AI Real Talk: The Curiosity Connection

"What do we want to become?" Curiosity-Driven Education with Amirah Cummings
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[00:00:00]

Introduction
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Matt Karabinos: welcome back to Real Talk: The Curiosity Connection. And today I'm really excited because I may have found a guest that values curiosity just as much as I do. It's all over her LinkedIn profile. It's all over the company that she has started and created. And so of course, when presented with the opportunity to speak with her, it was an immediate yes, because as we can see from my shirt, my favorite quote from my favorite show, Ted Lasso, is, "Be curious, not judgmental." And that's what this show is all about. So I am so curious about the level of her curiosity. So I would like to introduce Amirah Cummings. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Amirah Cummings: Thanks, Matt. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited and, like you said, curiosity, I didn't realize it was all over everything, but yeah, it's the number one commodity the future commodity for me, so I'm super engaged in it.

KIO: Kids in Orbit
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Matt Karabinos: Kio, Kids in Orbit, and I [00:01:00] have to admit I went on and I played around with all the stuff that I could, and it's it's fascinating. So y- I went onto I forget, 'cause, 'cause I found this out too. You have like a whole ecosystem of things.

There's a, an AI and AR experience. There's a storytelling experience. And I was hearing a story about Ana one of the, one of the

Amirah Cummings: Cadet? Yeah, the cute, yeah, she's the Kionauts.

Matt Karabinos: Yep, the Kionauts, cadets. Okay. And that whole idea how you put that together, and to me, like as a...

I just left teaching at the end of November. engagement piece of telling that story in such a visual way, you have the audiobook, you can listen to that. You have the images that pop up there, and the sound effe- it was, like, incredibly well done. And just my students, this would be so engaging and immersive for them, and I'm [00:02:00] imagining that was the whole purpose.

The Origin of KIO
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Matt Karabinos: So why don't you tell us how, like, how this idea came about and, like, where did it come from, this whole Kio

Amirah Cummings: Yeah. I'm glad that you picked up that it's an ecosystem because I'm like building, my vision is like this big and I'm building piece by piece. And so the fact that you can see it all goes together, I'm like, "Yay, I did something right." It doesn't seem like these fragile loose pieces. But yeah, so KIO, it actually, it came about my graduate work was all about how do I build this?

I really wanted to build this like multilingual school that like taught kids conceptual learning. So let's get the concept of math, let's get the concept of speaking to each other in different languages and traveling the world, and then use that to kinda create these like mutants that could like travel the world and really understand anything from the framework of let me just understand, let me look and observe what this is and then I can pull out and understand.

So it was teaching more how to learn than like what to learn. And so I went to [00:03:00] graduate school and really honed in on that. And when I came out, I did my first I opened my first school, my pilot, and it was KIO. And at that time it stood for Knowledge, Innovation, and Opportunity. And I had this like, yeah, I had this my pilot was this multilingual Montessori environment where I had kids, very young where they would go through this entire school day and figure out what they wanted to learn, and then I or my teacher would come in and speak to them in these different languages.

So like one kid would be at the, the truck station. It's like, "" like speaking Japanese to him. And another kid's like, doing the button station 'cause they were super young, two, two to four at first. And it's like, "Oh, okay." And~ ~

it's like, "Ah." So I realized that would bring them to life. And I set, I did my second program, so the first one was in New Jersey and so was the second. And then I went to older kids out in Los Angeles and that took me all the way through, through eight years old. And what I realized getting to KIO or how KIO became Kids in [00:04:00] Orbit, when I was at that program in Los Angeles I kept calling them Kids in Orbit.

I kept saying "You guys are like orbiting around the world. Like you're orbiting around, like we're going outer space. We're like, like we're going wild with this. What are your wildest dreams? Let us really think big." And like just that's the concept of what I wanted them to get, and I was doing it in Japanese 'cause that was the language for that program.

And so I asked the, I just, I asked the, the main person in the school 'cause it was inside of a school and I said... He's like, "What are you gonna name this program?" I'm like everything's been the coming school, right?" I was like, "But I like KIO." He's like, "I love K-" Like it was j- it like, it was like an aha moment for the three of us in the room.

And so I just, I really just kept that on. And as time went on, I said, "I really want this thing to go global." But language isn't compelling enough. What am I really trying to do? Like, why do I care so much about language? I have to go deeper with my why in order to go deeper with other people's why.

And I said because we're really an in- we're becoming an [00:05:00] interplanetary species, and most of us have no idea about humanity. We have no idea about the world. And so for me, Kio became this story-driven, it's who do we get to become? I would, move to online learning in the pandemic and I said, I would be on with the kids and they'd be from different countries, some down here in Mexico, some...

I've had Australia, I've had London, I've had the United States on different coasts. And so you've got these kids from all around the world, and it's like we're learning this program, how about you be the scientist? How about you be the, like I, I came into this mission-driven learning where it's like, "Here's the mission for today.

Who wants to be the this?" And you don't get to be the scientist every single time. You get to be whatever you want each time. If you wanna be it every time, you can. And so that's really where Kionaut came out of. It was like, it was really just these like steps of me continuously asking like, "Why? How do we engage more?

What am I seeing?" Everything to me was a pilot. And so one day I just sat down and said, "You know what? We're at a place where I've piloted [00:06:00] so much and I've figured out what I want this system to look like. I've been around the world. I've spoken about Kio, I've spoken about the Cummings school, I've spoken about my vision for an education, a world where kids can drive their own education.

What do I need to do next?" And I'm a big meditator, and it's just wr- it's write the story. Write this, write what you want this education system to look like and tell kids what they can become so that's the concept that they get to en-engage with. And then from there we have AI that can pretty much make things infinite.

It doesn't replace teachers, but it can make thing, it can make learning infinite. And so for me, Kionaut is the, Kionaut is the vision that I have. Kionaut is like Ana's book one. She's the, the kid from the United States. I wanna do books about kids from around the world and how they come to see and find this Kio Academy so that they can say, "I wanna be a Kionaut."

And a Kionaut is a curious, [00:07:00] compassionate explorer of Earth and the cosmos. And so hopefully that wasn't a ri- a, a long roundabout way, but that's, they were just tiny nuggets that brought me to Kionaut and now we're building this entire ecosystem.

Matt Karabinos: Well, no, but I think that I just think the underlying purpose, the underlying point is phenomenal. Th- this idea of bringing and students together from all over the world to give them more of a perspective

The world that we live in. ~I'm guilty of this myself. I'm a little ashamed to admit this.~

~Went out of the country for the first time in my life,~

Amirah Cummings: ~Okay~

Matt Karabinos: ~years ago. That was the first time I had left the country, and i- there's a lot of reasons behind that, but it, a lot of it was just meh. And for me, I didn't think about it at the time, but I'm like, what an incurious way to be. Like a- and so I had this opportunity to go, and my wife, she's like, "You need to get a passport," know? And that was, like, step one. So once I got the passport, I was like, oh now this is actually~

Amirah Cummings: ~Yeah~

Matt Karabinos: ~we have to do it. But you take that trip outside, and you see the bigger picture. so I got to go to the Dominican Republic, and it was very interesting, and I had heard all the stories, 'cause I'd had lots of friends that had traveled to the Dominican Republic, to Mexico to these resorts, right? So you go to the resorts, but the resorts don't tell you the story of the whole country. you drive outside of the resorts, you see the story of the whole country, and it is, it is- A- as an American, it is mind-boggling to see the, the, the disparities that are, like, literally right next door. a resort and then abject poverty literally right next to each other. And, that is something...~

~we see that in our large cities in the United States. You see these giant skyscrapers, but you have lots of people that are homeless and are in the alleyways there. But it's a lot of kids... And so I will preface this. There's a reason why I'm~

Amirah Cummings: ~I'm following~

Matt Karabinos: ~I am in a... No I'm in a very rural area here in Central Pennsylvania, so that's where I'm at and that's where I'm based. I have taught a lot of students who, it pains me to say they haven't been outside of our area and they have no desire to go outside of our area. one of the things I tried to get through to them while I was teaching them was, like, it is very important to travel outside of your bubble to see e- a- and I tell them this.~

~Even, I said, "Even if you travel to Pittsburgh," okay? That's our, big ci- big closest city here to where we are. It's about two hours away. I said, "Even if you travel to Pittsburgh or Philadelphia," it- Philly's a little more scary 'cause it's huge, but- ... but traveling to those places will show you a different... there... It's a different perspective. And so I pushed them and I was like, "Please consider. consider even just taking a trip, a weekend trip or something just to see." ~So I think this message that you have of spreading this, worldwide connection this and through Kio, your interplanetary

Amirah Cummings: Right

Matt Karabinos: I think that's a great way to do it.

And so I'm really excited to see what the rest of those stories. I only got to read

Amirah Cummings: Okay.

That's 2042. That's where we're going. That's where we're going.

Matt Karabinos: ~It, so it. I read that and I was like, "Oh, this is pretty cool." And if I... And I'll tell you what, if I was a student, I'd be like, "I wanna know what~

Amirah Cummings: ~Okay. I like that. ~

Matt Karabinos: ~To you on the~

Amirah Cummings: ~Thanks~

AI and Infinite Learning
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Matt Karabinos: 'cause I'm like, "Where does this go? I wanna see where this goes." But you brought it up, so now we're gonna, we're gonna transition into this, 'cause one of the main parts and portions of this show is [00:08:00] discussing AI and AI as it relates to education. So- AI, I love how you put that.

It makes learning infinite. I actually don't think I've heard anyone put it like that, so that is definitely a clippable

Amirah Cummings: Nice

Matt Karabinos: But it makes learning infinite. With that being said was this process did you get to where you are, did AI help you get there? ~Was this something you were already building and then, like, when AI came along it, it helped the process go f- I'm curious how AI~

~In the whole thing. So that's one of my~

Amirah Cummings: ~Yeah. ~Everything we're building now was the vision I had. And it's evolved. It's evolved many times. Each time I've piloted it, it's evolved. Throughout my grad school career, I thought it was gonna be one school that was kinda like the boarding school I went to in Pennsylvania. I thought it was gonna be like that.

And then my mind expanded to, I wanna do this all around the world. It's, I don't wanna just limit it to the kids that'll go and be in this physical space. But I do believe in physical spaces for kids.

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: AI

Matt Karabinos: Yeah

Amirah Cummings: has changed the game for me because before, of [00:09:00] course, I still have to pilot, you still have to do your market research, although you can prompt, "Give me market research," but there's nothing like the human experience, and I think that's where the commodity truly is that AI has just given me the opportunity to accelerate building out my human experiences. I don't have to stop the way that I used to and become the jack of all trades, or if I bring someone aboard, acclimate and then the vision changes or pivots or gets bigger and the person is not necessarily able to grow with that, or it's just not synergy.

And so I can workshop a lot of things out with AI. I'm also an engineer myself. I was a software engineer before I went back to grad school for education. And so-- I know. My co-founder's a nerd too. I'm like, "We're all nerds." Like the, the... we, of course, of course we put augmented reality

Matt Karabinos: everybody's nerds, everybody's

Amirah Cummings: Yeah. Yeah, and I...

Matt Karabinos: how I'm gonna...

Amirah Cummings: Yeah, I've got [00:10:00] 10 things that I'm a nerd at. But,

Matt Karabinos: it.

Amirah Cummings: yeah, so just to answer your question, for me, AI has accelerated what my ability to prototype, my ability to test. I don't rely on it. I build with it. Every single thing that you're seeing now is being built with AI. As a software engineer, it's been over a year since I've actually written code for anything.

But everything that, even the augmented reality that we're working on right now I'm launching an app to see all of our entire augmented reality ecosystem. I just built the technology for that while I'm here down here in Mexico, and all of that is thanks to AI. I don't have to prototype with teams anymore.

I can now prototype and then go find the team that's going to help me do everything. So I can actually create teams quicker and know exactly what their roles are gonna be, and I can do it anywhere around the world. I could do that before, but now it's like super fast for... and it also the biggest thing, 'cause I know we're talking about education.

The biggest thing is that [00:11:00] before I could tailor education to each kid, because that was just like my natural way of teaching or guiding rather. Now I can train a lot faster in doing that because the AI can be that conversational and the, that conversational companion. If a kid likes rocks and sharks and we're talking about Earth's ecosystems as a course, now the AI can pair that and storify it in a way that, that allows that, that kid to come alive.

~And just going back to your point about the kids that are in your neighborhood and that don't really wanna see the world,~ I think education is, it's really beat the curiosity out of them to the point where it's like anything that you try or do, you have to know what you're gonna do with it, or it has to be going somewhere.

It can't just be this innate curiosity. And so for me, the way we've been building out KIO has been w- with AI on the education side, has been to like, for a kid to like literally not even realize they're being curious, think they're being funny and [00:12:00] type like, "Yo, ah, what would this be?" And then they get something and you're like, it's kind of one of those we're creating the wow moments that kids don't usually get from school with AI.

That's what's happening.

Matt Karabinos: I love how you put that the wow moments. ~'Cause I, I do- I, I post on social media, TikTok not regularly, but one of the posts I did a while ago was, I feel like most people remember the really cool~

~They did in school. ~Like I, I can still remember early as fourth grade as fourth grade, I did a project on the circulatory system, and all it was a little report. And I got the help of my parents who were very artistically talented, a- and I was not . So I need, I needed lots of help in that aspect. But also a family moment too, where we were all kinda helping do a, a different part. I was providing the information. My dad was helping,

The models, and my mom was, like how did she...

adding pizzazz

Amirah Cummings: Moms are for pizzazz. Yeah.

Matt Karabinos: It. Yeah, exactly. And so she always had the eye for "This should go here, and that should go..." And but it was like you... I still remember those. A- and the big projects [00:13:00] that I've done, they stick out to you. So creating learning experiences like this are gonna stick with people. And I think you- you're kinda hinting at something too. Using AI in that way, even if the kids are trying to be goofy or funny or whatever they stumble

They're learning.

Amirah Cummings: Yeah.

Matt Karabinos: into it and not realize they're doing it. You know what I mean? And I think that is, the fun part for me, is I see, when I see the looks on people's faces.

So now, in my role, I don't get to see that on students' faces anymore, but I get to see it on teachers' faces. I just presented this idea a, a couple weeks ago to a group that I was speaking to, and I said, if you have, let's say you have a student in your class who likes Minecraft, and you're teaching division of fractions. You could use any of these AI programs and tailor your instruction. You can put in your learning goal, your exact lesson, and say, 'But this kid likes [00:14:00] Minecraft, so how can I tailor this lesson to the kid who likes Minecraft?'" Now all the problems have to do with Minecraft. There's a story around it.

Guess what? That kid's not even gonna recognize like, "Oh, I'm

Fractions because I'm reading a cool story or something about Minecraft." And that was, like, a- an eye-opening experience. So I got to see that look on teachers' faces when they were like, "Oh. That, that does sound really cool.

That is something that would be, pretty interesting." So I love how, A- and to me, that idea right there, that builds that curiosity and I really like how you put that to, and I wanna put emphasis on that. you can't just sit with curiosity ' cause it,

Fizzle. It will just...

and I do know from gleaning, from reading across all the different spaces that I was trying to do my research here, you have that view of beating the

Amirah Cummings: Sorry.

Matt Karabinos: out of kids. No, and [00:15:00] but listen. It's something that I've said. A- another podcast that I do for my work, and it's more of a regional thing for our teachers in AI, but my co-hosts and I, we said almost that exact same phrase, is that the curiosity d- disappears. And it, and correlation doesn't equal causation, but the it seemingly disappears around third grade. which in Pennsylvania and most states is when kids start

Amirah Cummings: Yeah

Matt Karabinos: And so it's interesting those... And again, correlation doesn't equal causation, but boy, that's a pretty strong correlation.

Rethinking Education
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Matt Karabinos: So I wanted to ask this 'cause I come from the generation, was taught in the tr- rows, sitting in your desk, we're gonna read from the book, you're gonna answer a couple ques- or I had to go to the board, and write on the board and get the problem wrong in

Amirah Cummings: Yeah.

Matt Karabinos: and then feel like an idiot in front of everybody. But so the very traditional form of education. Here's the knowledge, I'm gonna give it to you. You gotta practice [00:16:00] it, and then I'm gonna give you a test on it. Was that your experience, and is that kind of what, what led to you... i'm so curious to see if that was what led you to this like, "I wanna do the complete opposite."

Amirah Cummings: Yeah.

Matt Karabinos: So-

Amirah's Personal Journey
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Amirah Cummings: So yes, I did have that experience. I actually had a couple experiences. So I grew up in Newark, New Jersey, public school rows of desks, had to write on the board. Me and my closest friends to this day still have stories about things we've said to each other we've healed from. "Remember you said that to me when I was at the board?

I hurt my feelings." Things like that. It's like, "Ow, get it. I was trying so hard and you devastated me for the next 20 years of my life." But, so yeah we, I had that. And then what I believe was my origin story, but it's kinda sliced between my other education, was because I was gifted and talented.

And so when I was I finished elementary school two years early and then I went to a high school, but I still had to be in like the seventh and eighth grade kinda program [00:17:00] with kids my age. And someone came to my school and said, "Would you like a $100,000 scholarship to boarding school?" And, I was 12 at the time, and I didn't really know what boarding school was, and I just said, "Sure."

And I went through the entire... Yeah, that was, it really was like that. I was just like I kinda came to high school two years early. What if I... This sounds like college. I've never heard of this, but you get to go away, you stay there. It sounds like what college is, so I don't mind going to that early."

And so I kinda just took myself on that path, did everything that I needed to do. Didn't really involve my mom until the very end when I knew that it was like serious, and so I'd take, I'd gone and taken the state test, like, 'cause I just walked everywhere and never... Yeah, my mom worked in New York, and so she wasn't home much.

So I just became very independent super young. And so I walk into, took this, took the state test. And so I get back into this boardroom meeting with this boarding school board, and they go, "So Amirah, [00:18:00] you've placed in the top 1% of kids nationally in math." And I said, "Sure." I didn't know what the test meant.

No one helped me read it 'cause my mom didn't even know I took the test. It was like, "Oh, you're in the 99th percentile." I was like, "Oh, okay, great." And then they go but you get Bs in math." And I'm like, "Yeah." For me, As and Bs meant honor roll. Like I didn't need to do super honor roll, but it's okay.

And so they were like, "So does that mean that you're lazy or that you don't try hard or..." And I was just like, I just remember that. Like I remember that feeling. It was the first time I became curious about who I was. It was the very first time. It was like...

Matt Karabinos: Yeah

Amirah Cummings: And then I said, "No, actually," and this is where the trajectory came for education and how Kio...

I said, "No, actually, I see math and people don't really know what that means, so I get the answers right on my tests, but I can't show my work and so I get marked, I get Bs because I get them marked off two plus, two, two points here, a point here." And I said, "So that [00:19:00] really, that, that's really the, the reason I get Bs."

And from then on, I had to ask myself consistently, "Am I lazy? Am I this? Am I that?"~ And I'm not sure if you, are you there? Ah, this flickered for me ~

~Are you there, Matt? ~

Matt Karabinos: ~Seems like I've lost you again Flicker of the internet ~

~There we go. ~

Amirah Cummings: ~Can~

Matt Karabinos: ~Do you have another flicker? Yep. Yeah, we're good. ~

Amirah Cummings: ~I did. All right, so I'll,~

Matt Karabinos: ~all good~

Amirah Cummings: ~me to pick up or I can wrap up the, pick up where I~

Matt Karabinos: ~Yep.~

Amirah Cummings: ~Okay, cool.~

Matt Karabinos: ~Yeah. Yep, just y- yep. You see math.~

Amirah Cummings: ~yeah, yeah. So I~

Matt Karabinos: ~Yeah~

Amirah Cummings: ~math ~and then that just led me to realize as I went to... Sorry that, fast-forward a year and a half later, I go to boarding school, and completely different experience than Newark public school. Boarding school in the middle of, Pennsylvania, Quaker boarding school. I just realized, I said in public school you pass..." might be controversial, ~but ~this is how I put it in my 14-year-old and 15-year-old brain. In public

Matt Karabinos: ~This is what podcasts are all about. I'm, I'm ready~

Amirah Cummings: In public school I pass if I shut up.

I notice that we all pass if we kinda don't say much. Now, it's just like a, I have to talk. They wanna know what's on my mind. And so it started making me think what's on my mind. Where what do I actually wanna say? I don't wanna just participate for the sake of participating.

I've never been that kind of person. And I realized I would always raise my hand, especially in math [00:20:00] class, and go, "Okay, when are we gonna see this in real life?" Because that's how I learn math. I couldn't show my work because if I could, I was that kid that even before I could s- I was old enough to sit in the front seat, would look at the speedometer and see an airplane, 'cause I love airplanes and race cars, and say "3.5 seconds."

I would play a game like that, one, two, three, of when we're gonna meet. Like, when is this point of the dashboard gonna meet with this point? And that's just how my mind was, so the moment word problems and things like that would come about in in, in school, I would be able to say, "Oh if so-and-so's traveling this fast to do that, or if so-and-so had this," I never needed to ner- to learn that again.

I never needed to look at the book. I got it. And so give me that problem. So the more I went in school, the more I had to r- and to ma- you know, higher math in school and then to raise my hand, found myself asking the same question: "When are we gonna use this in real life?" Just tell me it's gonna be on a rollercoaster so that every time I get a problem like this, I can just visualize that, and [00:21:00] then I can give you the answer. And it just beat the curiosity out of me.

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: of made

Matt Karabinos: Yeah

Amirah Cummings: I didn't even take math in college. I just went s- if

Matt Karabinos: Wow

Amirah Cummings: me, I look back on my life and I always say, if someone had just told me when I was 12, 13 years old that, "You're really great at math. You could engineer rollercoasters.

You could be an engineer." I didn't know what an engineer was. Even through graduating

Matt Karabinos: Neither did I.

Amirah Cummings: I didn't even know what

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: was, even going through

Matt Karabinos: Yep

Amirah Cummings: never went there, it wasn't until someone s- I was trying to build my first app and someone said, "Oh, HTML looks like Chinese to me."

I said, "Give it to me," 'cause I love learning languages. And so I went and read the back of HT, read through H- HTML and was able to decode it. As you said, to me, this is all education. This is all gonna get me where I wanna go. None of this need to be gatekeep- gatekept. And I don't... And then I would look around at my teachers and I would say this, again, all [00:22:00] of my thoughts about education are probably gonna be controversial, but they were just how I related to the world.

I would sit in classrooms and say, "This classroom, I'm here because I'm learning about life," or "This is supposed to make my life better. But I don't want the life of any of the people that are teaching. So how can I learn what I wanna learn? I just need to know the concept of what I gotta learn so that I can go out and I will teach myself."

And this was before AI, this was before,

Google. This was before any of that. I would've gone to the library and immersed myself in every single math course. You-- I would've gone past. I would've gone to the... I would've gone and immersed myself in every, every language that I could learn. Every- anything that w- I would've done it myself.

And so for me, KIO was, is really about how to make self-driven kids, not motivated kids like you gave, you're gonna give me something, here's a coin, I'm gonna be motivated. How can you

Matt Karabinos: Yeah

Amirah Cummings: self-driven that no one can stop you? And you, [00:23:00] the only way you're gonna need a teacher is because they're going, they're gonna be people...

You're gonna have to find your teachers, opposed to teachers saying, "This is my expertise and I'm gonna pass it down to you." Now I'll never know more than you do.

Student-Centered Learning & AI
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Matt Karabinos: I'll tell you what, that, you know what? It might be controversial but that is y- I think that you've hit on a lot of things there, especially in the American education system. And w- what you brought up, essentially your experience that you talked about at boarding school was, like what the, in the teaching realm, that's we would call that student-centered learning.

And when... it's really hard for a teacher who's gone through, you know, their training, their school, which doesn't really prepare you to be a teacher. What, what school really does prepare you for your job? You know what I mean? You... I feel like every profession, my wife has said this many times, my wife is a lawyer, and how you are, this is funny, so how you are with [00:24:00] math, she is with reading and literature.

She is a, I always say she has a superpower when it comes to reading. I don't know how she does it. I struggle with reading so much and stuff.

But she the, the world is different to her than to me. And so when you were explaining that with the math and how you visualize things differently, I'm like, "Oh, I, I definitely know what that's like, having someone who views the world completely different than me, who's who I see and get to talk to every day."

But that idea of student-centered learning is scary to people because I don't think, and I don't know if we've ever given students enough credit for what they know.

And so I always tried. I tried really... Now, I will say I, I didn't have many students like you. I may have had one or two in, in my entire teaching career.

But I would always ask them questions. I would always just try to get them curious and I would say, "I [00:25:00] know that what I'm teaching right now, you could pro- like you're probably already done. You've got this. It's already done." And so I would say what do you want to learn?"

Like what do you want to learn? 'Cause this is what I have to teach, but I can teach I can teach you whatever you want to learn. So so tell... Or I could work... I shouldn't even say that. I probably said that at the time, but looking back I probably should've said I can help you get there."

Amirah Cummings: Yeah.

Matt Karabinos: I can point you to- in a direction,

And again, before AI. And I can't help but do this. This is, my brain works like this. I connect situations to movies or songs or quotes. Your whole story that you were saying, I'm envisioning Matilda. I'm envisioning Matilda the entire time.

You walk into the library by yourself, teaching yourself. I'm like, oh my gosh, she's Matilda with math. You know what I mean? And I'm just that, that is...

Amirah Cummings: told me I could be an engineer, so it's like in my

Matt Karabinos: Yeah. A- and again, eh, that... Talk about another point of connection. [00:26:00] I got to college my freshman year, and I lived on a floor with all engineers.

And I'm like, "What is an engineer? What is that?" "What do you guys do?" And they're like, "Oh, it's math and science." And I was like, I was really good at math and science, and no one ever told me about being an engineer. I was, like, angry. I was like, what the heck, high school? Why did no one tell me that engineering was a thing?

You know what I mean? And so now, oh my gosh, now engineering is everywhere,

Amirah Cummings: Yeah.

Matt Karabinos: And that's a good thing. That's a great thing. But again, you had this huge disconnect. And so you found your story. And I love that, that, the, going to the boarding school, the col- mini college, I bet- You could say mini college, but getting that experience. And I think that you opened up the door there for a model. And to be quite honest, in the age of AI, what I'm seeing from a lot of the discussions that I see on LinkedIn are a shift to that model, to student-centered learning, to project-based [00:27:00] learning to having more not necessarily me teaching you, delivering you content, but guiding you through where you wanna go.

And essentially just making sure you hit targets along the way. I'll let you, I'll let you go on the path you want, but you have to, I have to hit these targets. I think that would be a pretty good compromise. So we keep the targets. We keep the standards or whatever. We keep those targets.

But, like, how you get there is your choice. What do you think about that?

Amirah Cummings: I'm totally with you in the sense pretty much everything except we keep the targets.

Matt Karabinos: Okay.

Amirah Cummings: why I say that

Matt Karabinos: Good. Please

Amirah Cummings: so you said something back go- going back to the Minecraft and AI, and that's like the teacher's wow moment. "I can do that." I think that's still... and this is where for me it's like mission-based learning.

And the reason why is because now you kinda handicap, you can almost handicap. Yes you're opening this learning out to this kid. But hey kid, there's so [00:28:00] much more to the world than Minecraft. That's just the most interesting thing to you right now because learning is just not something you're interested in this traditional way.

And so your mind says, "Minecraft is fun, learning is not." If you put

Minecraft, then it's fun. But now you're handicapping yourself where you can't see the world unless it's through Minecraft. You can't learn

Matt Karabinos: Ah, I see.

Amirah Cummings: And so for me, th- drawing out of the targets, because the targets of school right now, and I don't fault teachers when I say beating the securi- yeah the curiosity out, because to me, I don't fault teachers, I don't fault principals, superintendents. even fault the system. The system did what it was designed for. It was designed to make sure that we could assembly our way into an industrial society. It was made so that we could get to productivity, and the system, the way it was designed pretty much can say brought us [00:29:00] AI. The, all of those, that it brought us to where we are. It's just that it's outdated. It's old. We have to do something new. And so for me, the targets are no longer... I think curiosity is the number one skill. You are not curious, there's a... So I think w- and you also t- taught taught bringing in we're kinda the same, where you talk, you said underestimate what kids know. think that's also an old paradigm as well, because before information was the commodity because it was so scarce. When, that's why Google is who, you, who they are. They brought us information. It was like the biggest thing since sliced bread. Now information is there's nothing that we can't know, and you can know it for free.

You just get on and you... free-ish if you have, internet. And so information is no longer the commodity. It's now transformation. It's who do I want to become. think we all s- before we sit down and prompt anything, you and I could have the same idea. How we think is gonna prompt differently is gonna [00:30:00] give us two different products, and one of us is gonna make a different amount of money and one of us is gonna make something else.

It's not, it's, it doesn't level the playing field. What creates value is who are y- who is the agent? Not the agent that we're building. Who's the agent? And not what do you know, but- are the questions you're willing to ask because the information is there in front of you? And so to me, the metrics, the reason why I think education the way it is, again, another controversial potentially, it's 100% dead.

I don't think it's 99% dead, 99.99. I think it's 100%. So anyone operating within that paradigm is operating in the old, and that's why it doesn't really fit. That's why there's so much friction. When something fits, it fits, and it becomes great. When you're trying to put a new thing into an old thing, it just doesn't work.

So we have to really rework our mind. And I think mission-based work, so the reason why we go on Kionaut missions is [00:31:00] because take that Minecraft and take the story of like what it means to become this, just becoming. a kid says, "I like Minecraft." "Why do you like Minecraft?" I like to build things."

"Okay, great." ~"I like pressing buttons 'cause just that's a thing." Some pe- lots of vices that we have, some people really they can quit smoking becau- but as long as they~

Matt Karabinos: ~Yep.~

Amirah Cummings: ~the thing, it's like there's we have these, these vices that we, that, that comfort us, the behavior doesn't have to necessarily, or the outcome doesn't have to be what it is.~

And so a kid starts to ponder I'm curious why my b- my finger's like this, because it's, that just feels like freedom to me. I like that. like building things. I like the feeling of seeing something jump up and down. Like that screen really makes me happy. When I go outside, I see things and I see them through Minecraft."

Now you've given that kid an entire world of what do they wanna create. Now, Minecraft was just the catalyst to help them understand who they are, and you don't have to, you no longer have to give that kid the pill in the applesauce. Now the pill is the applesauce. They want the

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: They want it.

They're like,

Go and build a video game like Minecraft. Maybe I wanna be a

Matt Karabinos: Yeah

Amirah Cummings: I just like playing the g- maybe I don't wanna, maybe I'm not technical, but I like the colors. Go and craft [00:32:00] that and now AI can just become something that helps you start that and you can just become so many things.

So to me, it's less about trying to give kids old paradigm in new ways, but now more metrics of... One last example, and I said

Matt Karabinos: Oh, yeah

Amirah Cummings: That I was working with, a teacher in a school that I was working with recently for Kionaut. I said, "I know literacy is the big thing right now. Everyone, literacy. You c- there's so much money going in literacy." And I'm like Our literacy rates have sucked for decades. It's not new.

Matt Karabinos: Time. Long time

Amirah Cummings: Yeah, for a

Long time. You look back in some districts in this 30 years that we're to the point where the language is changing, it's have reached, but no, that means 66% have not reached.

And so we're changing the language and it's think from the human perspective you have this many kids that can't read. [00:33:00] But now with AI, it's like there's a new life because give me a kid who is like number one in the national spelling bee, has read every Harry Potter book, has read the entire library.

Give me that kid that did, they've done well in school. Give me that kid. And then give me the kid who probably can't... They're still figuring out that B is for ball, they're figuring that out. They're... But what they've had to do is they've had to read people. They've had to live their life doing whatever they had to do because they couldn't read. I'll sit them down in front of technology and I gu- I can, I can't guarantee 'cause I haven't done it, and we have it, it's not tested. It's not the Kionaut way to just

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: something and say it.

Matt Karabinos: Yeah

Amirah Cummings: my excitement, my enthusiasm for the kid over here and what they create, I would say that th- that this kid would get on there and have to figure it out, and they would figure it out from a mindset of what [00:34:00] works in the world. This kid would prompt for instructions, how to do this, and that kid would get this and they get that long stream of something. This kid wouldn't even know how to read it. They'd go and create. I need to create the thing and get the thing rather than get the instructions for the thing and then go figure it out and then go ask someone to check it.

Or a- it's a completely different... So for me, the new literacy is being able to read yourself and read other humans. And once you can do that, you don't even need to type anymore. You can literally press a button and tell AI what you want it to tell and tell it to build an entire empire for you.

Whether could u- I could have a Vietnamese keyboard on my computer right now and still build an empire. read the keyboard.

Matt Karabinos: That's it. I

Amirah Cummings: That's just where I am as far as like the metrics. I think the metrics are dead along with the system that we built for the Industrial Revolution.

We're in a completely different era of humanity. And it's

Matt Karabinos: Wow. That [00:35:00] is, that's bold. I love it. Boldly going where... Actually, I can't say where no people have gone, 'cause there's qui- a lot of people are in your boat. A lot of people. I'm sorry, not your boat. A lot of people are on your spaceship with you, okay? Way- there, there's a lot

Amirah Cummings: but

Matt Karabinos: a, there, there's a lot of people l- on the ship with you, okay?

So there... Oh, we could just use ship. It could be a boat or a spaceship. But

Amirah Cummings: it

Matt Karabinos: y- who knows? But so I... Oh man, I could have an entire podcast just about that. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna swing back around here, 'cause this is what I do. 'Cause AI, AI is always my big thing. So I'm gonna swing back around here.

I got your view on the education system as a whole, and I've gleaned actually a lot from what you said there about AI and your views on

AI. So with all that being said

The Future of Education & AI
---

Matt Karabinos: what are your personal views on AI edu- where, how does it fit in education? What... And I know you've alluded to a lot of this, but how does AI fit in, and how do [00:36:00] we get from where we are to where you think we should be?

Amirah Cummings: Yeah. I think AI unlimits us. I, that's what I really-- I know we've all talked about limited possibilities for so long, and

Think it unlimits us even in, in, I think if we learn... The only way to truly be able to take advantage of AI I think we have to do two things. is to reevaluate our relationship with ourselves and with fear so that we can take those guardrails off.

And not necessarily let it go and go rogue and do whatever, but I think that fear is going to create. It's almost like the Tomorrowland effect. You constantly see things and so you're creating, you're looking for them. Humanity has a chance to almost start over or go towards extinction.

Matt Karabinos: Yeah. Yeah, ~you're right. Yeah~

Amirah Cummings: It's so for me, the story is us to look at who do we want to [00:37:00] become. We get to become-- Before we were evolving, it was like mistakes, right? Not mistakes, but things that were happening over and over. Oh we're upright. It depends on,

Matt Karabinos: yeah.

Amirah Cummings: side of anything you're on.

Like I'm in a

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: Like just put me

Matt Karabinos: Yep.

Amirah Cummings: I'm all

Matt Karabinos: I hear you.

I hear you.

Amirah Cummings: all right, we've got this. Okay, now we're eating cooked food. We got fire. We have houses. Now, we don't have this. Wherever you think, how, no matter what, you can't say that we didn't evolve even if we came straight from s- one civilization to another. were more, not mistakes, but they were happenstance. They were... We had to do them in order for to survive. And we still have to do that now, this is the first time that the thing that we might not survive from, that we're talking about now, which is AI, 'cause there's all the other catastrophic things that is the thing that we created. And so this

Time where we have choice. It's full on [00:38:00] choice and we get to choose who we wanna become. We don't have to bring evil into the new worl- w- we don't have to bring these things. A lot of them are balanced and inevitable. we get to tr- choose who we become and AI can then build with us, for us, all of those things.

So the first I think is we have to, figure out who we d- decide, not figure out, decide who we wanna be. And then the second is relationship to information ~ ~Knowing is certaint-- we built everything that we are on certainty. Ask most adults and it's this is-- even when they're showing their kids off "Look what my kid knows. Look what my kid knows." We have to get to a place where "I don't know" is the best answer you can get. I don't know yet. I don't know

Matt Karabinos: I like that

Amirah Cummings: know yet. Because that's where the new teachers are gonna come from. Why? I think the teacher, and I'm not [00:39:00] sure, you and I have seen, I think we're the same generation. I'm a millennial, right? I've been saying for years now, it's like I think we are one of the most important generations in human history since we went from homo sapien to homo sapien.

Whatever that

Matt Karabinos: Wow. Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: Because we are the last, we are the, we're the most unique generation. We're the only generation that was here completely before all the digital. We had flip phones. We were here when the, the big phones were here. We dialed up

Matt Karabinos: Yep.

Amirah Cummings: We

Matt Karabinos: Yep

Amirah Cummings: for that, and then we became, we weren't digital natives, but then we became digitally savvy.

We built the beginning of that. And so we're the

Matt Karabinos: Wow. Yeah

Amirah Cummings: human generation that sits on the cusp of like where we're going. J- digital natives, they're native. They're a completely new

Matt Karabinos: You're...

Amirah Cummings: And so

Up to us to truly create What we are the true [00:40:00] teachers for where we're going because humanity is the thing that we have to know the most.

We need to know humanity. We have to-- The reason I was I'm so focused on languages, and this is before, know, we had all these translators. It's like trans- language is human history. The only reason why we have a word for something is because there was an experience for it that happened over and over again where people needed a word for it and it had to be put into context. And so just saying English is the wor- the world language, like that's one... we're going to, we have to look and see what language we use. We have to have a better relationship with that language. And the biggest thing we can say is, "No se. Wakarimasen." I don't know. Learn that in

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: more than hola. More than

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: Learn I

Matt Karabinos: Yes

Amirah Cummings: becomf- and become comfortable with that there's, the things that we know, AI knows. Don't be impressed by what you know anymore. Be impressed by what

Matt Karabinos: Yeah

Amirah Cummings: and who for [00:41:00] the sake of making humanity based on the story that you give yourself of where humanity needs to go.

I believe we're in not even interplanetary. I think the solar system is, the mindset of that is too small. There's 6,300 planets we've identified, and I'm sure that's just because that's what we know,

Matt Karabinos: Yep, exactly.

Amirah Cummings: It's more of the co- the consistent state of discovery and exploration and being excited about that. And so for me, I think teaching right now is, there's nothing... I think we're our own teachers, what we need from other humans is to guide us more to become better humans and for us to collectively. I don't think the age of the teacher is gonna be the same. I think it's gonna, I think

Gonna be an eight billion teacher market.

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: Yeah. So that's,

Matt Karabinos: Wow.

Amirah Cummings: that answered the question fully,

Matt Karabinos: Yeah. No and it did. That's I think that y- [00:42:00] man, you bring up so many good points. I have all these things I wanted to talk... Forget that. We're off script now, 'cause this is wonderful. No, this is g- no, 'cause this, again, this is part of the wonder of doing a podcast is I have an idea of where the conversation is gonna go or where I would like it to go, and I get blown away immediately as soon as I get here, and I'm like forget that.

This is way cooler. Let's go there." No, but like I, that... huh, we're our own teacher. I, that's a good way to look at it. I think that's a good way to look at it. And I'll tell you, I'll be honest with you, I have a I have a four-year-old, and something I constantly think to myself is, "What h- how do I build..."

And something I've been pondering for a while, just with my own teaching practice and just throwing it out there in the world, so here I am throwing it out there again. How do I build,

Developing Curiosity
---

Matt Karabinos: how do we build curiosity in people? Like how does that... so I, I will say my kid his teachers at school, they say he's, he is super curious.

He [00:43:00] asks questions all the time about everything. And I'm like, "Yeah I have no idea. I have no clue where he got that from. No clue. No clue why he's asking so many questions." But how do you develop that? Like how would you, if you had a chance to tell the t- like, how would you tell somebody to help develop curiosity?

Amirah Cummings: I would ask them what's important to them. That, that-- the first thing is let's stop kids from-- them be curious, but then start to steer them in a way and ask them more why questions and answer their why questions with why so that they know why they're asking. And then that'll then start to steer their mind into why am I asking that?

Oh, because I'm curious about this." Most of the time they're just like, "Why?" And just "Because," it's just...

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: So it's

Matt Karabinos: Right

Amirah Cummings: if we all become curious, it starts to steer us in a direction. "Why are you

Matt Karabinos: Okay[00:44:00]

Amirah Cummings: because..." And now my thought process has somewhere to go, and I'm learning about myself, and that's what why does.

Why teaches me more about myself. And so someone who, let's say they have zero curiosity, it could be an adult, it could be a kid. The first thing if they were sitting in front of me right now, I would say is, "What's important to you?" And if their answer is, "I don't know." It's like, "Why?" Not, "Go figure it

Matt Karabinos: Ooh.

Amirah Cummings: because that's what we

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: "Go and ask

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: or go in the world

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: a lot of us, especially our generation, a lot of us, we need a gap year to figure our lives out.

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: so guilty of that. I've-- I'm still figuring, I don't know. It-- it's really just why? Like, why

Matt Karabinos: Yeah

Amirah Cummings: important to me? Because no one paid attention.

Like it's just... Or I went to school and they never asked that. Okay.

So

What do you wanna do with that? "I don't wanna do anything. I don't think..." Why don't you wanna do anything? "Because I don't really think [00:45:00] that life is gonna do anything for me. Like I'm here in this little town of Pennsylvania," or, "I'm here in this place that has no internet," right?

"I've never

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: most of these things and, I'm in a place that they call the slums or whatever the world has deemed me to be, and there's no opportunity for me." Oh what you're curious about, or a-you can even go deeper till that person's like really gets there, is wow, so what you're really feeling is like-- or not what you're feeling, 'cause then that's us trying to be in the place of know of like, why?

'Cause I'm just defeated and I don't wanna do anything because I don't think it's gonna amount to anything." What if I told you it could? I can't tell you what it is, but it could. Because now I'm saying AI, like before it would've been something else, but it's like now with AI,

Just ask yourself a question and just put it in there.

And then that's where AI, that's what I mean by it unlimits us. Because even asking it a question, I think I asked Gemini the other day 'cause I'm trying to figure out what's the different models and [00:46:00] I was like, "I don't use Gemini that much. ~It's so serious." So~

Matt Karabinos: ~Yeah~

Amirah Cummings: ~like ChatGPT is know? Gemini was like,~

~So~

Matt Karabinos: ~Yeah~

Amirah Cummings: said... I was just sitting there and I was just like, "Oh," was just really exhausted and I just said, I think I said, "Surrender or fight." And it doesn't know anything

Matt Karabinos: Oh.

Amirah Cummings: And it

Matt Karabinos: Yeah, I love that

Amirah Cummings: " When you're in a place," like it, it went so broad, but it understood what I was...

And it's just c- emotionally you can be like this or, and it was just like, wow, a person,

Matt Karabinos: Interesting

Amirah Cummings: a person- Just getting to a place after asking themselves what's important to me and realizing that they probably don't know, or maybe they do know and then they can go with that. But if they're like so defeated that literally you think you could get nothing out of them and you're just continuously asking them... say, keep asking yourself why. Y- you can literally just-- If you don't, you're not teaching them. What's I'm not curious what's important to you. I don't know. Just keep asking yourself why, and then you leave the room. You were the teacher. You were the guide because y- and then you

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: the tool. Go

Matt Karabinos: [00:47:00] Yep

Amirah Cummings: or whatever it is. What's important to you? I don't know. Keep asking yourself why, and then when you have a question, it into this tool, and that's it. That could open

People up, and now they go down rabbit holes, and they don't even have to know how to read or write.

Matt Karabinos: Yeah, that's what a world. A- and like that's the crazy part and is trying to translate that into the system we're in right now is where my job sits. So my job sits in that, that kind of, just like a millennial, in between everything. Because, the in-between generation of everything.

But trying to not freak people out, but also make them aware that any student at any time in any class that we teach could get whatever knowledge we have to impart on them, they could get it on their own anytime they wanted to. [00:48:00] And, just leading with that, like just l- just leading with that, that, that scares a lot of teachers.

But I try to tell them the important part is, but like the important part to me is that they can find all the information. They can learn anything they wanna learn, but they still need, and I think all people at different stages of their lives, you need guides. Y- because if you learn all this stuff, and you just sit there and just keep learning, you're just the, you're just the AI.

Just the AI yourself. You're just sitting there and just continually learning the things. I constantly use, again, movie quotes, this is like my thing that I do. But I c- I constantly use the analogy of Matt Damon's character in Good Will Hunting. Okay? It's such a good analogy for AI because he has a photographic memory.

He can remember everything. He knows so much information. He knows so much stuff, but he doesn't have experiences. [00:49:00] And the scene on the bench when, Robin Williams is "If I ask you about love, you'd quote me a sonnet from Shakespeare. But you don't know what it's like to be in love because you haven't been in love."

And, I f- I forget the next part. If what did he say? "If I ask you about the Sistine Chapel, you'd give me some his- history lesson about it, but you don't know what it smells like in there, and you don't know what it feels like to be in that environment. You don't have that experience." So he's a- and I think that is actually a, a- along the same lines of the message that y- you can be anything you want to be. E- especially in this world where everyone could be Will Hunting if they wanted to. They could learn whatever they wanted to learn. And even if you don't have the photographic memory, you have the infinite information.

I love how you keep saying that, the it unlimits you. It, and it's like unlimited possibilities. And so I really like how you put that. So[00:50:00]

Amirah Cummings: no

Matt Karabinos: please.

Amirah Cummings: I don't want you to lose your train of thought.

Matt Karabinos: No, it's okay. It happens all the time. Don't worry about it

Amirah Cummings: before you even brought in "Good Will Hunting," had a thought and then nailed it with the "Good Will Hunting." Going back to just teachers, AI, curiosity, and really kids can learn anything they want, and that being, like, intimidating for teachers. And then going back to the what would you say to someone who's not curious? I th- I always say can't give what you don't have. So when someone's like, "I really wish this person loved me more," or what, just all the things people want from other people, it's like we cannot give what we don't have.

And so in thinking about your work with teachers, in my mind I'm like, 'cause I don't wanna count teachers out. I know someone must be saying, " Oh, it's

Matt Karabinos: No

Amirah Cummings: billion teachers, so now they're no one's..." It's like everyone's special, no one's special. It's just like everyone's a

Matt Karabinos: Yeah. Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: But right now, because of where we are, we have teachers, [00:51:00] a lot of them are passionate. A lot of them are there because they want to teach, and this is such a confusing time right now

Matt Karabinos: Yes

Amirah Cummings: Doing that exercise with a teacher, in my mind, again, this is all me thinking in this moment. Why? important to you? Why? Why? Going those whys and really... And then I think their prompts be different how-- So how could I bring this to my seventh grade math room classroom? Really be like, 'cause you still have

Matt Karabinos: Yeah. Yeah

Amirah Cummings: your job. You can't just come in and be like, "Oh," you're teaching math, and it's "What's important to you?"

"Flowers." "Okay, everything's fl--" it's like you still have to meet

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: but it's reinvigorating their why to their curia-curiosity and then allowing AI to unlimit their curiosity. So it doesn't even have to be now AI's in the classroom and we have to audit and make sure it's [00:52:00] telling us real things.

It's, no, AI has now unlimited that classroom because it's unlimited the teacher. Now that teacher's curiosity can... It, understands why you're asking. I think the way we... we're so uncurious or incurious, don't know which one that is or if it's either one of those, the way we prompt might be, "How do I teach seventh grade math better?" Or, "How can I make this fun? How can I..." You're

Matt Karabinos: Yeah

Amirah Cummings: there instead of realizing you have to start with who you are, because you walk into that classroom differently every single day because now you're being self-driven. You're walking into that classroom, AI tells you like, "Oh, you have little Henry, and he likes this.

Tell him that he can do it like it." Now you're bringing the unlimitedness or unlimit whatever, to the classroom.

Matt Karabinos: up words. It doesn't matter. Yeah, no, these are great.

Amirah Cummings: classroom because you've reinvigorated your own curiosity. You've re... You've your sense of self in the classroom, and you're [00:53:00] no longer just trying to teach to metrics.

You're and within metrics. Now those metrics don't have to confine you because you can get to where you need to get to being the person that you've always wanted to be while expanding yourself and giving each kid their own individual lesson. Like you can say, "This is the lesson. Here are my 12 kids.

These are their personalities. This is what they like." You can go into the classroom and ask the kid, "Hey, I'm gonna teach you guys, fractions today." Who wa- how do you wanna learn fractions? I wanna learn how to divide pizza. I wanna learn ice cream. I want dinosaurs. I want... And they could just be, and they could, again, it could be that wow moment where a kid thinks that they're being They think they're being like, "Ha, I wanna learn about poop," and you just go give it to 'em, and now they're wowed by, like, how to

Matt Karabinos: Yep.

Amirah Cummings: poop, right? You know what I mean? And you get

Matt Karabinos: I love it

Amirah Cummings: where it's like you literally, before I thought I was gonna get in trouble for it, or I'm just doing this because school's so boring that I just have to make jokes all the time.

But it's now you brought this joke to me, [00:54:00] and this AI was able to give each one of us our, the exact same lesson in this way, and now there's my curriculum, and you print it out in the printer room, wherever they print things in schools, and there you go. You have,

Matt Karabinos: Yep.

Amirah Cummings: your own

Based on you as a teacher, and that AI's gonna remember that and

It. So to me that's just, I'm like,

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: unlimit the teacher, and then you don't have to think

Matt Karabinos: it

Amirah Cummings: in the classroom

Matt Karabinos: Yeah. And it ties into what I have said s- you can see my slight obsession with superheroes, especially this particular superhero, Superman. But the idea of to me, and again, this is probably because I'm a millennial, and we've been through every technological advancement, m- major technological advancement of the last, 40 years.

We've been in the middle of it.

And happening at pretty prominent times in our lives, and I s- to me, AI has always been about ... I view it as a superpower [00:55:00] because I constantly was someone who w- and as a teacher, I was ... I threw kids off all the time. They, because a lot of kids had never seen a teacher like me, because I would say, "I don't know," all the time.

Oh my gosh, I would say, I don't... The, and this was always a funny one. I started the year when I was a reading teacher, a reading and ELA teacher. I would say, "I'm gonna start by telling you something that's gonna confuse you." And they're all, so now they're cur- like, "Oh gosh, what's he gonna say?"

"I don't like reading. I don't like reading at all." And everyone has these quizzical looks on their face, and they're like, "What? How do you teach reading?" And I said, "I'm really glad you asked that question. I teach reading because I am good enough at reading to be good at it, but I don't like to do it."

And so again I got to... A- and I told them this I didn't like reading. I learned later that's probably because of adult ADHD and all that entails. So that's probably why I don't like reading. [00:56:00] But I said I couldn't sit there. I would, any time I'd read a book, I'd fall asleep. Still happens as an adult.

I'm getting better. But it's just, I would say these things out loud, and the kids are just like, "Oh..." A- and this was always my favorite, 'cause I'd always have a kid who'd go, "Hey I have ADHD, too. I know what that's like." And I'm like, "Cool. I know what your life's like." You know what I mean?

And it's we know what each other's lives are like, okay? But I told them, I said, "My goal is not to make you a perfect reader. You don't have to be a per- you just have to be, you have to be able to read enough enough to d- to, to just, c- can you read basic things? Can you understand?" And I and to your point, which is a hard one, a- again, the teacher is hardwired in me, but it's a hard one for me to grasp, but I do come to terms with this quite a bit, is this idea of even if the text is there, all of the technology we have can just turn the text into words.

It can just turn it into speech. And so a- and speech [00:57:00] in any language.

Amirah Cummings: I'm not against literacy.

Matt Karabinos: Yeah. No I understand. No, absolutely. But I, that is part of the struggle for me. Again, being someone who doesn't like reading, I was always good enough at reading,

And I think I got lucky because, on the, on, on the tests that you had to take, you didn't have to read whole books. You just had to read little passages. I got lucky that I didn't have to read a lot. That was always something I started with, and I think that kinda ties in here is 'cause it's like you don't have to be, like, perfect at the thing, at whatever it is.

But building enough of the skill, and I think right now, to your point as well, AI can help you

Build enough of the skill to get to where you want to go. ~And even more your story there, 'cause a- as someone who has dabbled in vibe coding, I will say dabbled, okay? 'Cause I don't do the back end stuff. I stick with static HTML pages.~

~That's about as far as I go, okay?~

Amirah Cummings: ~good. ~

Matt Karabinos: ~I don't connect to back ends yet. I'm slowly getting... I have people trying to convince me that it's not that hard. It's not, whatever, and I'm just like, "Eh, we'll get there. We'll get there." But- I don't know, I don't know the first thing about coding.~

~I couldn't even tell y- and this is funny because I took courses, I took college and high school courses when I was in high school for Java Basic, and C++. Do you think I could tell you anything about them? Do you know what I... I'll tell you what I remember. If-then statements. No context, I just remember that I had to learn if-then statements all over the place, and I don't remember which language that was.~

~Couldn't tell you. And I remember that I had to make little programs using the code. I made a snowman in winter w- wave. In a little window, I wrote the code, and it made the snowman wave. I got 100% on that project. We played Unreal Tournament for the rest of class. We sat on the computers and played Unreal Tourn- 'cause everybody was done with their projects.~

~So for two weeks straight, we just played Unreal Tournament when we were in class.~

Amirah Cummings: ~Okay~

Matt Karabinos: ~I didn't learn much from that. But again, I nev- I didn't need it. And here we are in the Vibe coding realm. I'm reading this code, and what's starting to happen is so interesting because you can go back, "Oh, I don't like the color.~

~I don't like this. I don't like that." And it's like, okay, let me do... And then it has to do the whole thing over again, and you're like, "Okay I'll wait for you." What's actually started what's actually started to happen is I'm like, wait a minute. That, that's where the color is. If I just type a different color in there, that's gonna change the color I wanna change.~

~And so I've started to actually recognize, like, where's this box? Where's that header? Where's that text? And I'm like, oh, it's right there. And, thankfully with Gemini and Canvas, with ChatGPT having the canvas that opens up there, you go right in and you say, "Oh, I can just edit it myself."~

~Which is wild. I don't know code, but I figured out where it was, right? That's silly. And so I think the point I'm trying to make with this big, long story... See, this is the problem. I talk too much. I talk too much~

Amirah Cummings: ~not too much.~

Matt Karabinos: ~But the point I'm trying to make with this story is that I think that even more than when we were in school- ~

Kids now, that curiosity, and I am gonna keep coming back to this. I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna quote this somewhere, but I'm gonna quote you on this, the, yeah, the unlimit- I'll have to go back and remember exactly what you said, but unlimiting. This it opens up so many possibilities for students, and I think if I [00:58:00] can get teachers to shift their mindset, 'cause that's one of the big duties that I have, is to shift their mindset away from this AI being this scary thing that's gonna take away all the thinking and creativity of the kids, and th- those are all the fears, right?

AI is gonna do all their work for them. My response has always been what are you changing about your work?" The thing in my head is what are you changing about the work? So if you're worried about AI doing the work, what are you changing about it? And most of the time, the answer is they should be able to do this work."

~And it's okay, but ... And then I always I, again, these, here's my controversial takes, right? That I usually don't say these out loud, but when's a kid gonna need to write an essay? When- How many times in your adult life after college have you had to write an essay~

Amirah Cummings: ~Yeah. The answer is in your~

Matt Karabinos: ~That, yeah, r- exactly.~

~That, right? And now, do I understand the importance of organizing thoughts, writing ideas out, like brainstorming, organizing thoughts, putting your ideas forward? I make the argument all the time to teachers, there's more ways to do that than just an essay. An essay is one way to do that. And with AI, a kid who, like me who maybe doesn't hate reading but hates writing AI gives them a place to start, and they can just talk out their story.~

~They can tell their story just by talking, and then here you go. There's my story. You know what I mean? Or they could do this. My kids, right before I left, we did a project where I gave them a choice board, and I said, "The- you could do anything on this board as your, assessment for this to show me your knowledge, show me what you learned or you can make up something, and I'll- and we'll go with it."~

~And almost all of my kids picked podcast. Every single kid, they wanted to make a pod- they were like, "That sounds so cool." And I tricked them 'cause I had the ... I had them. I don't know where they are, but I had the little TikTok mics~

~That are- that have the fuzzy, whatever, the fuzzy.~

~So I showed them those, and they were like, we get to use those?" I'm like, "Yeah, they plug into your computer, and you can use two of them," and then they're, and then so you have ki- I had kids all over the hallway. They were like, "Can we record our podcast now?" And they're just like... and I, this is the story I tell everybody.~

~I had a girl in class. She did not like to speak at all. When she did speak, she was very soft-spoken. Could almost barely hear her. When she did this podcast, sh- perfectly clear. Everything she said was perfectly clear. Her voice was there, and I heard it ~

~Tool.~

~You don't have to write the thing. You don't have to talk in front of the whole class. You can just talk in this little microphone,~

Amirah Cummings: ~Yeah~

Matt Karabinos: ~and I heard you better than I've ever heard you before. ~I'm of the mindset I think we just need to start doing things differently, and I love that you are like you've gone way past the we should start doing things differently to just be like, "Let's rebuild the whole thing."

No. And,

Amirah Cummings: saying.

Matt Karabinos: Yeah. And, and I love that, and I hope, I really sincerely hope that more people hear this and say, "Huh, [00:59:00] maybe we can. Maybe we can get there." It is within reach. Yeah. And especially, and so yeah, so I'll bring this, wrap this up. I'm def- I can tell you already I'm gonna need to talk to you again in the future.

We're gonna need to talk again to see how f- how far we've come.

Amirah Cummings: all for it.

Matt Karabinos: How far we've come from this moment. But

Closing: What Are You Most Curious About?
---

Matt Karabinos: I always end our podcast here with the whole things curiosity. So we've talked a lot about curiosity, how to bring it out of people. I've given you a lot of my curiosity. So I end with asking my guests what is, what are you the most curious about going forward?

Related to AI, education, all of the above. What are you most curious about going forward?

Amirah Cummings: I'm really curious about who we're gonna become. I think and when s- who we, I- I'm curious, I keep saying I wanna see what 2042 looks like

Matt Karabinos: Yeah. [01:00:00] Yeah

Amirah Cummings: 2042 that's to me an entire generation out from the kids that are being born today. And right now we're in a place of so much fear. We're in a place of so much change, and we're gonna continue to be there because we're just advancing.

Every new-- every day there's a new something The Where we get to is gonna be where we choose, and I think we're not gonna be able to choose until we can release our fear, because you can't choose from a place of fear. You're not actually choosing, you're just reacting and surviving. And so I think older people, because whenever something is new, is shifting, we wanna hold on because we don't know.

We haven't-- We've cultivated a society to hold on to the, the unknown is actually what we've said is not good, [01:01:00] and so we're only in the unknown. So I'm really curious to see what kids who have no idea what any of that was create. And so I'm super curious about what does 2042 look like. And if I can get a knee injection, 'cause I got without having to have knee surgery.

Just grow a new knee, 'cause I've, my, my one knee's really bad. So I'm really curious about that too. But yeah, I just, I'm curious to see what we ch- this is the first time we get to truly choose who we get to become,

Matt Karabinos: Yeah.

Amirah Cummings: I'm s- I'm curious to see what that looks like, 'cause I don't think it's gonna look like anything we can imagine today

Matt Karabinos: ~No, I'll tell you what, you've, you've- we've ended this with me having about a bajillion more questions to follow up with. But~

~all the excuse that, all the excuse that I just need to have you back on. But I'm so glad that you said that because I do wanna tie that to something that I'm currently listening to,~

~Steven Bartlett's podcast, Diary of a CEO.~

~I don't listen to all of his episodes, but any episodes that have anything to do with AI, I listen to every single one of them because they are fascinating. And he's talked to the people like Geoffrey Hinton and Stuart Russell and Yoshu- what's it? Yoshua Bengio,~

~The people who were in the room that created these things, that built the technologies that made AI possible, the neural networks.~

~Stuart Russell wrote the textbook that everybody studied when they learned about AI in college. He wrote the book on it. Bengio was at Google and DeepMind. Tristan Harris was at Google as well. And so all these people are all saying the same thing of A- and you said it, you just you said the exact same thing.~

~We have a choice.~

~There's a choice of where this technology goes, and the one that's on right now, I'm gonna butcher his name, but it's Daniel something. It starts with a K.~

Amirah Cummings: ~Yeah~

Matt Karabinos: ~of c- he has a book coming out, but he used to work at OpenAI, and I guess they're referring to him. Steven Bartlett, he gets all fancy with his titles.~

~OpenAI whistleblower spills the blah, blah, whatever. His titles are all~

Amirah Cummings: ~ChatGPT~

Matt Karabinos: ~there, ~

Amirah Cummings: ~just kidding.~

Matt Karabinos: ~Probably, yeah, he is not afraid. He's like, "I have a lot of AI agents that do a lot of stuff. My staff all uses AI." He's all about AI, and he's very... the way he does his podcast, I think is very curious.~

~He he asks pretty good questions, and he lets people just talk and do their thing. But this guy, it's very interesting 'cause he said 2040.~

Amirah Cummings: ~Ah,~

Matt Karabinos: ~said to his prediction, his thing that he, his, How did he put it? His plan A, what he hopes happens is based on 2040.~

Amirah Cummings: ~Okay~

Matt Karabinos: ~And so when you say 2042, I'm like, "Oh, man, you two need to meet."~

~You guys would have- that would be a great conversation. But no. So I just wanna say this, th- this conversation was truly fascinating to me. I like I said, I had notes and I was f-forget that. You took, you, we went down rabbit holes together, and I'm so glad that we did. This,~

Amirah Cummings: ~I~

Matt Karabinos: this was such a wonderful conversation.

Thank you so much for sharing your insight, your kn- your curiosities, and I can clearly, and I think everybody else is gonna see the passion that you have for transforming education, like truly transforming it and building something completely new. And I'm all for it, and I'm ready to see it.

Kio is the name of the ecosystem. I got that right, the [01:02:00] ecosystem, okay? So we have the Kids in Orbit that's the progr- so you have the... tell me what's all in there. Or let's do a run, like what's all, what is all in the ecosystem here?

Amirah Cummings: KIO, Kids in Orbit, is the, you can say it's the, the holder of everything. And we wanna encourage kids to become Kionauts which are curious, compassionate explorers of Earth and the cosmos.

Matt Karabinos: I'm going to get ready to sign my kid up as soon as I get home. So you're gonna have one more

Amirah Cummings: thank you. Parts of the ecosystem will be will be released.

But yeah, mainly KIO. We're at kiolearning.com and Kionaut.com. That's, those are the two main places where you can much go anywhere from there. Anything that we build in the ecosystem will come from those two

Matt Karabinos: ~Wonderful. And I also, I texted a colleague of mine, she's in charge of all of our AR and VR stuff that we do with schools. And so I said, "Ooh, do I have a person that you should talk to about some AR,~

Amirah Cummings: ~be~

Matt Karabinos: ~VR stuff." Kinda helping bridge, bridge some gaps there, make connections. It's been my thing on LinkedIn, I have a, a lot of connections, some of them I haven't met. But I'll tell ya, being able to be like, "Oh, I have a person for that. I have a person..." It's nice to be able to connect people, so I'm glad that I have added you to my circle~

~Of connections. And ~thank you so much for your time, and thank you so much for your story.

And I look forward to see what else is coming down the pipe from you. So thank you so much

Amirah Cummings: This was fun. This was everything it needed to be. So thank you so much, and I look forward to coming on again and seeing what else you [01:03:00] your other interviews as well. So

Matt Karabinos: Hopefully not, hopefully it won't be, like, all the way until 2042. I gotta get you before 2042. So although, but that would be... I'll tell you, that would be really cool to have an episode in 2042. I'm gonna write that down, so we're gonna keep that. So

Amirah Cummings: put it in your AI calendar and it'll tell you in

Matt Karabinos: So it keep... Yep.

Amirah Cummings: remind you.

Matt Karabinos: 100%. 100%.

Amirah Cummings: All

Matt Karabinos: All right. Hey, thanks Amirah

Amirah Cummings: ~you. Take care~

~ ~