level issue in the US which is basically like how do you educate all the kids and of course that's incredibly important and of course you're going to need like some

07:33level of large scale system like the you know the national K through2 school system or something like that you know in order in order to do that um but then there's this other question which is like at n equals 1 for an individual kid like what can you do with with an individual kid um and so I'll just give you kind of the ultimate you know kind of the ultimate answer to that question which is it's been known for centuries that the ideal way to teach a kid at the unit of n equals 1, by far the ideal way to do it is is with one-on-one tutoring. Like if you just have an individual kid and the goal is to maximize an individual kid, by far you get the best results with one-on-one tutoring. And and this is something that like every

One-on-one tutoring and the Bloom two sigma effect

08:10royal family knew in history. It's something that every aristocratic class knew in history. There's all these amazing examples. Alexander the Great was tutored by Aristotle. He took over the world, right? like you know many of the great kings and queens and you know royal families and aristocrats and so forth you know over the course of centuries um you know kind of always had always had this approach. There's actually also statistical evidence um analytical evidence that this is correct. Um there there's this you know massive question in the field of education which is how do you improve educational outcomes and basically it turns out it's just it's very hard to improve educational outcomes except

08:42there's one method that always does it which is called the it's called the bloom two sigma effect which is there's one method of education that routinely raises student outcomes by two standards of deviation and will take a kid from the 50th percentile to the 99th percentile and that's oneonone tutoring right so again if you go back to like at n equals one you have like a kid and a tutor and they're in this like you know very tight loop with each other you know where the kid is able to constantly kind of be on the leading edge of what they're capable of doing and they can they, you know, they they can move incredibly fast and they get kind of correction in real time, you get these better outcomes. But, you know, to your

AI tutoring for every parent

09:13question, like it's never been economically feasible for anybody other than the richest people in society to be able to provide one-on-one tutoring for kids. AI provides the very real prospect of being able to do that, right? Because obviously now, right, if you have a kid that's like super interested in something and they can talk to, you know, an LLM about it and they can ask an infinite number of questions and they can get instantaneous feedback. Um, and in fact, you can even tell an LLM it's like, you know, teach me how to do the following. And you can say, you know, wow, that's like I don't quite understand what you're saying. Like, dumb it down for me a little bit. Um, okay, now quiz me, you know, do I

09:43actually understand this? Like people can just do this today, right? Um, and so I I think there's this like massive opportunity for for parents, you know, in in many walks of life to be, you know, with with with a little bit of time and focus, uh, to be able to say, okay, you know, my my kids's probably still going to go through a traditional education system, but I'm going to augment this with AI tutoring. Um, and of course there, you know, and of course there's going to be tons of startups, right?