The implications for teachers, children and education are hard to overstate.  

A sleek downtown campus in Chicago has become the latest testing ground for a model that replaces traditional teachers with artificial intelligence for academics. Alpha Chicago, part of a rapidly expanding network of private schools, welcomed its first students last month. Tuition is $55,000 per year. The school markets itself as the city's first AI-driven, essentially teacher-free operation for pre-K through eighth grade.

Two Hours of AI Instruction, No Traditional Teachers

Under the "2 Hour Learning" model developed by co-founder MacKenzie Price, students spend roughly two hours each day on adaptive software for reading, math, science, and other core subjects. School officials and marketing materials claim the students "crush academics" with just two hours per day using the AI-based program.

The software, drawing on platforms such as Khan Academy and Membean, personalizes pacing so children advance only after mastering material. The rest of the day involves workshops in public speaking, entrepreneurship, financial literacy, leadership, physical activity, and creative projects, school officials say.

Human "guides" — not actual teachers — monitor progress, motivate students, coach "life skills," and supervise activities. Price has insisted the model does not eliminate teachers but simply "redefines" their role; guides need not be subject-matter experts.

As this writer has warned for years, teachers may be left in the classroom as glorified babysitters to keep the far-left union bosses happy. But going forward, the algorithms will handle most of the indoctrination.

"At first, we'll be most stunned by how it helps with reading — being a reading research assistant — and giving you feedback on writing," Gates explained in his keynote talk at the 2023 ASU+GSV Summit. "This should be a leveler…. Because having access to a tutor is too expensive for most students — especially having that tutor adapt and remember everything that you've done and look across your entire body of work."

Alpha School, founded in Austin, Texas, in 2014, claims its students rank in the top 1 percent nationally on standardized measures. Independent researchers, however, have questioned those figures, pointing to the lack of serious outside verification and the fact that private schools typically attract a more well-off socioeconomic segment of the population.

Whatever the validity of its academic claims, Alpha's expansion suggests growing parental interest in the model. "At Alpha Chicago, kids love school," the outfit claims on its website, adding that "kids learn twice as fast" using the AI-driven model. "We're not just preparing students for tests; we're preparing them for limitless futures."

Experts have already expressed criticism. Pointing to the hefty price tag, Northwestern University's Liz Gerber with the Center for Human-Computer Interaction described the approach as expensive personalized learning that is simply not scalable for most families.

Philosophy professor Joe Vukov of Loyola University Chicago warned that the model changes "the nature of what learning and education, at its best, has always looked like." Stanford education professor Victor Lee observed that teachers perform sophisticated work well beyond current language models and that evidence for wholesale replacement remains thin.

But 2-hour Learning model creator Price, a Stanford psychology graduate, said the traditional classroom produces "boredom, inefficiency and lack of mastery." Of course, that is true. But it does not follow that replacing teachers with AI is the solution. Still, numerous parents at other Alpha campuses have praised rapid progress.