In this article, he contrasts the billions flowing into artificial intelligence with the persistent underinvestment in education and youth development. He warns that while AI companies race to build machines that can “learn like children,” we are neglecting the real children in overcrowded classrooms who need resources, mentorship, and meaningful learning experiences. Dougherty argues that true progress depends not on replacing human intelligence with technology, but on strengthening it through relationships, community, play, and hands-on exploration such as makerspaces.
By Dale Dougherty
In the future, people may look back at our time and wonder why we poured billions into artificial intelligence while we underinvested in the development of human intelligence through education. Capital flowed freely to AI companies, but school systems—whose job is to grow human potential—struggled for basic resources.
In December, Disney announced a $1B investment in OpenAI. A media company that makes its money from movies and theme parks aimed at families and kids is investing in an artificial intelligence company that wants to build machines that can learn, think and create like humans, if not better than them. Imagine what a billion dollars invested in early childhood education, teacher training, or community-based learning centers could do.
If you have listened to the podcast “The Last Invention”, you’ll know that the current approach to AI, the so-called “connectionists”, thought that instead of building an expert system based on organizing knowledge, they wanted to build machines that could learn the way a four-year old child learns. Researchers say that we don’t really understand how a four-year old learns but machine learning has proved to be very effective. What about our real four-year-olds who start TK programs in overcrowded and underfunded classrooms?
What’s more, underinvesting in education makes children even more vulnerable to the harms caused by ubiquitous access to social media and other tech. In Northern California, several cases are proceeding in parallel that seek to sue tech companies like Meta for designing products that cause social media addiction in young people..
Today, toddlers are tuned into Disney and many other media properties that aim to captivate kids. As they get older, those same children are on social media properties like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. Kids are glued to their screens and, like junk food, they like it and want more. Algorithms hook them and feed them, and now AI is perfecting the creation of technology that will think for them. Psychologist Jean M. Twenge writes on Generation Tech that in 2024 a study found one out of four 8th graders was spending 7 hours or more on social media; that’s more time than they spend in school.
For all these companies, the attention of young people is like a gold mine; and the more they dig, the more they find. However, these companies are stripping away a natural resource to get at the gold, which they sell to advertisers. They leave behind a child that is less whole, less safe and secure, less confident in their own abilities. One teacher talked to me about “zombified” students who can’t pay attention in class; they’ve been trained to seek out their fix of screen time.
There is already an arms race between tech/media companies and our rather fragile public education, and this will be no contest. While technology companies are forward-looking, our public education system is backward-looking, designed for industrial-era efficiency. Real improvement in public schools has been stagnant for a dozen years. More money won’t solve its many structural problems such as centralized control, and bureaucratic management.
But change is coming and AI will be driving the change, but not necessarily in a positive direction. AI will present itself as a more efficient form of learning, and even as hyper-personalized learning. However, we can look back to the same claims made by EdTech companies in the first 20 years of this century to see how they promised a lot but made little difference in student outcomes. Students had more online quizzes but they didn’t develop their sense of agency. At its worst, AI will keep students from doing a lot of thinking for themselves and be a substitute for doing the work themselves to learn. That’s how you gain a sense of agency.
AI will not help a child feel that they belong to a learning community. While sitting at a computer using AI, an unmotivated student will struggle to focus and concentrate while a motivated student will find that AI accelerates their learning. Motivation develops through relationships, community, and time. Many students today need coaching to help them guide their own learning journey.
Maybe we could use AI to redesign schools based on learning science and break out of the confines of the current school system. However, I think we already know how kids learn best and how they can become capable and confident adults. Children learn from other humans, including other children in small groups. They need to interact with the physical world; they need more time to play. They need to be around caring adults who guide their growth and development. The school and its programs should adapt to the needs of the children rather than the other way around. Investing more in education means placing more value on the people working closely with children such as teachers, coaches and counselors.
Following new models like Alpha Schools, which balance short AI-driven academic blocks with deep enrichment, this new school day could offer more time devoted to enrichment opportunities that kids enjoy. Think of mornings where children are truly focused on academics and then afternoons where they in playful and creative activities that bring joy, spark the imagination and reward curiosity. Give kids more time in makerspaces to learn how to create and solve problems that are important to them. We want to see kids explore, experiment and build.
If learning machines are part of our future, how can we redesign our schools and provide them with sufficient resources so that our youth become eager learners themselves with a brighter future? Hands-on learning just might be the answer.
