"In 6 Months, We'll Start Losing Jobs to AI" — Alpha School Founder MacKenzie Price

25:02And now he's like, I'm too busy to play video games because I'm out building this business, you know, and doing these things. And, you know, if you can inspire kids to try something hard. That's what I'm seeing, right? Not just go straight into this like scrawling, playing the game, but go behind the scenes and become the creator behind your heart. What is it you do? And really, that's what I think is another thing that is so important to teach young people, especially in our society today, where being a consumer is so easy to fall into. It's like, okay, I can scroll TikTok. I can play video games.

25:37I can just hang out and watch YouTube. What we need to do is instead create creators and contributors. How can you go out and be someone who builds? And you know what? People naturally, they want to be builders. They just often aren't given the tools, the time, or the mentorship or the confidence to do that. And, you know, again, not to bag on traditional school too much, but, you know, kids go to school every day and they say, okay, I'm going to sit in this chair and I'm completely beholden to what the teacher is going to be giving out for curriculum. Instead of saying, hey, I know I've got to learn this material and I can go forward and I can go as quickly as I'm capable of doing well.

26:19and they're sitting here just like, do this. Or let's say, you know, they're working on this, you know, project in a class. As soon as that class is over, it's like project's done. And last spring and the spring of 2025, it was about May, a bunch of our students were doing a pitch for a VC firm, you know, for funding for their businesses. One of the questions that one of the VCs asked was, so what's gonna happen this summer when school gets out? And the kids look at them like, what do you mean what's gonna happen? I keep going. And I got work to do. And in fact, our high school students came to us last spring and said, can we please keep our high school open for the summer?

26:56Because they didn't have this attitude of, well, my business is done because I got the A in the class and so it's over. They're like, I got work to do. And why would I not want to be surrounded by my friends and classmates and getting the mentorship and support that our guides are able to provide while they're going forward with this? And it just creates this like amazing energy and environment where it's an ambitious and it's exciting. And it's also supportive and collaborative because every kid is working on something different. It's not like there's only one spot at the varsity tennis captain, you know, and you got it.

27:34You get that or, you know, you can only have the one winning robotics team at the competition. We've got kids doing things from such varied backgrounds. And they're all there kind of saying, like, let's support each other. Let's help. And we really find that when you put kids in that environment and call them to something greater with that support, they get just psyched. And it's a fun place to hang out. Yeah, that sounds incredible. Hearing that story, the thing I keep coming back to is that it wasn't talent. It was the system around her. And it made me think about something very simple. Most people use Claude like a search engine.

28:12They type in a question, they get an answer, most times they're not really satisfied with it, and they close the tab. I did the same thing for months and I was looking at people who were saying AI is changing their life and I'm like hmm? Then I spent one afternoon setting it up properly, uploaded a few files about how I think and how I work, and it completely changed. I wrote the whole process up, step by step. You get it when you subscribe to my newsletter, Future Proof. It's free. The link is in the description. Let's talk about screen time, something that a lot of parents are concerned with.

28:43And also Sweden did this experiment. I know if you know about this, they abandoned books, they introduced iPads, and then literacy went down. So they had to ban iPads and reintroduce the books. Do you have books in your school or is it just iPad even for four-year-olds? Is it like two hours on the screen? No. So we do start as early as four years old in a pre-K program. They are doing some work on screens, but it's a shorter period of time than that two hours. And actually, fun fact, the average amount of time kids are spending on screens in the United States right now is two and a half hours a day.

29:18So our kids actually spend less time on a screen than kids there. Oh, it's cool. Yeah. But here's the other big key component. There is not equality between all screen time. I, myself, with my kids, we were a screen-free family. And I recommend that, like, you know, putting an iPad in front of your kid, you know, at the dinner table or even in school to say, hey, let's do this online, you know, that could have been just a worksheet, right? But we're doing it online. It's just, it's like technology for technology's sake. And the key difference here for us is it's not just doing something on a screen.

29:54It's having that engaged level of interaction with your academics that's keeping you in what's called the zone of proximal development, where the answer, you know, the work isn't so hard that you've kind of turned off and so easy that you're not really engaged. So it creates a very proactive kind of connection with what students are doing, which is why we're seeing, you know, better learning results than just putting something on screen. That said, yes, of course we have books. One of the things that I think is such an important thing for kids to learn is we've got to teach them not just to read, but to fall in love with reading.

30:32And what better way to do that than, first of all, teaching them the skill of reading, which we're able to do very well with this environment. And I will say the importance of one-to-one out loud reading with a human is so critical. And so that's what our reading specialists are able to have time to do that one-to-one pull out reading time with every kid as part of their learning. But then it's also teaching them to say, OK, let's figure out how we can encourage you to love to read. And an example of that, we have an app that we have created called Teach Tales. And what it does is it's basically an AI app that allows kids to create stories that match their interests.

31:13And it's at the difficulty level that's exactly right for them. that keeps them in that zone of proximal development. So basically you can take that little boy who maybe would rather be just like going around on a scooter than sitting down and reading a book, but suddenly he's the main character with his best friends in a save the world kind of adventure that matches his favorite movie that he's got. And all of a sudden he's excited about reading. And these are things we have to do. So yes, our kids get to be exposed to Shakespeare. And yes, our kids are reading the great books. you know, and they're doing that stuff.

31:49It's one part of, you know, what I think is important for education. Edie Hirsch has 5 ,000 facts, concepts, and what they call core pieces of knowledge that are considered important to be an educated person. And we're able to put that information into our curriculum in order to make sure that, you know, that kids are getting that education. And so, you know, the wonderful thing that I think people often forget is that when you only have to spend two hours working on that academics, it opens up the whole rest of the school day to be able to do things like, okay, you're going to do a great book check.

32:25We call it a check because it's on a check chart. You've got to read a certain number of books and then you're writing reflections on them, you know, and having kids have that opportunity. Are they writing an iPad or handwriting? No. So guess what we do? We teach cursive. We teach cursive. This is what I really want my kids to learn because I spend days and weeks learning, well, months probably. You know what's crazy? I only write in cursive. Like I still think cursive is like a pretty important art. I think it's a great skill. Oh, it's a great. Well, and it's a great skill because of what it does with just your hand-eye coordination, how it helps develop the brain.

32:58Same thing with music, same thing with art. There's so many different types of things that we want to give kids to do. And so, yes, they're doing that on pencil and paper. Here's another thing that our kids get to do. They're learning to sew, right? They're doing a woodworking class, like stuff that, you know, has actually been torn out of the traditional school day because there's not enough time. Everyone thinks we just need more time on academics in order to see success rates go up. And that's not really true. We're showing that in less time, kids can learn more effectively and then open up all of those other kind of life skills experiences.

33:34But if it's anything like when our kids, you know, our five and six year olds were riding back and forth on the Golden Gate Bridge in their Alpha Biker Gang, where they finished that ride as a team, or they've climbed 40-foot rock walls, or our middle schoolers have been able to complete a triathlon together. There are so many different activities that we're seeing. Kids can absolutely rise to the occasion. And part of what helps us do that is we're making sure that it's fun, like that the kids are having fun, even when it's hard, right? It doesn't mean when we talk about kids loving school, which we think is critical.

34:12Kids need to love school. In fact, it's our first commitment that we make to our families, which is that your kid will love school. The reason that's so important isn't because every day is Disneyland. It's because when kids feel this fire in their belly and are like, I like being at school, I love being at school, it allows us to challenge them to do hard things, to take on tasks that maybe they wouldn't know how to do. And they've got that support. And it's what helps unlock potential, which is what I think school needs to be. And so you basically compress, I'm thinking about a typical school day.

34:47It's six hours of academics, right? And you compress it to two. So three X less. And you still cover the same material and same depth just because everybody moves individually with an AI team. I would actually argue we cover it in greater depth because, again, when you think about what, let's say, fifth grade academic knowledge is for math, as an example, kids in a traditional system, they're moving through the math concepts, and whether they know it or not, they kind of move forward. Again, it's why a third of kids in this country are actually proficient in their grade level in math or reading.

35:25That means two system, kids don't move up in their academic grade level until they've mastered. They've got to be above 90 % in order to master. And so it goes to a larger depth. This is the other reason we get sometimes this question. So our second commitment is that kids will learn twice as much in only two hours. And so often twice as much. And we measure that with something called the NWEA map assessment. It's a standardized assessment that's taken by about 10 million kids all over the country, Homeschool, public school, private school. And they actually remember what they learned? Yeah. And then again, what happens is when you set kids up for success by giving them mastery of earlier content, it again, it makes more sophisticated content easier to grasp.

36:13Yeah, and go deeper on that. And so at our high school, our kids are taking the same advanced placement courses that, you know, some kids are taking. They're taking four years of English and foreign language and science and math and all of those types of history. They're doing that, but they're doing it in less time. At the high school level, it's three hours. It's a little bit longer on there. But, yeah, we have basically been able to compress that time and make it more efficient and more effective. So I think they are learning at a deeper level than kids in a traditional classroom. That's very interesting.

36:48Yeah. Okay. So if somebody's listening to this and you have a pretty high check, right? Is it like 70? How much is it? So our alpha schools, alpha school is kind of the school that's gotten a lot of the attention. And that is like super high end private school, kind of redefining what parents expect out of their kids' private school experience. So, you know, when kids are learning teamwork and adaptability through sailing and then they get to sail from Florida to the Bahamas, you know, over time, they're doing that. And that's basically between$40 ,000 and$75 ,000. Those schools are opening all over the country.

37:21and it's been really cool to see the amount of demand we have from families who are excited about not just the the part we've spent time talking about the academics but really all the life skills so somebody who can't afford 70k if it's just well two hours a day can a parent like me replicate part of this experience because i'm a dedicated parent i spend like two to three hours at least per day with my kids just doing stuff with them if i want to do something like that What are the steps that I need to take? And I also feel like it's really because all the skills that you're teaching, it's not just for kids.

37:57It's for adults who understand that the world is changing and they need to be constantly learning, adapting. Basically, world changes every week. So that's that's what we're up for. I love this question because it's been so fun to watch people who are replicating a lot of the alpha magic in their own homes with what their kids are doing. And so that's everything from, you know, we've got families that are using our Alpha Anywhere homeschool program. That's$10 ,000 a year to get the same academic platform, you know, that our kids in school are getting. And then their afternoons get to be, you know, the life skills development that the family decides that is interesting.

38:35And, you know, there are so many ways that you can teach great life skills. You know, sports obviously has always been a really popular way of teaching grit and resilience and teamwork and leadership and receiving feedback, you know, and learning to mastery as well. You know, one of the things we think about with sports that it's harder to understand with academics, but we're taking the same approach. You know, if you're a basketball player, you're not working on your dunking if you don't know how to dribble the ball down the court. Right. It's start with the basics, master the basics and then move up.

39:07You know, you analyze game film when you're finished, you know, with a game. You're watching to see where you can do better. We're doing a lot of that same stuff on the academic side. But there are things that families can do at home. I always think entrepreneurship is such a great tool. And we talked about that with the lemonade stand. So those are great ways to learn financial literacy. And those are things that parents can be doing at home. Now, here's the challenge. A lot of times, the big issue with this is there's only so many hours in the day. So when kids are going to school all day long, they come home, they get hopefully a little bit of a break.

39:43They often are ending up doing homework, which is starting earlier and earlier. They've got homework. You got to eat dinner. You're doing piano practice or you're going to play soccer, whatever it is. There's only so much supplementing that can be done. And that's one of the reasons I think families are starting to realize, like, it's time for us to demand change in our school districts and to ask our schools, what are you doing to try and improve academics? What about academics? If somebody wants to deploy part of your system at home, what can they do with their kids? Is it like watching particular videos or, I don't know, like vibe coding an app?

40:20Let me give you an example on the academic side. There is an app called Math Academy that we absolutely love. It's not one of our apps. It's built by, you know, an outside team that they've just done a great job with Math Academy. It's a great app. And so that's an example of something that, you know, if you're wanting your kid to be able to spend some time doing, you know, some app work going there. I think the other thing that's, you know, so much fun now is, you know, working on so many of these AI tools that are coming out. In fact, a bunch of our students went to New York last month and they did an open claw class for parents, you know, to teach them what to do.

40:54And, you know, when we're thinking about a super important skill as an employee in order to have a job, you're going to have to always understand, like, how do I take whatever I'm doing and add the most value from it? How do I become AI first? Oh, yeah. How do I automate part of my skills and rise up to the more strategic level? Use AI to give me superpowers, right? That's what's going to make people job resilient. and employable is if they are constantly knowing, all right, here's how I can take something and use it to my advantage to build something big. And also use personal judgment when interacting with AI.

41:28Absolutely. And here's the other thing. I think there's a lot of fear around AI. And in schools there is, and it's rightly so because chatbots in schools are cheap bots. And we don't use chatbots in our schools because kids do use them to switch apps. Do you have a So yeah, so our kids are working on computers. So they've got basically in the time back platform, it's monitoring so that they can't say, okay, I'm moving from here to here. Or if they're able to, somehow we can see it. We're screen recording to be able to see how kids are moving through this. It's also what allows us to give coaching to kids when it's like, oh, okay, I noticed that you maybe skimmed the reading.

42:08You didn't spend enough time reading the whole thing in order to do that. And then coaching, you know, oftentimes slowing down will actually help you go faster than trying to rush through something. And, you know, getting that kind of skills is important to do. So it's a, you know, there's a lot to do. But, yeah, in education, we've got to make sure that we're implementing AI in a good way. And what I would hate to see is just, you know, every kid gets a computer with a chat-gbt on it and say, wow, we're AI first. Yeah, that's my concern with screen time. Like I really want them to watch some videos.

42:43There are some TED Talks I absolutely love, which are also very visual so I can show them to my kids. But my concern is that if there's a phone call and I leave the room, they're going to figure out how to switch to shorts. Oh, yeah. If your kids like Mark Rober, who does all the school science stuff. Yeah, yeah. I just showed them the glitter bomb. They were fascinated. Yeah, no, there's some interesting ways to do it. And, you know, that's another thing that I think we have the ability now to like be able to watch a heart surgery, you know, on YouTube versus, you know, just dissecting a pig, you know, in class.

43:13There are so many cool ways that we need to take advantage of what the world has to offer in the right way where we can say, OK, let's learn this. Let's get inspired by something here. Mark Grover is a great example of a really good influencer who makes kids fall in love with science and activities like that. And so you got to pepper in that right amount. And I think, parents at home who are kind of being able to say, all right, I'm going to intentionally have my kid do some work using adaptive apps. I'm going to also have a way for them to develop life skills at home. We grew up in a particular system and we think it's the best system for our kids.

43:50But then what I also do realize that the world has really changed. Do you think higher education matters? Do you think universities are going to matter in five to 10 years? Here's what we're telling our students is that we want you to be prepared to go do whatever it is that you want to do. And if that means you want to go to an Ivy League school, then you should be able to have the resume that gets you into that. And if you want to be ready to go out and hop into business or go straight in the working world, you should be prepared to do that as well. So I think that's a very personal choice. Now, if you ask me in general about higher education, I think the university system is, you know, following very closely behind the K-12 one, which is that, you know, if you took AI tools, just like what Alpha is doing, and said, hey, let's do all our basic courses, you know, this way, and then free up the professor's time to really spend time in more sophisticated discussion with kids who are, you know, at that level.

44:51Let's go be doing research. Let's go build up, you know, build a build a startup together, do whatever that is. I think that would make it really exciting. Now, I believe university and I've got one daughter who's in college and another who's heading there next year. Both those girls were so excited to go to college because they're excited to be around other ambitious young people. Right. They're excited to build their network. And I think university does an amazing job at building out networks. It's where you often can meet your spouse. There's your best friends for life. That's what they want to go to college for.

45:25They want to have that experience. But I think, again, their time spent in classes is pretty inefficient. How do they adjust from two hours to eight hours? Yeah, it's funny. We actually looked at this because that's a big concern that people have is, OK, what happens when your kids go back into a traditional environment? And here's what we've found. They do great. They are able to very quickly understand, OK, here's how I can I can learn. And I they have a proactive attitude of taking on ownership of their learning. But they will say and my daughter was one of them. She called me up after the first week of school and she's like, wow, mom, I mean, these lectures are so inefficient.

46:04Like in a 45-minute class, you know, there's probably five minutes of real information that was worthwhile. But do they do well in grades? Absolutely. More importantly than that, though, I think what it feels like our alpha grads tend to do is they have a desire towards just mastery, even when the system isn't doing it. We had a student who went off to university and he wrote a paper for one of his classes. And he got the paper back and he had a 95%, but there were no notes. So he went and met with his professor and he said, Hey, I see that I got a 95%, but I don't see any notes on how I could improve.

46:39And she just said, well, you know, that's a good grade. That's an A. You should be happy with that. He's like, I am happy with it, but I just want to know what would make it better. Like what would get a hundred? And she said, well, you know, writing, you're never going to get to a hundred. There's always improvement. He goes, great. Share with me what, what I could improve upon. And, you know, she looked at him and she just crossed out the 95 and put a 99 and sent him on his way. So he didn't get, he actually didn't get the feedback he was looking for. And it's just an example that even teachers are programmed to be like, it's just about the grade.

47:08Just here's the grade. Go on your way. And, you know, I think alpha students realize like, oh, I can go learn this because, you know, it's interesting and I have an ability to get better. Interesting. Okay. So you're saying all of this and I'm like, what would be the version of a self-imposed alpha school for adults? Oh, well, first of all, I think, you know, for me, if I had a little bit more time, I sometimes think, you know what, I'd love to go back and do some, you know, hole filling, you know, and remember where am I at in, you know, my math and history, those types of things. So, I mean, I think that one of the things that parents can do is start doing some of these apps with their kids.

47:50Not with them, but do them too so that they can understand how they work and what they do. Find a thing that you're interested in learning more about and go deep. Our middle school students, we do this all the time. Actually, we start earlier than that, which is we'll have kids go down a two-week-long rabbit hole around a subject that they find interesting. And so that's something as an adult, go find a topic that you're interested in learning about and say, I'm going to go and I'm going to build what we call a brain lift, which is basically a list of everything I learned. Who are the experts in this area?

48:22You know, I'm at the point where I'm starting to think, oh, I should start learning about hormones and, you know, menopause and all those kinds of things that are going to be happening in my next stage. So go and find out who's the expert, who's doing this. And then this is what a lot of our students do is they spend a half an hour each day doing research on their topic of interest. They build a brain lift and then they can actually build an LLM out of that and they can search constantly, okay, here's what do I know about this topic from what I've studied and they're continuing to add. And so I think it's a great example of really encouraging this idea of continuing to go deeper and learn and becoming an expert in something.

49:02And when you talk about professions to your kids, what is your thinking around this? You're basically replacing teachers and you're moving them to more like a coach cohort. The thing that I'm getting from this conversation is that you're raising a lot of entrepreneurs, which is amazing. And I feel like if you don't have entrepreneurial qualities, it's going to be really hard to survive in 10 to 20 years when a lot of manual work is automated. Who else do you think doesn't have a future? true? I don't like asking young people, what do you want to do when you get older? Like, what do you want to be when you grow up?

49:38There's a few reasons I don't like that. First of all, I think it can box kids in to think, oh, I have to say, I want to be a lawyer, right? Or something like that. So I think one of the things is you have to say, what are the things you enjoy doing? And my daughter is a great example of this. I think she would probably want to be a lawyer. I think the field of law is going to be a really interesting place because now you can literally write up a legal document in two seconds, you know, and save the money on this. And so I think the law profession is an example of, you know, lawyers are going to have to elevate themselves to say, OK, here's how we're automating the things that can be automated.

50:14And here's where the real focus should be is, you know, as we're incorporating strategy and what are we doing and how are we negotiating and communicating, you know, on that. I think there's going to be so much change. You know, doctors, you know, I don't think, are we ever going to replace doctors? Absolutely not. But it's so interesting. I was at my last dermatology appointment where they're doing my yearly skin check. And instead of the doctor coming and looking at my moles with a little mirror, you know, the doctor is literally taking a camera and scanning my body and using AI to analyze if anything.

50:47And guess what? they have the record from last year to be able to know, hey, that mole looks different than it did this year versus a human eye who's like, I don't know. Now, does bedside manner become even more of an important skill? Absolutely. Right. You know, those are some places where we're going to have to see change. So I again, I think with with our students, we have no idea what they're going to want to be when they get older. But if we can help them develop the skills that that will be helpful in whatever they do. I think it's a very important question to ask yourself. Instead of what profession you want to be doing, what you actually enjoy doing, the skills, the process.

51:28Yeah. And that's the key because professions are going to change. Absolutely. We have our middle school students and our high school students do an Ikigai values chart. What are you good at? What do you love to do? And what does the world need? And that is something that I think we should all be revisiting on a regular basis, you know, as adults too. These are things that we should do. And that helps people kind of see like, who do I want to be? What do I want to do? How do I want to contribute? How do I want to build and create? And then where can this be helpful? Plug into what you can see as a need that you can meet.

52:02Have you ever thought about what to say to your daughters if they graduate and they don't get a job? Like in this world. That's changing so fast. That's a really interesting question. That's a great question to ask. So, yeah, I've got a daughter who is a sophomore in college and she's, you know, was hustling to find her internship for the summer. And I've got another daughter who's really different, actually, because she's a very well-known influencer. So now she's got a different thing, which is she's going to have to make sure to take advantage of her 15 minutes of fame and figure out how to grow and develop, you know, and move through that.

52:38And so this, but gosh, if they didn't get a job, that's a very interesting question. And I think I'm such an optimist that I really struggle to ever think that kids are going to be in a position where it's like, I can't get a job. Here's what I do believe. I think the value of knowing how to work hard is important. So I would say there's got to be some place that you can find, you know, work to get to do and make sure, you know, now that you're building those skills that are going to be resilient and, you know, finding that work. This opens up such another question. You know, I think I was reading something that Elon Musk had posted, you know, on X the other day around, you know, what happens when we really are in a world of total abundance, right, where we can have universal income.

53:25Again, I think there we have to help people plug into what they believe their purpose and their passion is so that they have a desire to get up each day and go create, even if it's not out of necessity. And that's what you help kids figure out, which is amazing. Instead of just following whatever teachers tell them to do, they explore themselves. Okay, my last question. Let's do the one sentence takeaway. If one person watches this, takes one action this week, what would it be? A professional, a parent, whoever was watching. If you're a parent, ask your kid, like, what's interesting to you these days?

54:05I think that right there is something that can open up so much. Like, what are you interested in? What do you find yourself curious about? And then you take that. And actually, you can even do that with your spouse, right? Or your business partner, someone, your friend that you're at dinner with. You know, what's something that's been interesting to you that you've been thinking about learning, learning about and then say, hey, if we were going to go do a deep dive on learning about this, how would we go about learning this? You know, and maybe that turns into this book that was recommended or maybe it turns into going in and chat GPT and like, you know, following something.

54:41But I think getting curious and asking questions is something that I would absolutely do. And I don't think there's a better way to connect with your kids than ask that kind of open-ended question. Not a yes-no question, but like, what's something you're curious about these days? And then how do we go into depth on it? I love that. And also maybe, I don't know, 10 cents from me, just changing the mindset around the fact that your kids don't have to be raised the way you were raised. That's such a tough thing for me. Because I grew up in the system and my parents grew up in that system. I have grandparents.

55:16I'm like, my kids have to follow the same system. And they're in a different country. They're in different age. We're in a different world. Yeah. Well, we often will say, hey, I turned out fine. So how bad can it be? But I think it's also, it's a mindset change from, you know, just kind of a scarcity. Like, what do you need to get by versus abundance? You know, what can really set us up for that? And, you know, I talk to families all over the country who are looking into Alpha School and our founding families, the families that say, hey, I want to be one of the first 25 families to come into New York City.

55:51they're my like my spirit twins because I was very much like I cannot watch my kids go through this you know obedient creating just follow the rules go through the the the system experience but there are other families who say I got to wait and see how this looks you know let me just wait and see and I think there's going to be some level of that but the other thing I think we're going to start seeing in the next six months is when we start knowing our, you know, friends and people that we work with, or maybe even ourselves losing jobs, you know, to AI and starting, we're going to start to realize, you know what, we have to prepare our kids for a different reality than the one we've grown up and the one your parents were in and grandparents.

56:36And, you know, the industrial revolution model of education, you know, it's been around for a couple of hundred years and it did a great job of raising factory workers who knew how to follow rules and be obedient and compliant. But I think the world's in for a pretty big wake-up call. And it's one where we don't have to be doomsday about it. I think it can actually be a really exciting place if we're equipping ourselves and our kids with the skills to be successful. Yeah, being open-minded and trying new things. Thank you so much. This is fascinating. I think this is the conversation I really needed because I'd be like, you know, with this new country, I'm like, oh, are they doing the right thing?

57:14Well, thank you for having me. This is so much fun. Thank you.