At This School, Students Will Be Taught by AI, Not Teachers

A new charter school in Arizona is making headlines not just because of its short daily regimen—there won't be any teachers, as artificial intelligence will be doing the instructional lifting. Gizmodo reports that on Monday, the state's Board for Charter Schools greenlit an application from Unbound Academy to open an online school in which students in fourth- through eighth-grade will receive just two hours of core instruction from an AI-driven "2hr Learning" model. The school will open in the fall 2025, with a max of 200 students.

• How it works: Third-party companies like IXL and Khan Academy will set up personalized learning programs in math, reading, and science, among other subject matter, for participating students. After students' work is complete, "the AI system will analyze their responses, time spent on tasks, and even emotional cues to optimize the difficulty and presentation of content," per Unbound's application in Arizona.

• Supplemental learning: Because the core courses take so little time, Unbound notes, students will have plenty of time to take part in "life skills workshops," which "ensure students gain essential skills such as financial literacy, public speaking, critical thinking, and teamwork."
• Who's helping the kids? Instead of teachers, human "guides" will be on hand—not to "teach students academics but [to] instead provide them with motivation and emotional support," per the Arizona Republic. They "won't help a student figure out how to 'carry the one' when they are learning how to add, for example, but instead will point them to the right video explanation," according to 2hr Learning co-founder MacKenzie Price.
• More from Price: "When you're getting one-to-one personalized learning, it doesn't take all day," Price says. "Having a personal tutor is absolutely the best way for a student to learn. Unfortunately, that has not been possible in our traditional educational system."
• The AI behind it: "This is not the same kind of AI as ... ChatGPT or Google Gemini, but Unbound says it's more capable than human teachers at tailoring lessons for individual students' success," notes KJZZ. Popular Science also tried to get the scoop on "who built the technology, and what datasets were used," but it hasn't yet heard back from the schools it reached out to.
• Other participants: The Alpha School in Texas, which claims a $40,000 annual tuition, already uses Unbound's system, and there are applications to open similar models in Utah and Arkansas. Students "learn twice as much as standard school students," boasts the Alpha School's student handbook, per Gizmodo.
• Some wariness: "While it is time to innovate, this is a really big risk," the Arizona Institute for Education and the Economy's LeeAnn Lindsey tells the Republic. "There is not yet research out there saying that content or all subject areas should be taught in this way. So, we don't know how effective this is going to be." She adds: "If the technology provides space for more human connection ... then that's amazing. But we should never allow technology to push humanness out of teaching."

(More artificial intelligence stories.)