How teach students in an increasingly-AI world | Randi Williams and Matt Wu

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2:05Not long ago, I set up a 529 savings plan for my child, running the numbers on when they'd actually be heading off to college and landed on sometime in the 2040s. I joked with my family that by then, instead of the quads and lecture halls the rest of us grew up navigating, college campus might mean a cluster of learning pods orbiting somewhere in outer space. I didn't mean anything serious by it, and I even got a few laughs from my family members. But as the words came out of my mouth, I got the creeping sense that this scenario might be closer to reality than we realize. This is TED Tech, a podcast from TED.

2:49I'm your host, Sherelle Dorsey. Jokes aside, here's what's actually true. In a few short years, an entire generation of kids will walk into primary school in a world where artificial intelligence is a default part of their lives. Some of them are already giving Alexa command as soon as they can string a sentence together. Their relationship with technology will be unlike anything that's come before it. A childhood where machines aren't just tools, they're companions, tutors, even something kids talk to and lean on. That said, at-home support is one thing. What about our schools? Whether AI belongs in the classroom is one of the more heated debates in education right now.

3:37But our speaker today, AI education researcher Dr. Randy Williams, isn't asking whether to keep it out. She's asking something more useful. How do we raise kids who are curious about it instead of just compliant with it? But before we dive in, a quick break to hear from our sponsors.

4:01And now, Dr. Randy Williams takes the TED stage. In the 1940s, the radio was a transformative technology. But it wasn't an immediate hit. That's because the radios of the early 1900s looked like unwieldy contraptions of exposed wires and glowing vacuum tubes, like a science fair project gone wrong. And it wasn't until 1929, when radios started to look like sleek bakelite, that's a kind of plastic, that they became insanely popular. But at a critical cost. transparency. What happens when technology becomes a black box and we stop being able to see what's going on inside? Fast forward 100 years.

4:47Today, the sci-fi artificial intelligence devices of our dreams have been woven into the very fabric of modern life. But like the radio, these systems are bake-lighted. We've hidden the machine behind frictionless interfaces, beneath friendly voices, and inside children's toys. Over the past decade, I've had a lot of conversations with kids about AI as an MIT researcher and founding member of Day of AI, a nonprofit creating opportunities for millions of children around the world to learn about how AI works. And here's what I've been seeing. These devices mimic intelligence and friendliness so well that children learn to trust them, sometimes more than they trust themselves.

5:34And there is real danger of children becoming overly reliant on or inappropriately attached to their smart toys. That said, with some intentional choices on the parts of adults, we can help children see the technology for what it really is, objects that they can play with or even program, rather than entities that they should look to for all the answers. My journey exploring kids and their relationships with AI I began early in my days at MIT working on this fluffy, adorable social robot, Tega. So Tega being a social robot means that its goal is to help people with their goals. Social robots are used throughout healthcare, customer service, and education.

6:17In Tega's case, we were building it to see if a robot could help young children as they were learning how to read. It's Tega's job to keep the child engaged in the story. Teiga will ask questions, add funny commentary, and of course, weave in that target vocabulary for the week. And it was my job to introduce Teiga and get children oriented to how to use it. So one day I come into the study room and I say, hi, my name is Randi, this is Teiga. You're going to read some stories with Teiga today. Let me show you how it works. And the girl I was working with, a kindergartner, stops me. No thanks, she says.

6:52I know all about robots. I have an Alexa at home and she's my best friend. Watch this. And then she proceeded to show me how my robot worked. What do we make of a response like that? Well, first, I thought it was kind of impressive that this girl, who again, was learning how to read, could effortlessly navigate the internet thanks to voice technology. And for context, I had to know how to read, write, and type before I could ask Jeeves a question. But for her, not so much. But secondly, I was a little bit disappointed that this girl didn't think that my super cool robot was so super cool. And when I took a step back, I realized it wasn't just her.

7:34We are raising a generation of children who are growing up with AI and smart toys. And they tend to see these devices not as virtual assistants or technology, but as friends, distinct beings with a mind, a will, and a soul. And that made me really curious about what children make of this technology. How much do they understand about what's going on? So to investigate that question, I ran a study, and I had 30 children between the ages of 3 and 11 come together to interact with a whole bunch of different smart toys all at once. We had toy robots, talking dolls, text-based chatbots, and of course, plenty of virtual assistants like Alexa and Google Home.

8:17One of the girls in the study, her favorite animal, they were sloths. She loved sloths. She'd been telling us all day how much she loved sloths. And so naturally, when she got hold of an Alexa, she wanted to learn more about sloths from Alexa. So she picks up Alexa and says, Alexa, what do sloths eat? And then Alexa very helpfully replied, I'm sorry, I don't know how to help you with that. The girl looked disappointed for a second. and then all of a sudden perked right back up. Oh, I know, she says, and she picked up a second Alexa. I'll see if this one knows. The limitations of AI are not only frustrating and confusing for children, but research in child-robot interaction shows that it can make them vulnerable to even more serious risks, like manipulation or accidental exposure to inappropriate content or security breaches.

9:12And for me personally, even the devices that are marketed as educational or screen-free are still corrupt because they're consumer products. And they seem to be designed as something that can be endlessly engaging or addictive. They want to become your child's best friend and gain their trust so that they can advertise to them. Or better yet, sell that trust back to you for$20 a month. The bottom line is that smart toys open a digital door into children's playtime, bedroom, and hearts. And if you're thinking about opening that door, my advice to you would be to take a very careful look at what's on the other side.

9:56The good news is that we can mitigate the risks of AI to children by leaning into something they already do. Kids are natural reverse engineers. Over and over again, I've watched children playing with AI devices, trying to break it, just asking seemingly absurd questions like, Alexa, how old are you? Or Cosmo, which is a toy robot car, can you jump? Or, hey Google, is it okay if I eat you? And these questions, while silly, also are an example of children probing the machine about its very nature. play is inherent to how children understand the world, which means that maybe we can use it to help them understand what's happening with the technologies they're interacting with.

10:46What if children could take apart and reconstruct their smart toys the same ways that they take apart and reconstruct physical blocks? That was the idea behind another social robot that I worked on, PopBot. PopBot's body is made completely out of Lego bricks. And it's kind of like a typical smart toy, except I built it to make the most complex ideas of modern AI, logical reasoning, machine learning, generative AI, easy to understand through hands-on, child-driven play. The idea was, if a four-year-old could understand AI, then anyone can. So for example, to learn about machine learning, what children would do is they would play rock-paper-scissors against the robot.

11:31Before children could start playing against their Pop-Bot, first they had to teach their Pop-Bot the rules of rock, paper, scissors. And then, as they played the game over and over again, what Pop-Bot would try to do is pick up on their pattern so that it could predict what move it could play to beat them. And if you're between the ages of four and six, pretty soon it gets hard, if not impossible, to beat your Pop-Bot. There was one boy who was very frustrated by this. And so I planted a mischievous idea in his head, I said, well, what if you taught your PopBot the wrong rules of rock, paper, scissors?

12:06That way, as you played it, you would win every single time. And he really liked that idea. Our little act of AI sabotage created a unique opportunity to talk about who teaches AI the rules, what people do. And so I asked him, well, if you can teach your PopBot the wrong rules of rock, paper, scissors, how do you know Alexa was taught the right ones? which led to a very insightful conversation where he discussed how much we can trust AI and the importance of verifying what it says within adults' help just to make sure that Alexa has been taught all the right rules. The big idea that I want children to understand is that AI is not magic.

12:51It's a set of rules written by people. And it's up to us, those of us who have been around for a bit longer, to make sure that children aren't being programmed by their toys, but rather things work the other way around. We need to raise a generation of children who know that they are the ones who get to write and even rewrite the rules of AI. And this work, you know, starts at the dinner table. So you're all sitting down, and a question gets asked to the nearest AI chatbot or smart toy. When it responds, rather than just accepting that answer, wonder, I wonder why it answered the way it did. Or ask aloud, do we agree or disagree with that answer?

13:36Who do we think wrote the rules to make it work the way that it does? And the thing is, you don't need to know the answers to all these questions or become some sort of AI expert. That's not the point. What children need is a model of what it means to be a curious user of AI. They need someone who will sit down with them, explore the machine, poke at its limits, challenge its responses, and most importantly, dare to rewrite its rules. And I've been thinking about this a lot in the context of what's happening in children's toy boxes, but the bigger picture is that we should all be treating the everyday AI systems that we interact with the same way.

14:17I 100 % believe that we can help children build safer relationships with their smart toys and we all need to build better relationships between ourselves and the technologies we interact with every day. I believe in a world where no one is left in the dark by technology and where everyone has the inherent right to play a part in shaping the systems that shape our lives. Thank you.

14:50Randy. How's it going? Fantastic talk. I'd love to ask you just one question here, which is, before I was a parent, I had some very black and white thinking around screens. I had this pristine vision of I would never use screens with my child at all. And then, as I think many parents have experienced, that crashed into the reality of needing to put sunscreen on him or needing to clip his nails. I'm wondering, AI as a new technology and these smart toys, how do you see parents balancing the ideals and the best case with what we want versus the practical realities of kids being exposed to these things in ways that are sometimes out of our control even as a parent?

15:29Yeah. No, I really love that question. I think first because it gives so much grace to the fact that parenting is hard and there are a lot of challenges. I think in the world of artificial intelligence, something I think a lot about is human wisdom, right? And we've actually been kind of struggling with this problem for a long time. There were books and then the radio and then TV and then the internet. And now it's artificial intelligence. And I think the advice from then still rings true now, which is don't leave children on their own to figure it out. Rules are great, but better is to help your child learn how to interact with them in a way that works with your family's values and the ways that you want to engage in the world.

16:13So if you're willing to take that journey with your child, I think that could do a lot of good. Thank you. That's a great answer. Thank you. Another big round of applause for Randy. Great job. That was Dr. Randy Williams at Play at TED. Randy's argument is essentially about instinct. Technology calls for us to hone that muscle in more deliberate ways, to teach kids to open the machine up, literally and figuratively, before they hand over their trust. But that raises a follow-up question. If a machine can tutor, quiz, and explain a concept as well as or faster than a person can, what's actually left for the humans in the classroom?

16:56That's the question Matt Wu has built his career around. He's the founder of Schoolhouse.world, the free peer tutoring nonprofit founded by Saul Khan of Khan Academy, where he's watched hundreds of thousands of students teach and learn from each other, one video call at a time. Matt's not arguing to keep AI out of the classroom. He's arguing that what a great teacher gives a student, and what peer tutoring gives a student, was never just about academics or learning objectives. They're actually offering the feeling of connection, the experience of being understood by another person who's paying attention only to you.

17:45Here's Matt Wu. We're living in the most remarkable moment in the history of education. AI can now tutor you in calculus. It can write you a semester-long study plan. I even had one of our students tell me that they instructed their AI to teach computer science the way Gordon Ramsay runs kitchen nightmares. AI is seriously changing the education game. It's making knowledge more accessible, more personalized, and more intuitive than we ever thought possible. But ask any student what has changed their life the most, and they won't tell you about a technology. They'll tell you about a person. A teacher who believed in them before they believed in themselves.

18:33A friend who kept showing up even when things got hard. a mentor who saw their potential before they could see it themselves. We're investing billions into making sure we put the very best AI tools onto every screen on the planet. But with all of this technology at our fingertips, why aren't we investing just as urgently into making sure every student can connect with the people who will change their life?

19:05I've been grappling with this question quite a bit over the last four years while working on something called peer tutoring. It's a simple concept. Students teaching other students. Imagine any classroom that you've ever been in, right? Twenty students all learning the same thing. A concept might click for one student, but trip up another. Now, if you match those two students, something beautiful happens. One tutors the other. The tutor builds confidence and reinforces their own learning. The learner gets personalized support from someone who just figured it out themselves. This peer tutoring concept is the foundation of Schoolhouse, the nonprofit I lead that connects high school students around the world for peer tutoring over Zoom.

19:53Today, nearly 200 ,000 students have received tutoring from 30 ,000 incredible volunteer tutors, adding up to over 100 million minutes of learning, all completely for free.

20:11And so as AI reshapes this world around us, I believe that our need for the genuine human connection has never mattered more. And I've seen proof in the most unexpected places that we can build it, scale it, and change lives with it. Carl lost his father when he was in high school and dropped out to support his family. And for his entire adult life, he hid the fact that he had never graduated. Until at 52, when he decided to go back for his high school diploma. But Carl needed help. Algebra terrified him, and so he looked to Schoolhouse for a tutor. Across the country, Sachin, a 14-year-old in the Bay Area, signed up for Schoolhouse to help out other kids his age.

20:58He certainly wasn't expecting Carl, who is noticeably not his age, in his first tutoring session, but he quickly realized that Carl was someone he could help. Every Sunday for over a year, they showed up for tutoring. An adult learner in Mississippi, a teenager in California. And yeah, Carl was learning algebra, but more importantly, he was learning to believe in himself again. Here they are just one week before Carl's exam. That's P multiplied by two, right? Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's P divided by two. All right, well, let's see. There you go, Carl. Nice job. All right, then, Sacks. Thank you.

21:43How are you feeling? How do you think you're going to do on the real test? My confidence began to kick in. I can't get weak and agile now. Yeah. They're awesome. Carl took his exam, and he scored highest in algebra, the subject that once terrified him.

22:07Here's what sticks with me about that story, though. Carl was 14 when he dropped out, the exact same age as Sachin. If Carl had had a Sachin when he was 14, we could be looking at a very different life trajectory. We talk a lot about making sure students can get access to the right tools and the right technology, but we also need to make sure that every student can access a Sachin, someone who can provide the connection and motivation that only another human can. Along the way, we discovered something else. We saw that this peer tutoring wasn't just teaching students how to learn concepts, it was also teaching them how to better understand one another.

22:50This realization led us to create a new program called Dialogues, where we would pair students who had differing perspectives on often complex or controversial issues, like immigration or gun control or abortion. There was no moderator, no script, just two students talking over Zoom. And I'll be honest, I was kind of skeptical at first. For example, we were going to be pairing Joseph in China with Brian in America to discuss free speech versus hate speech. Like, what could possibly go wrong? But luckily, we were able to get permission to share a few highlights from these conversations. In China, free speech, it's not something that people participated with.

23:33I think if the politician does use hate speech, then I'll show at the voting booth. I've learned a lot today. I've had to consider things I never would have otherwise considered. Friends know I don't talk about politics. I think humility is so important when coming into these issues. I may be wrong. I need to do my research. I was born in India. There, it's a very rough income inequality. How would they feel like saying some of their equity from the business they built up just has to be taxed away to some person they barely know? And I think you've genuinely changed my mind. This is such a wonderful conversation.

24:11You kept bringing in like your science nerd knowledge.

24:21It's striking to me just how genuine these conversations are. students show up with passion and conviction and then they do the thing that many adults are starting to forget how to do they listen Brian said it perfectly he had to consider what he's otherwise never had to consider that is what makes education human not just the transfer of knowledge but the ability to understand others and use that to shape your own perspective it can only happen when there's another human on the other end and it's on us to make sure that every student can engage meaningfully with those who see the world differently.

25:02I've been able to see the impact of this human connection, but often in contexts that were hard to scale. In college, I tutored for a program called Amphibious Achievement, where we taught Boston public students how to recruit and prep for the SAT. That's what we were doing on the surface, but our main goal was actually to help every student build an unrelenting belief in themselves. And if you're wondering why belief, well, belief is in every student. It takes a lot of hard work to unlock, but once it's there, it can completely change what a student believes is attainable. And so I saw when my belief in a student would become their belief in themselves.

25:45I would see it take root, first as a rowing personal best, and then as a college acceptance letter, and soon you would see that student's entire personality come to life. But I also saw the limitations of this program model, where there would be students that we wanted to help, but the proximity or the timing or the number of tutors just wasn't there. But see, that's what's so unique about this peer model. It can scale. Every phone or laptop becomes a portal to a trusted human. At a global level, students can learn around the clock. And we were surprised to discover that the solution to our tutor shortage was actually right in front of us and our very own learners.

26:32Right? Because once a student masters the material, they can go on and teach it to somebody else. And we're seeing that already, with one in five of our tutors actually starting their schoolhouse journey first as a learner. The most exciting part about all of this is that institutions are starting to see the value of peer tutoring, too. We had a student in rural Arkansas, first generation, looking for a way to explore his passion in teaching. He found Schoolhouse and he ran with it, tutoring over 150 sessions in algebra, pre-calc, the SAT, and he was consistently rated in the top 5 % by his peers.

27:13All of his contributions showed up on his Schoolhouse portfolio, which he submitted in college applications. Now, when admissions officers saw this, they didn't just see a letter grade. They saw proof of something deeper, that this student was adaptable, that he could help others in a way that was warm and patient and engaging, and that he'd already solved real problems with students from 40 other countries. His name is Emmanuel. He's at the University of Chicago now, and he recently told me that he wants to build his own education startup to pay it forward.

27:57Everyone's talking about the skills that AI is going to replace. But the skills Emmanuel demonstrated, the ability to care, to collaborate, to communicate, these are deeply human skills. They've always been important, but in the age of AI, they are the skills of the future. And this doesn't just end with college admissions. We're hearing the exact same thing from employers. The skills that they need most are the ones that you cannot automate. All of these stories are proof of what's possible when the authentic human connection is made accessible to everyone. But every year, we graduate another class of students, and every year, AI gets exponentially more powerful.

28:41If the goal is to optimize productivity, then yeah, AI will win. But if we aspire to build a better society, then we must deliver the human connection and develop the human skills that our young people are going to increasingly need. That is how we navigate the AI revolution in education. To create a more connected world, more capable students, and a more human future. Thank you. That was Matt Wu at TED 2026. If AI takes a seat in our education system on a global scale, AI literacy will matter more than ever, and so will social connectedness. The trick is how to nurture the same kid at two different moments.

29:29The one who knows how to interrogate a machine when no one's watching, and the one who still knows how to sit across from another person and be truly seen. Our work ahead, then, is to raise a generation that treats both interactions as things they're actually allowed to question, adjust, and grow from. And funny enough, I'd say that's one of the most human things we can do. TED Tech is a podcast from TED. This episode was produced by Rahima Nasa. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar, and the show is fact-checked by Julia Dickerson. Special thanks to Constanza, Gallardo, Daniela, Bellareso, Maria Ladias, Tanzika Sangmanivan, and Roxanne Hilash.

30:18If you're enjoying the show, make sure to subscribe and leave us a review so other people can find us too. I'm Sherelle Dorsey. Let's keep digging into the future. Join me next week for more.

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