- An Arizona charter school will use AI in place of human teachers during academic classes for two hours a day.
- The AI will adapt lessons in real time to the needs of each student.
- The company has only previously tested this idea in private schools, but claims it greatly increases students’ academic success.
One school in Arizona is trying out a new education model built around AI and a two-hour school day. When the Unbound Academy opens in Arizona, the only teachers will be artificial intelligence algorithms in a perfect utopia or dystopia, depending on your point of view.
Unbound Academy’s unconventional approach to teaching required approval from the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools, which it received in a contentious 4-3 vote. Students in fourth through eighth grades will be enrolled in the program, which will see two-hour-a-day academic lessons taught by personalized AI, which will rely on platforms such as IXL and Khan Academy. The idea of Unbound is that it will make students happier and smarter, with more time to explore life skills and passions.
During those two hours, students complete adaptive learning programs. As they study science, math or literature, the AI will monitor their progress in real time. Depending on their performance, the AI will then adjust the style and difficulty of the curriculum to help them succeed. That may mean slowing down and spending more time on some subjects, or raising the bar and making some parts of the curriculum more difficult.
While the academic lessons are summarized, the rest of the day is filled with practical workshops in areas such as financial literacy, entrepreneurship and public speaking. Instead of traditional teachers, students are guided by mentors who lead these sessions and help develop practical skills aimed at going beyond the classroom.
Academic AI
Unbound Academy has tested this concept elsewhere in similar programs at private schools in Texas and Florida under the name Alpha Schools. They claim that students in these programs learn twice as much in half the time. Arizona officials are now betting that this success will work in public schools, albeit charter schools rather than standard educational institutions.
This isn’t Arizona’s first foray into AI education. Arizona State University (ASU) partnered with OpenAI to include ChatGPT as a faculty member of sorts. The difference is that ASU has AI that helps students write academic papers and helps professors conduct more complex simulations and research. There are actually no lessons given. What Unbound Academy is doing is getting closer to a test drive in Britain. London’s David Game College is hosting an AI-taught class as part of its new Sabrewing programme, with 20 GCSE students taking part in the programme, which uses AI platforms and virtual reality headsets to guide their learning.
The idea that AI enables hyper-personalized learning and can create more successful students is of course attractive. The extra time freed up for life skills workshops is another selling point, preparing students for challenges outside the classroom. But it is all too easy to see the shadow cast by what has been lost without human teachers. AI cannot replace the mentorship, encouragement, and emotional support that characterize a great teacher, at least not in its current form.
AI may be able to enhance a teacher’s ability to help students, but it is objectively ridiculous to claim that AI as it is now can be better than a human teacher. It may be cheaper for a district to use a for-profit company in the short term, but it is a short-sighted way to consider the value of teachers. For now, the students of Unbound Academy will be the pioneers of this new approach. Everyone will learn something from the outcome one way or another.