When a superintendent told Babak Mostaghimi, “I think we’re Blockbuster Video, and Netflix is coming,” it became a warning, and an invitation, to rethink education before the future arrived.

In this episode, Babak joins Brett Roer and Rebecca Bultsma to explore why improving the existing school system is no longer enough. He breaks down LearnerStudio’s three horizons of education, from the industrial factory model to a future designed around human flourishing, agency, and lifelong learning.

They also unpack the growing tech clash in education: nostalgic humanists who want to remove technology altogether, techno-nihilists who want to automate everything, and the human-centered middle way between them. From screen time and AI literacy to creativity, collaboration, data sovereignty, and the skills students need for an uncertain future, the conversation asks a bigger question: Are we using AI to deepen humanity, or replace it?

Midway through, Babak takes over as host and puts Brett and Rebecca in the hot seat.

What you’ll learn:

• The three horizons of education, and why reform can only go so far
• Why changing the architecture matters more than adding new content or tools
• How the “swim, snorkel, scuba” framework explains different levels of AI literacy
• Why blanket screen bans and unrestricted technology use both miss the point
• How schools can design for agency, lifelong learning, and human flourishing
• Why the right questions may be more useful than one standardized AI policy

Tune in for a wide-ranging conversation about redesigning education for the world students are already entering.

Brett Roer: Students are getting right that they are truly anxious and afraid that they don't know the line between having AI help them or teach them and having AI take away their agency and their learning, and they know it.

Babak Mostaghimi: What happens if we flip on its head the idea that learning is about schooling, and we actually remind ourselves that learning is about flourishing?

Rebecca Bultsma: The pumpkin spice latte is back, and I am a fall girl at my core, so I am basically living the dream.

Brett Roer: That's wonderful. We were just catching up with our guests on when summer really ends in different parts of, I guess, North America with Rebecca up in Canada, and our guest visiting the state from Georgia. So without further ado, it's so exciting to introduce someone that I remember about five years ago learning about what they were doing in their work at the district they were leading, and being like, "Wow."

Brett Roer: And five years later, I'm still saying that about this person. So it's a real honor to have on today's podcast, Babak Mostaghimi. Welcome to the podcast.

Babak Mostaghimi: Thank you so much. It's great to be with you.

Brett Roer: Yeah. So again, I know for the last five years what you've been doing. Our guests hopefully are gonna learn about your storied career and where you are now in your role at Learner Studio.

Babak Mostaghimi: Sure. So I'm gonna do, like, a quick piece of w- how I got to Gwinnett, and then I'm gonna slow down for a minute there, 'cause I think it's really interesting.

Babak Mostaghimi: But first of all, it's great to be here with you guys. Like, it's good to see you all. I, I really appreciate you guys elevating different voices across the sector around AI. I think it's, it's, it, it's, and not just AI, but, like, the future of education and things like that in general. It's just so important right now.

Babak Mostaghimi: I actually started as a defense contractor, and it was into, like, counterterrorism, national security type stuff. My undergrad was in economics and international relations, right? But there came this moment in my, in my career where I was asking the question of, "Hey- We're solving all these problems abroad, or like problems abroad, however you want to define that.

Babak Mostaghimi: And I couldn't figure out why, 'cause my family had come as refugees to the US from Iran literally with nothing, and like in one generation we got to like multiple Harvard grads and like all this sort of stuff. Like I, I just assumed that's like what happens, right? Um, and in looking at this question, I like came to this moment where I was like, "I think I'm not seeing something."

Babak Mostaghimi: And so I ended up signing up for Teach For America. I ended up in rural Mississippi, was a teacher, and it completely changed my perspective on e- everything, right? I was like, "Oh, okay, hold on. Like we have some things that we have to improve as a country, and I wanna be a part of improving it." Um, 'cause we don't pay people n- Like you can get a ton of money being a defense contractor.

Babak Mostaghimi: And the sort of biggest part of that is I realized that too many kids are left out of the opportunities of tomorrow. And so fast-forward, I had just finished up my doctorate at Harvard. Um, I had facilitated a team from Gwinnett County, Georgia, which was like a really high-performing team. They had just won two Broad prizes, and the superintendent came up to me and he's like, "Hey, I think we're Blockbuster Video, and Netflix is coming.

Babak Mostaghimi: I need your help building a system for innovation for Gwinnett County, figuring out what Netflix is gonna be, how we should prepare for it, um, and we like give-- like let's give ourselves as much runway as possible." And literally by, by December of twenty seventeen, I had figured out just like I didn't know anyone in like the AI space or anything like that.

Babak Mostaghimi: So fast-forward eight years after that, I was an assistant superintendent there, did a lot of really cool stuff, built a bunch of new schools and, and those sorts of things, built that AI learning framework that was like a K-twelve model of how do we prepare young kids for a future infused with AI. Um, and then realized that, hey, to get this work to happen everywhere, we gotta change the underlying architecture of education.

Babak Mostaghimi: And because otherwise you have these like really amazing innovators who just burn out 'cause they're always, you know, like swimming against the current. How do we make the current help everyone go to where we already wanna go? And that's when I joined Kim Smith at Learner Studio, and that's what we've been working on.

Brett Roer: That's incredible journey, and just so many impressive moments that you've just h- highlighted that we really wanna make sure our audience learns about today. There's one that you didn't mention that I do want you to dig in on a little bit because I love the way this, the philosophy that you're bringing.

Babak Mostaghimi: Yeah, absolutely. So at Learner Studio, we had this moment where we recognized that a lot of people are saying that they're innovating, but there wasn't a clear answer of like innovating towards what. And oftentimes what ends up happening when that's the case is you end up with a lot of improvement, a lot of really...

Babak Mostaghimi: A- which isn't bad. But if you're improving something that you don't necessarily want or it's not working well, you're just getting a better product that you didn't want in the first place, or one that's not working anymore. And so at Learner Studios, we were sitting there thinking about this. Kim Smith actually came up with the, with the idea of maybe actually education is happening on three horizons simultaneously, meaning you have this first horizon of education, which we all know is like the factory model, like the industrial sort of model of education.

Babak Mostaghimi: This, this doesn't work." Like, it was, it was a great innovation at its time, right? Because it, for, for the first time made it so that education was a- available sort of democratically to anyone, right? Obviously, we had hiccups in the past around excluding people out of that system and those sorts of things, and we're still working on that, right?

Babak Mostaghimi: But it was a pretty big innovation of its own. What happened, though, is a lot of people started saying, "Hey, hold on. This whole s- sort of sorting mechanism, this standardization piece doesn't fully make sense. It's missing something." And so they started building out the second horizon of education. And in this horizon, you can think of, like, the charter schools.

Babak Mostaghimi: You can think of me at Gwinnett, where it's like, "Hey, we're gonna work within the structures of, of that old system." So it's still, like, six and a half hours a day. We still get on buses every morning to go to this building. We still have 180 days of school. We still have one teacher per 30 kids, like, all that sort of stuff.

Babak Mostaghimi: Like, there are so many times when I was partnering with, like, really great people in, like, a, like, a New Schools Venture Fund cohort, and they're like, "I wish I could do X." And they just literally couldn't do it, not 'cause they weren't trying hard enough, but because the system in its rigidity prevented it.

Babak Mostaghimi: Um, and so that third horizon is what Learner Studio is, is working on with a ton of really amazing partners across the country who have been working and building p- parts and pieces for, for decades.

Brett Roer: Rebecca, I, I'm gonna let those thought bubbles percolate into a great question. Go for it.

Rebecca Bultsma: No, it just, it just resonated with me just based on a, an article in The New York Times this week, and I'm just, I'm just finding it because I, I did post about it right away.

Rebecca Bultsma: And that's Natasha Singer from The New York Times. But just teaching kids to ask not only questions about the world and democracy, always be asking questions about who holds power and who doesn't, especially, um, you know, politically and in the world of technology, but where did this come from? Who built it?

Rebecca Bultsma: Why was it built? Who's profiting? Who's benefiting? All of these really, really important questions. Uh, so just to kind of carry that on, it just really sparked a connection for me of how important all those different elements are for bringing everything together, and that idea that we all have this connected responsibility to work together to make that happen.

Rebecca Bultsma: So thank you for bringing all that up, that connected just a lot of dots in my brain. Thank you.

Babak Mostaghimi: Yeah. I mean, Rebecca, that's, that's super cool. I, I had not heard the term technology civics before, but it's, it's fascinating. I would say one caveat i- in, in my understanding of that is that I don't think we're gonna get to the future we want just by adding in more content or more things that kids need to know.

Babak Mostaghimi: Which is why we get like an 18-year-old who graduates from high school, and all of a sudden we're like, "Oh, you suck at civics." And you're like, "Yeah, 'cause for the last 18 years, I get in trouble if I like speak up in class," right? "Or if I don't stand in line appropriately or whatever," right? And so, like I think I agree with the idea that we need to make sure that our young people and our educators and everybody are able to like, like pressure test the world that's being handed to us, right?

Rebecca Bultsma: I think that's a really good point.

Rebecca Bultsma: I, I have to wonder if the skills you're talking about developing, uh, if incorporating things like AI in the classroom actually creates opportunities for that at all, knowing that, uh, power systems exist within them, and, uh, we can't necessarily see how they're steering and why. And so I'm wondering if for the future that you're envisioning where kids have the freedom to explore and have those conversations, I feel like that has nothing to do with AI.

Rebecca Bultsma: I feel like we would almost be better served in classrooms where technology or AI wasn't present at all, and it could be more of an oral, strictly human experience to explore those ideas. What are your thoughts?

Babak Mostaghimi: Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. So at Learner Co., we have this concept where on like the AI and, and just like technology sort of front in general.

Babak Mostaghimi: One which we call the like nostalgic humanists, which are the people who are like, "Oh, let's go back to blue books. Let's go back to this like beautiful world before technology." Right? And if we like pressure test that a little bit, like one inch under, we realize that there wasn't this like beautiful world pre-technology.

Babak Mostaghimi: It was just a different world than what we have today, right? And so it's like, and, and if we think about it, we weren't flourishing under that environment either On the other c- sort of extreme are these, these folks who are like these techno nihilists, who are like, "Whatever technology can do, it should do."

Babak Mostaghimi: And so what we imagine is actually this, like, human flourishing middle way that allows technology to be used in ways that are super pro-human, right? So I was actually at Tennessee SCORE. They had a AI symposium last week, and, uh, Senator Frist was doing the opening, and he talked about this moment as a doctor, where there used to be when we moved to electronic medical records or even old note-taking, a doctor's, like, looking down, writing notes a whole lot around what they're saying to the patient and all that sort of stuff, or, like, typing on a keyboard.

Babak Mostaghimi: But then recently, with the help of AI, now you have this, like, automatic transcription and analysis. So now the doctor, like, can just come in and look at you as a human being and, like, talk to you as a human. And, like, and that's the world that I want, and not just in medicine, but, like, in classrooms, in community when we're together, right?

Babak Mostaghimi: Um, and we just have to change those, those paradigms

Brett Roer: I think. Yeah. You know, Babak, you said two things that... Like, that middle way, there's two things that we're doing across the country that People are like, they're so skeptical of, and then they can't believe how much it restores humanity. So one of them we do is wisdom collection, where 10 school districts in one of the most rural and poverty-stricken parts of Pennsylvania, IU1, they just talked the entire time, and all we did was use voice memos to record it.

Brett Roer: So that created these AI playbooks that were completely quoted back on the values of their community. And so two weeks ago, I was in Pennsylvania keynoting at one of those districts, introducing it on day one of kickoff, and I had one of the teachers part of it just stand up and be like, "How often did we use AI during that whole three-day, 15-hour process?"

Brett Roer: She's like, "An hour." I was like, "Right, what did we do the whole time?" She's like, "Oh, we just talked. You just gave us prompts, and all we did was talk." And I'm like, "And does this playbook reflect all the conversations?" She's like, "Yeah." And I said, "Right, like, this is your values. We could have made this cookie cutter, but this totally exists on your human wisdom, and all we're doing is just cross-mapping it to district policy and best practices like your organization and a few others We also did this, though, with we call Pass the Mic, where just like you said, just getting people to stand in a circle away from their screens and just all listen to, like, one hope and fear about AI, but not using AI except for recording with consent.

Brett Roer: It's, it's easier said than done, but it's, it's happening, and I know that you partner with a lot of great organizations that are really trying to move that forward. Would love your reflections on that, like, how do we move people more into this space, and also some of the organizations that are doing this tremendous work in the space.

Babak Mostaghimi: And, like, on the education front, a couple of examples that, that come to mind for me of places that are doing, doing things that are similar, like in terms of bringing people sort of h- h- eyes up off the screen together, right? Are people like, like the folks at Oko Labs, for example. I always talk about them, right?

Babak Mostaghimi: Where they are y- you know, ostensibly creating a small group instruction platform where typically what a platform is trying to do is, like, suck a user in and just, like, keep them engaged, quote-unquote, i.e., addicted, with the specific task on the screen. What this is doing is like, hey, let's actually engage a group of people, just like a human would, with one another around a math problem.

Babak Mostaghimi: And then in the background, the AI is not only able to figure out what the kids know and are able to do and help the teacher figure out what that is so they can support them, but it's also helping to measure the-- Or it's like the early days of being able to measure things like collaboration and cooperation together, which we know are really important, but we haven't figured out good ways at scale to, to, to test, right?

Babak Mostaghimi: Or like, like another one that comes to mind, an organization called Inquire Where they have-- They're like a project-based learning platform, right? And people go, "Oh, great. So you like click a couple buttons, and here's a project." It's like, no, it's not that at all. It's like a young person and educator come together and explore something that the young person really cares about.

Babak Mostaghimi: I'm trying to get the person to just keep doing it. I'll give them points. I'll give them whatever. And you're like, actually, you're, you're creating habits that aren't good for you in real life, uh, later.

Rebecca Bultsma: I actually love that idea that you said about, you know, the student working with the teacher. It reminds me of preparing kids young to do something like a thesis or a doctorate, right?

Rebecca Bultsma: Uh, but You mentioned the techlash, and we're seeing that a, a lot, a lot right now with parents, right? Who've decided they just don't want their kids in front of screens anymore, and it's all connected to what we're seeing with the social media backlash, which took far too long to surface, right? And everyone's worried that this is gonna happen again.

Rebecca Bultsma: What are your thoughts on appropriate, um, ages and places for these screens in the classrooms, and at what age? I, I'm just curious because I've been researching, as part of my research, a lot of what other organizations are saying, and they say lots of different things, and w- as you peel back the layers, you can tell who funded the studies, which is, uh, goes back to the power dynamics.

Rebecca Bultsma: But I'm just curious about your thoughts about where it belongs, at what age, and in what ways.

Babak Mostaghimi: Like, I think that kids on average are literally sitting there staring at a screen for the majority of their day in many cases. Like my own, my own child oftentimes would come home and just be like, like a zombie. Why? Because every class, like, had their notes on the screen. Every class had essentially worksheets on a Chromebook.

Babak Mostaghimi: Every class had assignments that he has to do online in the thing. Every class had, like, apps to use not-- But-- And everything was screen-based, and I think that's a lot, and probably not screens used in the right way I think when screens are used well, they allow you to do things that you couldn't do otherwise.

Babak Mostaghimi: That said, the question of, like, I, I think the idea of outright banning it misses the point because it goes to that nostalgic humanist idea of, oh, if we just got rid of the technology, we'd be fine. And we know that that's not true because what we're pl- what the technology replaced essentially was, like, worksheets.

Babak Mostaghimi: Going back to the worksheets is just as bad, except it's just not on a screen. It's, like, on a piece of paper, right? And so the way forward, in my mind, needs to be, hey, what are the things we're actually trying to do with learners? And how do we unlock those things in ways that an educator who's overwhelmed and by himself in a room can't do unless they have support?

Babak Mostaghimi: So our current system is about standardization, right? It's like by age four you do X. And, like, that's just not how people work. Like, that's just not how the brain develops. That's just not how, like, anything in life works, right? Somebody might take a little longer to, like, learn how to do X. Somebody might take learn-- a little longer to learn how to do Y.

Babak Mostaghimi: They might need to learn it in different ways, all those sorts of things. And so the idea that we believe that we should have just, like, a strict, like, until this age, don't do whatever is like, it simplifies things sure, but it creates problems later, right? And I'll bring up an example. At what age do you guys think kids should learn how to cross the street by themselves

Rebecca Bultsma: You're exactly right.

Babak Mostaghimi: It depends on where you live. If you're sitting here in Georgia, my street, no one comes down it. Like, literally a two-year-old could probably cross it. I'm not saying that I'd just let a two-year-old run, but like, at like age four or five, my kids were walking across the street just fine, right?

Babak Mostaghimi: Even in my own situation, go five blocks further down, there's a highway. Like, dude, no, the kids should not be crossing that street on their own. Probably not even as an adult, just like walking across a highway, right? And I think it's similar with AI and with all these tools. I think we need to be looking at the developmental sort of nature and status of a child, like individually.

Babak Mostaghimi: I think we need to be talking about what we're trying to get them to do and under what conditions, and that should determine whether or not we're using technology in the ways that we're doing it.

Brett Roer: So something you just said, sorry, that this has been my biggest ... I would love to learn to solve this at scale.

Brett Roer: But to your point, I go into every district and I say what you just said, which is like, if you do the, uh, you know, I do, we do, you do model, and you're just showing your kids how to use Alexa to like plan for a trip. We're going on a field trip. I'm a teacher Whenever they're ready in front of you to ask the right questions and not ask the ones that should be a human or an adult or a child, that's the exact moment when you can trust them.

Brett Roer: But if she wants to learn like how big a whale is or big-- a blue whale, great, and then she has to go and check it in a book anyway, or check, ask her father or ask an adult because that's the part. So I make districts say, "I don't care when you're doing this, have the conversation and create those values yourself."

Brett Roer: But once you have that conversation and role play it, you'll see where it fits in with the rest of the things you're talking about. And if it's, like you said, if it's two, six, eight, like that part, I'm like, "That's up to you. I'm leaving here after this." You have to decide, but you have to now acknowledge you haven't actually taught your kids these skills, and you've acknowledged these parents are not teaching them.

Brett Roer: So let's like, let's address the elephants in the room and then, you know, move forward. That's the hardest part, though.

Babak Mostaghimi: So like instead of being like there's a, an answer or a thing we always do, which is the old standardized model, like even in Gwinnett when we were doing our, our AI themed high school instead of cluster, in our design sort of like playbook, it ended with a series of questions that should be asked at any decision point, and these questions would guide you to the right answer years from now, right?

Babak Mostaghimi: So the question might be, is whatever I'm doing increasing the number of times a young person gets to practice like making decisions or finding problems on their own? If the answer is no, you should probably do it less often. But if the answer to your question is yes, it does help kids do that, then you should do it more often, right?

Rebecca Bultsma: I think that's really interesting, and I've, I've heard a couple times about this idea of rethinking what we do, and I, I can't help but think that we need to, like, zoom all the way out and look at the big picture of why we do what we do. Because even the idea of personalized learning, um, and I've, I've read a lot about this, but it even implies that there's still one single destination.

Rebecca Bultsma: We just all get there at different speeds, and it implies this is the right place to go, and this is ... There's still a path. You just might be slower, so we're gonna help you along this path a little slower, but you have to end up here. And-

Babak Mostaghimi: Yeah.

Rebecca Bultsma: Yeah, it's the same destination ... that fundamentally needs to be rethought.

Rebecca Bultsma: Yeah. Exactly, and that's part of, like, zooming out and one of the bigger, uh, more wicked macro problems that we need to be talking about when we talk about redesigning education.

Babak Mostaghimi: How high of a priority should that be?" And people have a different range of answers and stuff, right? And then I go, "What happens if the school was in, like, China?" And they're like, "Oh, well, totally different." I'm like, "Okay." So like the idea then that we've already landed on is like the language you speak really depends on like where you are, like what your destination is.

Babak Mostaghimi: And they're like remarkably intelligent, brilliant people who have never spoken English and never will, and the other way around, right? I've never spoken Chinese and probably never will, right? And that's just like how it's showing up for me, right? Like, I never took a physics class, right? Like, the craziest thing about physics though is like when I drop a pen, it still falls, right?

Babak Mostaghimi: But even we know like, look, everyone who graduates high school does not have the same sets of skills or knowledge and capabilities. You and I, all three of us, could be in the same class, and all of us could get an A, but we could get it in three different ways. Like, I coulda gotten it just because I do really well on the final test.

Babak Mostaghimi: You coulda gotten it 'cause you don't do well on the test, but you do great on the homeworks, right? Brett coulda gotten it 'cause the teacher really likes him, right? It's like, like you never, you never know. And so I think when we finally realize we've been like fooling ourselves by this mirage of standardization, and what really should happen is we need to make sure that every kid is prepared for whatever future they want.

Babak Mostaghimi: Um, and, and I, I think we need to create protections around that for sure. But we're also not serving kids who are not achieving the basic bar well either. So like how do we help people, everyone, achieve whatever goals they have, and help push them on their goals of what they could be by having them see new things?

Rebecca Bultsma: I think it's a problem of having to measure everything, right? It's becau- it comes from a much bigger place of we have to measure and categorize people, and then that depends on how much money the government gives you, and how successful you are in life, and who the haves are and who the have-nots, because we have to be able to measure it.

Rebecca Bultsma: And, uh, that, that's tricky.

Brett Roer: Yeah. But Rebecca, you're looking at it, and obviously, like, both, like this is a yes and obviously. You have to look at the topic you're talking about. Something that, Pupak, I wanna ask you about, uh, fall back, sorry, is ... Okay, so I go into a lot of schools and I quote a report that, you know, ISTE, like Richard Culatta always shares.

Brett Roer: I don't want you to tell me about, like, where it accidentally happens, and how are you ensuring that these are skills people leave with?" And also, then I do even their portrait of a graduate. I'm like, "Did a statistically significant number of stakeholders build this? How long ago did they build it?"

Brett Roer: Meaning like, have they all graduated and a lot of your teachers have left, or your parents? But then I'm like, even that, show me how that intentionally, what does it look like, sound like, feel like in every classroom? 'Cause you haven't done it at the micro level. You've created the nice thing on the page.

Babak Mostaghimi: Yeah. So that's a great question, and actually, I have like a similar question that I ask people when we're, when I'm talking to districts, especially with big sets of educators. I ask them like, "If I looked at your lesson plan, would I see what content you're teaching?" And every single teacher's hand goes, "Absolutely, yeah, of course.

Babak Mostaghimi: Like that's what we do." And I'm like, "Okay. Now how many of you all teach like skills in your class that are important for the future?" Every hand goes up. I'm like, "All right. If I were to look at your lesson plan, could I see that you designed the experience to make those skills come true?" And usually no hands go up 'cause, like, that's not what we're designing and building for, right?

Babak Mostaghimi: Um, and so as we're talking about what we need to do, and obviously that's still in the sort of h- second horizon system. Like, you're still under the old requirements, right? One of the things that Learner CEO did was started to ask this question of what are the human skills that are required for the future, right?

Babak Mostaghimi: the ability to apply skills across different contexts and domains, and this idea of agency that you can, like, exercise. You have the capacity to act and make choices, and like take knowledge and turn into action, and those sorts of things. And then it, and it showed all... Essentially, as you look across all these different frameworks, you land on these other s- like, all these set of skills are approximately the same.

Babak Mostaghimi: Like, things like critical thinking, right? Things like communication, things like adaptability, all things that we've heard. Collaboration, emotional intelligence. We've, we've heard all these things before. I think the one, though, that out of all these different skills, like, yes, we, we teach them often by accident, and most of these skills are actually taught the most outside of the classroom, right?

Babak Mostaghimi: So for some people, they only get the inside of the classroom experience, and so if we're not teaching those skills inside of the classroom, then it's a major problem, right? The one skill that I think out of the sort of 12 skills we laid out that I think is missing the most is this idea of lifelong learning, and the reason I bring that up is because most people when they graduate, whether it's high school or even college, they end up hating learning.

Babak Mostaghimi: They end up realizing like, "I only did this to get this degree 'cause I had to, 'cause I had to get this job." And like that doesn't work anymore in a world where we need to like up our skills all the time. You need people who actually love learning at its core. You need people who at any point look up and go, "Oh yeah, I wanna learn about that.

Babak Mostaghimi: And so the thing that we don't do enough in our, in our schools is understand that like joy and motivation are really important, and that we need to make sure that the joy and motivation around learning is built in to the core of how we design the learning experience for young people. So yeah. So really, like there's a lot of work that needs to be done there.

Babak Mostaghimi: But if they could do-- if, if we could do one thing in our society, it would be to build that lifelong learning muscle in, in everybody

Rebecca Bultsma: I have a question about those, those 12 things, those, those meta, th- you know, that, that list of, of 12... What, what did we call them again? I'm trying to remember here. The sk- human skills, right?

Babak Mostaghimi: Yep.

Rebecca Bultsma: I, I'm not an all or nothing person, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. Like, in any case, like, I am a nuanced person, um, and I spend a lot of time in this space. The more time I spend in it, the more questions I have about how useful AI can actually be. Um, and I've learned it's very, very niche places, usually in the background, and often for teachers only, and I just would like to understand more what I might be missing about these skills that we think everybody needs to survive in the world, and the role AI plays in actually getting those skills.

Babak Mostaghimi: Yeah. I'll, I'll give a really crisp example that actually was one where I had my own thinking pushed on it really hard, and then I tried it out with one of my own kids, all right?

Rebecca Bultsma: I appreciate it, yeah.

Babak Mostaghimi: It sort of brings everyone to this, like, mediocre middle," all that sort of stuff. And I ran into a Stanford professor, and I'm forgetting his name. He was at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning at an event there, and he was giving a talk about AI and creativity, and he, by background, I wanna say was deep into, like, music and, like, like, uh, the arts and, and he was looking at AI and the arts.

Babak Mostaghimi: And one thing he said, like, really changed how I think about, like, everything about AI, and wh- what he said is that with creativity, often people think that the signal of creativity is the product, i.e., like, you had a beautiful piece of art, or you had a beautiful piece of music. He's like, "But the actual creativity is in all the thinking and designing and learning you had to do before getting to that end product, and the end product is just that.

Babak Mostaghimi: It's, like, what went into building that five paragraph essay that matters. So I tried this out with one of my kids. So I have a 14-year-old. He was, like, maybe 12 at the time, and he has these, like, brilliant ideas for, like, apps he wants to build out in the world and that sort of stuff, and he's, like, laying out this, like, really cool thing.

Babak Mostaghimi: And I'm like, "Oh, that's really cool." He's like, "Yeah, it's, like, a shame I can't build it And so I, like, pulled out Claude Code and showed it to him. He's like, "Oh, this is cool. What is this?" And he starts, like, s- putting his ideas in, starts... And all of a sudden he builds the app that he's thinking about, and it just, like, blows his mind, right?

Babak Mostaghimi: But I think there are many circumstances where AI can either give us good feedback or let us do things that we couldn't do before that allow us to, like, in this case, bring out our creativity, but it also could be our collaboration or our, our teamwork or leadership, those sorts of things.

Rebecca Bultsma: So how do you-- we make sure that it doesn't take away from the human elements of that, I guess?

Rebecca Bultsma: Like, it's just a matter of, I think, just further dissection and really critically analyzing very rigorously, like, where exactly on a really small level this is useful versus not.

Brett Roer: Yeah. Could... Babak, I wanna ask you, I wanna just think about that for a second 'cause, you know, you all at Gwinnett County, I bel- I don't know if you founded it, but you were the first people I heard express the, like, swim snorkel model.

Babak Mostaghimi: Yeah. Oh, we... That was us. That was us-

Brett Roer: Okay, great ... all

Babak Mostaghimi: the way. Absolutely. Yep.

Brett Roer: So, okay. So I wanna give- What you just said about, like, your son's creative, creative process, I'm not exaggerating, it was one week ago, a neighbor just walked by my house and we wound up nerding out about AI on my back porch for, like, way too long till his wife's like, "Play date's over.

Brett Roer: I'm not figuring out how to use AI effectively. And he's like ... But you're, like, an old-school shot producer, 'cause I'm making all the reference cards for the images for, like, if I make 10 of these books, like, I realize I have to start at the beginning, like, what is this gonna look like 10 years from now?

Brett Roer: And he's like, "Yeah, that's how you should be thinking." But then when I started reading the book hundreds of times to my kids and be like, "Does that sound good?" And now we're making the pictures together. When I show them stuff and they're like, "Well, why does it look like that?" I'm like, "Well, where do you think the word should go?"

Brett Roer: And they're like, "Oh." And then we, like, take out a book, and we're like, "Oh, that goes there." And I'm like, I wish I had been documenting this whole process because I've learned so much about, like, why do books look the way they are for kids? And they're even like, "Yeah, that should be better." So to bring it back to your swim snorkel analogy, Rebecca, imagine if, like, when we do these things, like, I make people say, like, "Well, right here, what would be the best creative way to talk to your class about it?

Brett Roer: Like, if you only learn how to do this and you only become emotionally available to a machine, that's not really bringing humanity back. But knowing when you can use it in a small group, a class setting, or, you know, a community, that's a nuance no one's really doing yet So that's my knowledge. But Babak, what do you think, and, like, where is it happening?

Babak Mostaghimi: No, I mean, I think, I think both of you guys are onto something. I think what, what I realize about AI is when we get worried about what should AI do versus what a human should do, it's usually when we're thinking about, like, AI as a tool and a human being using that tool, and that's the only interaction we're talking about, right?

Babak Mostaghimi: And so, like, the true, the true judge of learning is whether you can actually do it in real life with real people. There's actually some really interesting research going on right now of essentially, like, if you learn collaboration creativity in the context of, like, game-based play, does it actually transfer into real life when you, like, show up at work?

Babak Mostaghimi: People should understand what it is, how it works, how it doesn't work. Doesn't mean you have to use it all the time, but, like, you should know what it's, what it is. The snorkelers are... Most people should be snorkelers, right? So, like, when your internet stops working, you don't throw your computer away 'cause you're like, "Oh, hold on," like, "I know that this is a separate thing than my computer," and, like, "There are some things I can troubleshoot, and then maybe I should go look at my router."

Babak Mostaghimi: And, like, there's, like, a couple other steps you can take, right? And you can... You know when to use the internet versus when not to, and all that sort of stuff, right? And most people should be in that category, and we're not doing enough to help people understand AI to the depth needed to... And you don't need to, like...

Babak Mostaghimi: Just like I know how to use a, a refrigerator, I don't know how it actually cool, cools down food. I don't know how a compressor works. I tried learning it, and it was, like, really difficult for me, right? But we d- But I do know when I, when it doesn't work, I'll, like, unplug it, plug it back in, and then I know who to call when something goes wrong, and I know how, what it should do.

Babak Mostaghimi: Like, I remember there was a tweet from Sam Altman about how you could take all your, like, kids' games and stuff like that, uh, during the week, like, every interaction they've had, and then have, like, a summary of how your kids' week went. And someone tweeted back, like, "Or you could just ask your kid," right?

Babak Mostaghimi: And, like, like, there, there's, like, a different worldview when you believe that the job that you're trying to solve for is like, "How do I not talk to my kid?" Rather than going, "Wait, could I actually have a tool that maybe sparks me with questions to ask my kid if that's, like, something that's really hard for me to do," right?

Babak Mostaghimi: Um, so anyway, this, this is really, really fascinating stuff, and not... More questions than answers at this point.

Brett Roer: Please choose a question that you would like us to answer, and please select who goes first so we don't hem and haw.

Babak Mostaghimi: Hmm. Okay. I wrote a couple down 'cause I was like, "All right, I know this is gonna come up. This is gonna be really interesting. I'm gonna pick one based on the conversation." So I'm gonna actually-- I'll start with this one and I'll start with you, Brett.

Babak Mostaghimi: And the question is, I know both of you guys interact with like young people and adults around AI all the time, right? Where do kids and adults disagree the most with one another? I.e. like kids think one thing, adults think another thing. And which side is right?

Brett Roer: I'm going to share one of the ways I really try to learn this the best is through interviewing the students of communities that I'm serving.

Brett Roer: Students are getting right that they are truly anxious and afraid that they don't know the line between having AI help them or teach them and having AI take away their agency and their learning. And they know it, and they're not given guidance or support on something that like if we had heard this in any other thing, we'd have commissions and task force and everyone trying to intervene.

Brett Roer: And I said, "Respectfully, I've been here 10 minutes. This kid's been here 10 years." Like all we did was ask them one time. So I think that's what adults still get wrong. They say they wanna listen, but they don't actually create the conditions for listening, taking that wisdom, putting it in one place, and then using NI to-- AI to analyze things at scale.

Brett Roer: So I think students are getting those two big picture questions right. They're also using it-- I'm not gonna even bring up, I know that academic dishonesty and cheating is what everyone goes to, and they acknowledge like, yes, and most of the time they don't get guidance on what cheating is, and s- somehow adults just fail to acknowledge that, that like they're not giving guidance and then they're calling kids cheaters.

Brett Roer: It really eliminates a lot of their motivation and willpower. And when you hear a student who's really thought deeply about this express it, i- it's hard to say that this system is supporting them the way they are. So what we normally do is we really try to help them figure out, well, then, if you're not getting guidance, what are some safeguards and what does learning versus academic dishonesty look like to you?

Brett Roer: And then we finally build into the playbook with the kid's knowledge, "This is a clear example of academic dishonesty, but this is how I use it so it works for my brain and it helps me learn the things you're testing me on." And once we have them map that out, it just gives them more of that self-confidence that they do know the difference.

Brett Roer: No one's just literally given them the time and space to think through these difficult questions. I don't know if I dodged it, but I hope that was, uh, that was suffice.

Babak Mostaghimi: No, that's pretty good. All right. Not bad. Not bad. All right.

Brett Roer: Man, it's a tough show. All right, Rebecca, good luck.

Rebecca Bultsma: Do you have a different question for me, or do you want me to answer that one?

Rebecca Bultsma: Hit me with the new one. I think Brett killed that one. I think he did a really good job.

Babak Mostaghimi: Okay. So you're gonna, you're gonna, like, hate me for this one, but what's the question you get asked all the time about AI that you think is the wrong question?

Rebecca Bultsma: Hmm. This one, this one's easy for me, actually, because I-- just wherever I go, people will say, "Well, which AI is the best? Like, what-- which one should I get? Which one should I use? Which..." You know, and it's the wrong question, obviously, um, because, like you said, it's like asking what age should a kid cross a road.

Rebecca Bultsma: Like, not which AI should I use. So, uh, yeah, that's probably the question I get the most.

Babak Mostaghimi: Can I do a follow-up? Or, uh- Absolutely ... I hope I'm not, like, breaking the rules. Slightly, slightly different question for you, Rebecca. Since you are in, like, the AI ethics space, what's something that has evolved in your thinking about AI and ethics from where you started to where it's now?

Babak Mostaghimi: 'Cause obviously the technology's changing all the time. Um, has anything changed about, like, what we should be thinking about as it relates to ethics?

Rebecca Bultsma: So much. So much. I, um, I- I have changed sort of how evangelical I feel about, uh, AI. Like, I use it all day every day. I know in this podcast I'm making it sound like I'm questioning and challenging.

Rebecca Bultsma: I had an AI system that was like, "I'm booking flights," and it's like, "Hey, you have an $800 flight credit that you forgot about. It expires in five days. You wanna use that? Um, I know it's gonna expire before, but if we refund this one, use that credit, free up the..." Like, and it just does all of these executive function things that...

Rebecca Bultsma: So I do think that it is absolutely amazing Um, the more time I spend with it, the less convinced I am that it's going to solve all of our problems, and that it belongs in all the places we think it belongs. And the more I've turned back to, uh, maybe we need to focus on being better people without it. Um, and I really see tendency for it to make us worse.

Rebecca Bultsma: Who owns it? Who's ... Who benefits from all these ed tech products that are collecting all this digital trace data about kids, and then benefiting again when they sell it? And who does that help? Who does that hurt? So I think about those things a lot more than I used to, and that's part of the reason I got into AI very, very early, and then steered the more I learned, the more I was driven to go do research, specifically in AI ethics at the University of Edinburgh because the more I learned, the more questions I had.

Rebecca Bultsma: And so my sh- my thinking has really, really shifted away from, "This is cool. I wanna use it and tell people how to use it," to bigger questions about, uh, humanity and where it belongs and where it doesn't.

Babak Mostaghimi: Uh, there is a world that's not that hard to achieve where people own their own data, and all of a sudden are really empowered by what the technology knows about them rather than right now, which is what you're saying, around people ... You essentially get used by the technology to ... Like, you're, you're being harvested all day long.

Rebecca Bultsma: Yeah, and people are profiting, you know? Like, really profiting. I have a ... That really great article that came out this week that I am ... we'll maybe post in the show notes as well, but it, it really shifted my thinking, uh, around, you know, who's, who's benefiting around this specifically in education. And, uh, I- I think Brett read it too.

Rebecca Bultsma: There's things we might be able to influence through our, our networks and our spheres of influence, and there's a lot of this out of our hands, but I think we still have a responsibility to do our best to try and understand it so we can collectively, you know, join our voices like the Whos in Whoville on Horton's Flower to just kind of yell, "We are here," and hope that somebody listens eventually.

Babak Mostaghimi: A+ both of you. That was great. You guys did, did wonderfully.

Brett Roer: That's high praise I wanna, uh, now that we're back, now we're back in charge, talking about power dynamics, you know, obviously Rebecca

Babak Mostaghimi: you just- I should have thought about that before I asked the hard questions. Right. Yep. Like, wait a minute. Yeah.

Babak Mostaghimi: Okay I might be setting myself up here. I need to be-

Brett Roer: So one, Rebecca, the article that you're re- referencing Natasha Singer, like I immediately texted you. I've read so many of her articles, someone who really shifts- shapes my thinking. I'm like, that's someone we need to have on this podcast because just listening to the two of you is, again, that would be like, I can't believe this is work.

Brett Roer: And I still unfortunately have the mindset that for overworked people in the service industry like doctors, as you mentioned before, or teachers or educators and leaders, I'm like, or students and parents, I'm like, I want this technology to work so bad for them that I sometimes do put up blinders to, like-- Same way in the medical field.

Brett Roer: But I really struggle with that bigger picture. And so I'm gonna turn this over to our guest. How do you grapple with that? And, and this is where I'd love for you to maybe not only how are you grappling with it, but let's give some flowers. You know, there's a number of great orgs that you and Learner Studio are champions of.

Brett Roer: I'd love if you could share how they're also thinking about the micro and the macro.

Babak Mostaghimi: Yeah, for sure. I think one of the things I've realized in this role is that many of the problems that we take as, like, really intractable problems are only intractable because of the way we define them, right? And so we set up these, like, limits or these boundaries to solutions that make it so that the solution set goes from this big to, like, this small and almost impossible to solve, right?

Babak Mostaghimi: But what I love about them is that they are re-architecting this, this sort of like fundamental societal thing that we should rely on other people to solve our problems by making it so that you create a safe, secure, underlying democratic architecture for people to build their own tools off of. And now they're em-em-embedding the sort of like learning science data sets, sort of direct curriculum links and those sorts of things that make it so that you can get really high quality production.

Babak Mostaghimi: So it's not just like you building your own sort of like GPT or Gem or whatever, or agent and trying to make it work, but it's built on an underlying architecture that, that works for everybody. And so what they've done essentially is they've, like, questioned this idea of like, why do teachers have to keep getting bad tools and trying to figure it out when they can just build their own tools on a safe, secure background as learning science, uh, based and those sorts of things, right?

Babak Mostaghimi: I had never made a grant before. I'd always been a district guy. Like, I'd always been on the receiving side, thank, thankfully. But she, at the Rithm Project is like: "Look, we need to rethink the architecture of like human belonging, um, and what that looks like in the age of AI. And we need to do it with young people at the helm, like leading the way.

Babak Mostaghimi: We need new research on, on our sense of hopelessness, our sense of connectivity, all those sorts of things, and how that's influenced by AI, how we might navigate around it, how we might build tools in a better way, and those sorts of things." And so again, you have a person who's like questioning the architecture of like, we need like-- It's not like we need a couple use-youth voices and surveys to tell those people what to build.

Babak Mostaghimi: You have like Tennessee SCORE, who I was with last week, who's really going, "Oh man, we gotta figure out how AI can be used to help push not only on the sort of achievement metrics that are important, but also on the human metrics and sort of workforce skills that we know are im- important." So anyways, I think the underlying theme across all of them is like people who are questioning the sort of architecture that we imagine is like rigid, and they're pushing those boundaries.

Babak Mostaghimi: And once they do, other people go, "Oh, I can do that too." And it like spreads in a really, really cool way.

Rebecca Bultsma: We should tell Sara to do this." And I think more the idea is teach people what's possible and allow them, empower them to find the parts of their job where it's the most useful instead of mandate it. 'Cause I, I would kind of say, well, like, maybe that's part of the job is Sara's favorite part, or that's her whole identity.

Rebecca Bultsma: Like, maybe she'll feel threatened if you tell her that she has to adopt this tool in this way to do this thing for her. That idea of human flourishing, but allow people to define what that means for them and their identity in a lot of ways on an individual level, uh, I think is going to be the key instead of going in, as we've done so long in education, and say, "Here's this new thing.

Rebecca Bultsma: Here's exactly how you're gonna use it, and you're gonna do it." Instead, empower people to make important decisions about where it belongs. So I think- I,

Babak Mostaghimi: Like, it, it, it makes us come to the real truth that we've known all along, that the people closest to the problem oftentimes have the best ways of innovating and solving them. It also pushes this question of, like, the architecture of jobs in their entirety, right? Like, what does it mean to, to educate for human flourishing versus educate for j- like, rote achievement?

Babak Mostaghimi: How do the sort of roles and structures-- Who, who else needs to be in the room? Like, what, what are the sets of adult roles and, and young people roles that we need? Uh, and yeah, like that, that's like the change-- Like, adding in AI into the existing architecture will only get us so far. Just like on the horizons front, you can only get so far if you're, you know, stuck in the old sort of mechanisms of, of doing things.

Brett Roer: And then also, like, what's the thing that fills your cup more than anything that you are honored and, like, privileged you get to do in your job?" And then once you cross-map that, then they wanna hear, "Okay, like, oh, I don't have to do that anymore? Like, how?" And then they're like, "Oh, this is an example," to your point, Rebecca.

Brett Roer: You can be like, "AI doesn't really solve that part. Maybe it can solve this part, so that part's a little more palatable for you." But it first starts with, like, what problem or what's, what's the thing that just drains your battery? And we learned from a kindergarten teacher, she's like, "I've been doing this 20 years.

Brett Roer: If you can teach me how I don't have to write out anecdotal report cards for my daughter, uh, for my ch- for all my students-" And I'm like, "Well, my kid just finished kindergarten." I'm like, "Yeah, that does take a while." And I asked her teacher, and she's like, "Yeah." And I've just been asking that around the country.

Brett Roer: We wanna leave it open to you. We've s- really covered a really wide breadth of- Well served today, yeah ... things. Yeah, it's been incredible. Just wanna hand you the mic one last time if there's anything else you wanna make sure our listeners get out of today's conversation. What do you hope it is? If you have any, like, big-picture thoughts you wanna end with.

Babak Mostaghimi: Yeah. I mean, f- first of all, thank you, guys, again. This has been an amazing conversation. I've really appreciated sort of going through all the little nooks and crannies of what can be talked about, and each one can be its own, like, multi-hour podcast of its own. So I appreciate the moments when we, like, pulled back on an idea, not 'cause it's not interesting, but it's like, "Oh, we don't have enough time to go deeply into that."

Babak Mostaghimi: Like, it, it becomes-- There's a difference between aiming for graduation in a way that like, "Here, kid, I'm gonna, like, literally drag you across the stage and kick you off the other side," versus, "I'm actually preparing you for a wide array of choices that you wanna do," right? And unfortunately, in many cases, we're so like, "I gotta get my graduation rate up," or, "I gotta get this test score up," that we, like, forget what was the whole point.

Babak Mostaghimi: Do you... Are you the one who's not gonna flourish? Is it the kid over here? Like, no, no, no. This is actually a legitimate goal for everybody. And what-- flourishing isn't some, like, nice to have. It's just the idea of, like, we need to be able to be safe, we need to be able to se- be seen, we need to be able to be curious and agentic in our own lives.

Babak Mostaghimi: Um, like, you know, two weeks of vacation a year wouldn't be a bad thing, right? A safe and secure house, be healthy, like all these different things. A- I think if we started designing around that, everything else would change. The other thing that I would say that, like, goes alongside that is when I say everything else must change, I literally mean everything else must change.

Babak Mostaghimi: I am not prepared for the first time my employer goes, "I don't know what the answer to that is. I don't even know what problem we're trying to solve." I'll be like, "What do you mean? Like, I can't solve something that doesn't already have an answer 'cause I've never had to do it." Or like a chemistry lab, where you're like, I already know the outcome at the beginning.

Babak Mostaghimi: Like, yes, you do need to do some of those things at the beginning to, like, learn along the way and those sorts of things, right? But, like, I just think our architecture of, like, one person holds the answer and the knowledge, and then everybody else need to, like, listen to it is the same wrong architecture, whether it's a human being or AI having that knowledge and having those skills.

Brett Roer: Absolutely. Rebecca, final thoughts? Final flowers?

Rebecca Bultsma: I think just amen to all of that. I think, uh, I fully agree with all of those things. They're all thoughts that have been percolating in my mind, and so it's great to hear them articulated. And I think, and I hope, we can all agree that that is the goal of education, is to help every, every student and every teacher and everyone involved in education flourish.

Rebecca Bultsma: And if we keep that the core of everything we do, hopefully we end up in the right place.

Brett Roer: Yeah. You know, you've changed my thinking in a number of ways today, but one that I'm literally gonna take from today is I'm writing a book with Kunal Dalal about being present papas and celebrating peak moments with your family and other people.

Brett Roer: That's a really insightful way to not only view education, but I think life in general. So thanks so much for joining us today on the podcast. This was an amazing, very long episode, but I think worth, worth every second of it. So thank you again for joining us, Babak. Thank you, Rebecca, for always pushing our thinking and having us decide what's right and wrong in the world of AI today.

Brett Roer: And thanks to all our listeners. Have a jumbo cannoli day, everybody. Take care