- An Arizona charter school will use artificial intelligence instead of human teachers for two hours a day in academic lessons.
- AI will personalize lessons in real time to meet the needs of each student.
- The company has only tested this idea before in private schools, but claims it greatly increases students’ academic success.
An Arizona school is testing a new educational model based on AI and a two-hour school day. When the Unbound Academy in Arizona opens, 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 needed approval from the Arizona State Charter School Board, which it received in a controversial 4-3 vote. Students in grades four through eight will enroll in the program, in which They will deliver academic lessons for two hours a day using personalized AI, which will be based on platforms such as IXL and Khan Academy. The idea presented by Unbound is that it will make students happier and smarter, with more time to explore life skills and passions.
During those two hours, students will go through adaptive learning programs. While they study science, mathematics or literature, the AI will follow their progress in real time. Depending on their performance, the AI will adapt the style and difficulty of the curriculum to help them succeed. That could mean slowing down and spending more time on some subjects or upping the ante and making some parts of the educational plan more difficult.
While the academic lessons are condensed, 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 that aim to go 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, even if they are charter schools rather than standard educational institutes.
This isn’t Arizona’s first foray into AI education. Arizona State University (ASU) worked with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT on board as a faculty member of sorts. The difference is that ASU has AI that helps students write academic papers and professors run more complex simulations and studies. He doesn’t actually teach any classes. What Unbound Academy is doing is closer to a trial in the UK. David Game College London is running an AI-delivered class as part of its new Sabrewing programme, bringing 20 GCSE students onto the programme, which uses AI platforms and virtual reality headsets to guide their learning.
The idea that AI enables hyper-personalized learning and can help students be more successful is, of course, appealing. The extra time freed up for life skills workshops is another selling point, as it prepares students for challenges outside the classroom. But it is very easy to see the shadow cast by what is lost without human teachers. AI cannot replace the mentoring, encouragement, and emotional support that define a great teacher, at least not in any of its current forms.
AI can increase a teacher’s ability to help students, but it is objectively ridiculous to claim that AI as it stands now can be better than a human teacher. It may be cheaper for a district to turn to a for-profit company in the short term, but it is a short-sighted way to view the value of educators. For now, Unbound Academy students will be the pioneers of this new approach. Everyone will learn something from the result, one way or another.
