Tony Wan: AI is raising the bar – are schools keeping up?

We’re redefining what an entry- level job is in the age of AI. Say more about that. Well, entry- level programming, right?

A lot of debugging, you know, a lot of sy, you know, more more of the basic level stuff. And I think that, you know, like back not like not even too long ago, like the past decade, all the coding boot camps, right? And, you know, and what they what they thought were going to be the skills that you need to create entry- level coders who are going to be like good fit, you know, for entry- level jobs.

You know, I think all that is being kind of aed out at the reach, you know, we hire, you know, we have interns like every year and I think like the the things that we expect to be able to do with AI in terms of like how much like preparation that they do, you know, how fast they can get up to speed on research, right, in support of some of our market research work like all those expectation, you know, that that bar is like that bar is getting higher. I’m here with Tony Juan, the head of platform for Reach Capital, formerly co-founder of Ed Surge, one of the leading publications in the K-12 and education space. Is it was it postcary as well or just K-12 focused?

Postsecondary as well. Yeah, K-12 and higher ed. And so you were basically not just in journalism but running a journalistic outfit for was it a decade or it was almost 10 years my my tenure there.

I started in 2011 around September 2011 and I left in March of 21. So you were like mobile and social media had just started to reach a little bit of maturity. Would you say that was sort of like the second wave of edte like how what was happening in edtech at that time?

I know that wasn’t the only thing that Ed Surge was covering but to the extent that we can maybe draw some parallels if there are any to what we are experiencing today. So I think what what brought me to Ed Surge was meeting meeting Betsy Corkerin the CEO at a at a meetup at NF edtech meetup and this is when you know meetup.com was you know the thing right for organizing a lot of local communities and this was something was happening for just for the SF scene and crew and one of the people at one of the people on that programming on that panel was Ellen Louie from Imagine K-12 which is one of the first ed techch accelerators in the game. And so if you ask me like what you know what phase of the edtech evolution you know I I I kind of landed in I would say maybe the second right I think edtech certainly like preceded you know the the 2010s but I think what felt new at this space and what was exciting was a lot of former Silicon Valley people you know from the big tech companies kind of spun out and started to to to start building stuff and technologies to really help bridge the gap between the technologies that they were used to seeing and building, you know, in the course of work at, you know, the Yahoos, Microsofts and Google’s and and and what they were seeing for the kids, you know, in in in their classroom.

And so out of that came a lot of efforts to really apply, you know, some of the things that they learned to build edtech software. And then along with that was the investment capital where some of these people you know had you know made decent money and wanted to like put some of the capital into like encouraging ed tech startups. So we started seeing accelerators like Imagine K-12 coming in the scene and then we started seeing you know organizations like new schools venture fund with you know start out their their little seed fund which is really the the origins of reach.

So I think the combination of capital innovation and also the beginnings of the distribution of availability of broadband and oneonone into schools. I think that was a starting point you know in the early 2010s but I felt that was you know the cusp of this of the of the second wave. So I do want to dive into it.

What is head of product a head of platform mean for those who are not familiar with that’s a good question. My mom asked that and I’m not sure she even knows what I do. So depending on what VC firm you ask getting ahead of platform can mean a lot of different things.

It can it can be like six different jobs. At reach what I do a lot of is provide a lot of portfolio support for our founders after they join a portfolio. So reach capital we are an early stage edtech venture firm.

We started edtech but now we’re expanding more into the workforce and healthc care space but we are basically investing across learning health and work all under the the thesis of we want to back founders who ultimately are building things that help elevate you know elevate human potential and help kind of ignite the purpose you know make life more more meaningful. So we we started in edtech. That was really the bread and butter of our of our origins and you know in the past couple of funds we started expanding more into the workforce development because there’s a lot of overlap actually if you think about it between you know K-12 and higher ed tech into helping adults upskill and work and now we’re doing more into health because health is also as we realize as as you know we’re we believe is a precondition for helping people live you know healthy thriving lives and so head platform.

At the early stage of reinvesting, some a lot of founders need support whether it’s for communications, marketing, thought leadership, whether it is for help opening doors, introductions, getting to meet you know some adviserss and decision decision makers on the ground in in schools and districts. Sometimes it’s for hiring, right? I think hiring is often one of the the biggest pain points for early stage founders.

And so I’m organizing a lot of programming, a lot of resources to help connect the dots for founders at at the early stages after they join a portfolio. So that’s a good a big part of my job. The other part is you know given my background in journalism and writing I you know I also help with a lot of the content and thought leadership on behalf of reach.

So we publish blogs, market reports, newsletters pretty regularly. And I’m essentially either the writer or the house editor for a lot of the thought leadership that we that we put out into the world. This was the easiest interview to prepare for because you just sent me like five pieces that you had written.

I was like, "Okay, I have a sense of perspective on this." so you’re cross reach capital. I think that’s important because sometimes you talk to someone who’s who’s at a VC and they are a partner with their specific portfolio of companies that they have invested in. But you have a little bit more of a bird’s eye view.

This is a bit of a loaded question. I’ll provide a little more context. What’s your take on the AI?

How the AI space is unfolding and and what I’m specifically asking about is there was like exuberance over the last 18 months, two years really of companies that were like okay let me like you know build some kind usually a rapper but build some kind of implementation for one of these frontier models we can focus on education but feel free to also include anything from health or or future of work as well by coding and they’re getting to these MVPs very quickly and some companies like magic will be an example are achieving like massive scale kind of right out of the gate because just this is sort of sexy and new and people are like curious and but then when I’ve the VCs I’ve talked to are also like it’s very hard like very little of it is sort of defensible because anybody can actually create a tutor in fact you don’t even need to create a tutor you could literally just prompt Gemini or chat GBT and just sort of like have it you know take a little bit of pre-prompting right and so I’ I’ve heard a lot of hesit hesitance about or just uncertainty about what does it look like for companies to go from you know the use case to a sort of scalable defensible you know whether it’s a billion or hundreds of millions but like sort of like you know series B CD businesses yeah is that yeah certainly like there I think the fear that hey is OpenAI just going to build this I think that’s a very credible and very real concern or at least consideration that you you know that that I think informs that makes investing in this space kind of hard. But I think what I have come to learn is that similar to how take the past decade like like Google I think you could like in the you know back when I was starting at Surge you could also ask hey is Google just going to build this and there were some things that Google did build right like Google classroom which was you know in in in for all intents and purpose a very very powerful and serviceable LMS but Google’s not going to want to build everything that you’re going to want you know in in education I think there are a lot of nuances is in how the systems, you know, all the systems work, you know, systems being both the political political systems and also like the technical systems, right? All the all the different pieces of software and data standards, you know, within educ that are very unique to education that I am not sure if you know someone like OpenAI will really want to devote a lot of resources into you know building for these use cases.

And so I still think like there is a lot of like nuances when we when when it comes to learning that and user experience and and like just understanding the day-to-day challenge of what it is to be a teacher, the classroom management, the relationship skills that you build. You know I am not sure if OpenAI, you know, or or Anthropic will always want, you know, will be able to wants to build for all these use cases. I’m not I’m not sure if it makes for like a business sense for them.

And so, you know, I I I think that when we look at you know, when we try to evaluate companies, I think these are, you know, these what we called earned insights into the problems that you’re solving for that are that that that really that help differentiate one like from from the crowd to magic schools. Yeah. That your example, I think, you know, Ado is a former, you know, teacher and a school leader.

I think he very well, you know, very deeply understands what the workflow of a teacher is like in day-to-day and the parts that suck, you know, the parts that, you know, you could save time for. And so I think part of that, I think like like using that to inform development of your product is, you know, is going to be a key different key differentiator. I mean, I will say that it does feel like a lot of the a lot of the VC firms kind of are are all like betting on their own.

You know AI teacher co-pilot horse you know they did like in the race like brisk you have class AI you have magic school yeah you know we also have curod in our portfolio teach share ti and so look I mean and I think to to your second point or other point about like different differentiation you know like tech like technology yes you know I think that’s a that’s a question mark and I think we have AI you know we have you know we try to tap into the AI experts and founders in our portfol folio to help kind of do diligence and vet the tech. I also do feel like AI has really raised the bar for time to deploy and time to yeah time to build and it’s also raised the bar for the metrics right how fast can you get to a million users how fast can you get to you know $10 million and I think you know just metrics wise if we’re trying to be quantitative about it I think those are the new bars for that can help inform like your differentiation defensibility and the final point I would say about defensibility is we we we want to see it what is the the rate of change you know that informs the product like is there research you know is there research or pedagogy that backs into how you’re building your product or how you’re building the the user experience because I think that is still key and and important and that’s one of the things where I’m you know not sure like a generalist builder you know will be able to to understand the full nuances of so this idea of raising the bar you sort of you’re you’re alluding I think to not just vibe coding but the there is a velocity in startups that just relies anything that you know startups always moved fast but you talked this is like the latest YC batch they did the survey I’m sure you’ve seen this this is like a quarter of their batch reported that almost 90 95% or more of their code base was entirely written by AI and Gary Tan was basically like this is just the way you code now. This is sort of the future and if you’re not vibe coding, you’re basically going to be left behind.

Is that sort of is there anything else baked into when you talk about, you know, sort of faster getting to an MVP faster, getting to some of your initial KPIs faster? Is like are there other aspects of of AI or even just maybe stuff that isn’t AI that’s lending you to sort of having this sort of different expectation? Well, I think the advantage of building faster is that you also learn faster about user uptake, user adoption.

Are they coming back to their product? I think back you know the the the first early waves of AI, you know, let’s call them rapper tools. I think you know we’ve seen that many of them actually have pretty low, you know, 7-day retention rate rates for like 30 days like after 30 days, right?

What’s the what’s the percentage of people who like still come back and use this tool? And so I think that what you learn from building faster is that you, you know, you’re able to like get get a faster sense of like what are the what are the parts of your product that are actually sticky that people will keep come back will keep coming back to and continue and continue to use because I I will I will say you know a lot of the a these AI rapper tools retention is one of the biggest you know drop offs and and and challenges to to make them investable opportunities. Ities.

Do you is magic school in your portfolio? Yes. Okay.

Yes. What are some examples of use cases where you’ve seen the best metrics on usage where people are coming back and is it like very narrow? Are these sort of the more broad-based you know teaching support tools?

Yeah. We invest in several teacher you know tools that help teacher generate lesson lesson plans and also to lead classroom classroom activities. One of one of them is called Curropod.

It’s you know kind of like a little bit like a near pod but with more AI powered generation and exercise creation features that help really teachers lead you know fruitful dialogue and engagements you know with with students and have students kind of interact with AI feedback in a way that’s very really encourages more like curiosity socratic based dialogue and so you know we’re seeing you know teachers you know well I mean we’re seeing you by word of mouth, you know, hundreds of teachers, you know, sign up, you know, every day. And we are also seeing that, you know, teachers are continuing to use it, you know, like week over week. And it’s becoming really a more ingrained part of their, classroom teaching instructional experience.

I think a lot of that is that in the in in the process of having teachers build their lessons you know it’s really incorporating you know some of what we know to be you know good pedagogy to encourage you know classroom discussion to encourage you know students to reflect to encourage students to actually push back actually on some of the you know some of the AI feedback and some of the things that a AI generates and so I think that you know baking in that kind of what we know is, you know, makes for lasting, impactful learning experiences. Learning that sticks, making that into the product has been something that’s been, you know, we’re seeing bear fruit. It makes sense.

And I I think I worry about teachers becoming overreiant on AI tools. I think just skills deterioration in general is a concern. Yeah.

But if you were to ask me like what does the future look like? It basically is a sort of world where we solve one of the biggest challenges in education which is students don’t feel like it’s relevant and it’s not engaging. And AI can be that’s like a very good use case for AI.

Whatever you’re teaching in math or social studies like give me a twominut surprising story or a funny story to start my class with. Yeah. You know take this homework assignment where students are just writing an essay and turn into something that’s a little more engaging and project based and I agree I think that like one I think what AI is not really going to solve for by itself is the motivation right like issue yes you know like there are some studies that show like you can improve you know learning outcomes academic achievement yada yada I think that well I’d like to actually get dive a little bit more into like the the samples of of those studies.

But I think ultimately when it comes to motivation, intrins developing intr intrinsic motivation, passion and interest, I still think you know a teacher, you know, the teacher still remains you know central in you know making those connections between you know the content and a and and you know a child’s personal interest. I think AI is great at brainstorming all kinds of ways to apply like an abstract like abstract con concepts like you know geometry right but you know you know builds you know come up with you know creative exercises that apply those in ways that are really interesting to whatever a kid may be interested in at the moment or or personally like so I think definitely I think AI can help like assist like teachers in you know helping to create more you know experiences that really develop a kid’s intrinsic motivation to to learn and and to ask, you know, good questions. I mean, this is the million-dollar question.

Another question is the the YC survey, does that is that out of line with what reach has seen or is that sort of roughly are you seeing the same thing basically that like your founders are heavily relying or just just leveraging AI? I assume primarily vibe coding, but maybe there are other ways as well. I think they’re definitely leveraging AI.

I don’t know specifically how much of their code is you know their their code base is being written by by AI right now but you know I just think across the board right whether it’s a you know publicly traded companies writing these memos about being AI first or even you know privately for you know for for smaller startups you know I think you know the the productivity and efficiency gains that you that we are seeing with AI for for for building products is it’s become an an expectation now you know I would say for our companies And so, you know, we, you know, we’re not, you know, we we would we want our companies, you know, to be, you know, to be to be able to be deploy these tools in ways that are more efficient and, you know, push things out at a speed that’s, you know, up to par with what’s happening today. Whether that’s by coding, whether that is doing, you know, re research, whether that is doing you know, communications and mass marketing, right? I think that there are a lot of ways in which AI is helping to improve you know just you know some of the basic business operational efficiencies and would you say are you seeing teams getting smaller are they are they hiring more people because maybe there’s like the jobs they will create like how have you seen like a noticeable impact on sort of the size of teams relative to their stage?

You know like we we have invested in a couple of teams from this latest YC batch and they were you know they’re pretty slim you know they’re two you know two like two co-founders three co-founders and they are just able to you know le you know they are leveraging AI to do a lot of things that you know previously may have taken maybe half a dozen people maybe 10 people and so you know we we are seeing you know we you know we are seeing human capital be just more efficient in terms of you know when it comes to like building out and and pushing technology prototypes and and products. And so, you know, the the the other, you know, flip side to that is, you know, that the past few years in in the capital markets has been, you know, a little bit rocky. And so, you know, more broadly speaking, I think that effic like operational efficiency and getting to profitability and sustainability has been a mandate across the board, right, for all, you know, all you know, big tech companies, small tech companies.

And so you know we are not immune to kind of like the you know what the market signal signals are and so like kind of downsizing being more efficient has been a mandate you know for the past two years now and so that’s not new and but you know what AI can bring to the table to help kind of supplement you know kind of what a little bit what you lose in terms of human capital I think you know we’re seeing some productivity gains there. Yeah. Well and it is hard right because there’s been a lot of layoffs in the tech sector.

And many times those layoffs are are talked about as oh AI we’re becoming AI forward, but I mean there’s like I think a lot baked into why tech hired overhired, you know, coming out of COVID and low low interest rates. And I think companies also have and and certainly the AI companies have this incentive to I don’t know if I’d say overhype but to continue feeding the the hype around the technology and sort of like positioning them as like this differentiated company which is obviously commanding a tremendous amount. Who’s going to write the next AI forward memo, you know, like Yeah.

And yet the Bureau of Labor Statistics published in February, and this is like I was waiting for this, a an update to their projections for a handful of careers, notably computer science or software engineering or software development, forget exactly what that term, I think it was software development. And their updated projection is something like over the next eight years an 18% growth. I’m curious for your take on that because I I the the the folks I talked to so far are surprised by that or I think I mean so everybody I’ve talked to in Silicon Valley is like that’s wrong.

There’s just no there’s no world where oh they think it should be flat or declining. I it depends on how you def I mean basically the the I think the most cogent response was there’s a question of like how it’s being defined and so there’s a world where there’s just there’s actually a growth of work that includes or incorporates software development because more people can use these tools now to like write code. But like functionally if you’re trying to think about like how do I go and add value into the market?

Is this a like is this a career pathway? Is it going to expand or or narrow? I mean, most people I’ve talked to seem think it’s going to narrow, but I I feel like we’re all trying to read tea leaves that are this is quite murky right now.

It is all murky. I mean, I think what Yeah. I mean, like what is the definition of like a coding, you know, a coder or computer scientist?

Is it somebody who has, you know, the the degree in in computer science or or is it a job that requires a degree? Or is it just someone who you know can can build software, right? And I think like that you Yeah, I mean I I mean we’re probably moving to a world where you may not need the full computer science credentials to be able to get to get a job that that that’s about building building building software, right?

And I don’t like I don’t I don’t say that as a way to kind of short change the value of computer science degree. Although I do believe that you know certain degrees are more conceptual and theoretical than than practical. I do feel like the computer science you know what it means to major in computer science may need to you know be I mean closer to like applications and building stuff right out there right I think there a lot of there there there have been you know a number of programs in the past where a lot of it is kind of more theory and less applied.

We’re moving to a world where like you know the bar for building and pushing stuff and with vibe coding has been so I I don’t want to say so low but it’s a lot more accessible now you know if you can describe a problem you can probably build a prototype of it that’s maybe 70 80% functional right but then like to take that you know for that last mile right the the 20 to 30% you probably should know right how this you know how how all the syntax and all the language and all the logic works right to be able to like debug. So, you know, I still think for that last mile, you know, I you know, having some trained computer scientist who is, you know, versed in the foundations of of programming and software and code is is is will will continue to be valuable. Yeah, it’s at the end of the day, if you have the option of hiring someone with a background in traditional CS or someone who doesn’t and is just a vibe coder, you’re always going to go with the person who now you might have other sort of like things you look at.

You might be looking at is this person do they have experience with like you know product management or project management? And so I can imag I I it seems obvious that computer science degrees are going to like if you don’t need to spend as much time learning coding languages and syntax and you know, maybe you create more space for them to actually get more hands-on and actually build you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if like a lot of CS programs have students just building companies, you know, as like their capstone project, right? And I think that’s, you know, when I hear about like, oh, this is going to democratize access to things like, let’s say, like coding, I think that’s right.

But I I worry that some people are making the like the assumption that that it means you don’t need to teach it as it’s not as important. And I’m curious because like you’re you’re sort of getting I think you alluded to it, but maybe you could just name it like do you see education changing significantly in terms of like the fundamental skills that we’re building? Because what I’m hearing from you is that actually those fundamental skills are still really important for people that are looking to harness the tools.

So I’m I study history in in you know in in undergrad and you know before I went into edtech journalism and NVC I was actually thinking about being a history you know become a historian you know as as a profession. Or I went to grad school for it. And I think what I’ve come to appreciate from that, you know, from my history studies, it’s not like it’s not it’s not the facts.

It’s not it’s not the it’s not the it’s not really the content or the knowledge but it’s like thinking like a historian and like knowing how the pieces like come to be like how facts come to be where the sources are like and evaluating you know the the credibility of sources and and and judging so that like and it’s it’s become very useful as a journalist when you talk to people it’s al when you talk to people when you look at data that’s also true for VC as well when people pitch you about stuff and you’re doing market research I think that like when you’re building software with AI, I I hope that we like we need to continue continue to be like critical evaluators of the output. And so like I I hope we never like go to a be a world where I’m I’m not a fan like I wouldn’t want to see a world where like we just take what AI like outputs and just like accept it as gospel. I think there should be a pause you know and see like oh does this make sense like does this seem right and I think that comes from having more core you know like foundation knowledge of you know the subject and content itself and also like having some knowledge of like the AI systems right which you know whether it’s LMS or like you know what what model you’re using to be to just know right how things are created and you I mean you described earlier this idea that what one of the things you look for in companies is people that have this connection to the the data and the lived experience of the users that they’re trying to serve.

And and this is amidst a world where anybody can create companies and build you know build tools or rappers. And I wonder what the equivalent of that is like think about art and if everybody can create beautiful anime my suspicion is that is that will that will cease to be something that people seek out. Yeah, the Ghibli example, right, that it was that one week where everybody was making JibLi Jibli memes.

Yeah, made me a little bit sad. Made me very Yeah, I I And I had actually just seen Princess Monoke and IMAX and I think it was the most expensive at the time. It was like 1997, I think.

The most expensive anime film that had ever been made. And there’s one scene in the movie it’s about like a 5-second scene and it took the animators a year and a half to illustrate or to animate. Maybe this is a chance for us to shift gears a little bit into journalism.

I don’t I don’t really read random blogs in the internet. So I I can only reference like headlines of studies that I’ve seen on Reddit and Twitter, but my understanding is that there’s a lot more AI generated stuff on the internet right now. Crap.

Garbage. Yeah, sloth is down. How is this sort of impacting journalism?

What like what’s your prediction of how the next few years I won’t I won’t have you predict 10 years out, but just like a couple years from now, like what are you seeing in terms of just your conversations? I’m sure you still keep in touch with a lot of your old colleagues and you know, contacts when you’re at Surge. You know, I I I I’ll speak more from like the just the writing perspective, like the the cra, you know, the craft of just writing.

And, you know, it’s taken me a while to to get to this point, but at the end of the day, whether you use AI, whether you don’t use AI, like if it’s good, does it matter. And so, I I go back and forth on this, right? I I I don’t I don’t have like a pure black and white answer.

But I think the second the question underneath that is then like how how do you know what’s good? How do you know what’s good? And and like I think for us like who were you know I would maybe say traditionally trained right we read a lot of books right you know we read you know we were exposed to a lot of different kinds of writing you know I think you develop a sense of like what you know what the quality what the different bars are there.

And so like I’m I’m okay now like you know if people use AI to create things that you know are you know by some st you know by by some you know more or less historical objective standards like good. I think where I get worried is that like I think if we rely on AI too much to create stuff like we may lo you know in the future generations like we may lose that sense of like what is like what is good what is bad right and like you know what yeah you kind of learn and develop a taste right o over time you know there’s a lot of art that I don’t think in large sales that I don’t think is very good that I don’t like right but you know I think that that that are heralded as good but I I think like like how are we going to develop like taste you know you know in in the future and what if we like lose that. So I think that’s one of the things that I that concern me a little bit when I think when I see people outsource a lot of you know writing like to AI for hiring right I was reviewing a lot of cover letters and a surprising amount of them was like AI slop right and I’m just like in what world like do you think that this is a passable cover letter?

But I also and I think like what and and and so that that to me maybe that’s just some percentage of applicants are just going to be like sloppy and lazy and about that but I think on a deeper fundamental level when we talk about you know the future of education with AI like how like I I still want kids to like develop a sense of like their own taste and what good is. Yeah. No, I mean this is I was talking to one of our the guy who designed our logo actually Alex Molton and he’s been in the graphic design and like branding space for decades and I was talking basically my question to him is like what advice would you give a parent of students who are interested in becoming artists and they’re you know obviously this inclination of like oh this is a tool that’s going to unleash their creativity and give them the chance to do stuff that they couldn’t do and Alex he basically landed on this idea of taste he was His his point was like the way you develop taste is by working your butt off and learning whether it’s like drawing or painting and and struggling through that process for years.

And there’s no way to fasttrack it. And sure there’s there’s like you could imagine different technologies and that’s not to say that Photoshop didn’t, you know, get rid of people having taste. It obviously just changed what they were spending time on.

But I think there’s there is a concern about what does productive struggle look like with especially AI art because I think with with writing I it’s I have not been able to use AI to write something really good like I think this what I found is that well actually let me before we because I want to talk about your your process for writing. Yeah, just to sort of validate this like idea of taste, I I also heard at YC podcast where they’re talking about their survey, they kind of landed on this idea of like we’re going to be over, you know, we’re seeing founders overindex on finding developers who have taste. So it’s interesting that this actually sort of a crosscutting beyond just art or or the humanities.

Yeah. I mean and taste is also like not like I I think taste is what taste is a different that’s a human differentiator right I think maybe have like an objective you know probabil probabilistic like model of like what general good taste is and I think that’s why you get a lot of the early iterations of like dolly art they all kind of look like this like similar in that like retro sci-fi little bit of steampunk style right and so like I do think like how do you break away from that like what is your point of view what are your lived experiences that help you know support kind of what how how you’re defining you know whatever you want your product to be and how it’s differentiated I think that is you know I think that’s still a very that should still be a very personal pursuit that’s a reflection of your different experiences and the craft that you build over the years of practicing and refinement whether Whether you’re writing newsletters like I used to do or whether you’re just drawing drawing cir you know drawing circles for artists. I think yeah I like I think the appreciation for you know how things are made is a good is connected to kind of your development of taste right if you know how hard it is to draw a perfect circle if you know how hard it is to like to craft that perfect like oneline sentence or a headline.

I think that you know I think all the training and that productive struggle that goes into it is you know that that that is key. Yeah. Yeah.

The like Picasso you know before he drew these like very simple you know abstract sketches he was doing like hyperrealistic Mhm. Art like he was classically trained, right? And and then he was able from that to abstract to just a single line.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when I see AI art, it’s first of all, I can immediately notice it.

I’m curious if I feel like everybody has seen enough of it. I feel like our AI radars are just kind of going off the off the charts so far. Maybe it’s not even AI, but like, you know, like we suspect it is.

And maybe that’s unfair, you know, to, you know, to human standards. But I’m I’m that way with writing and with art and you know other other AI creative outputs as well. Yeah.

And I I think it’s I don’t know that I would like stop visiting a website that had AI art, but I definitely feel like well that’s lazy. Like that’s just I’m I’m not just not impressed. I’m like actually like you would almost have been better off not having a graphic here.

Like the fact that you you know it is like it was like the the the Giblly thing. It’s like the first time I saw it was like that’s kind of that’s pretty cool. And then all it took was like seeing 10 memes and I was like, "Okay, yeah." so you you you’ve tried using AI to write.

I’m really curious about your your process and have you been successful like as someone who’s written a lot and has a voice and that’s I assume your voice is at this point quite dialed in. Yeah, I mean what’s your experience been? Is it changed the way that you write or still kind of just a curiosity?

I wouldn’t say it’s changed the way I write. I mean, I write primarily to well, not primarily, but one of the reasons why I I enjoy writing is that it like forces me to make sense of the thoughts that are in my head. And so, it’s almost like a masochistic kind of internal like battle with myself.

And, you know, and for you know, for that same reason, right, I think I understand why a lot of people do like don’t like writing, right? And and would and would rather outsource that. But like for me like primarily like I do enjoy that process of writing in in in terms of like forcing myself to thinker.

I think it’s the best and most brutal test of your thinking. So yeah I mean I will say like when I first experimented with AI and writing it was back before ChatGPT it was when OpenAI had its like playground it beta playground. Yeah.

And so I had my friend basically scrape all of my like seven or 800 articles on off of Ed Surge and like hundreds of newsletters basically train, you know, basically created like a GPT Tony to just spit out articles that are in my voice but like factually, you know, completely off the rails and incorrect. And I was actually like kind of, you know, I was amused. I was amused that it could spit out basic essentially fake news in my voice, you know, with like madeup quotes and stats and all that.

And so it was it was amusing. I will say like you know at you know at reach I’m the house editor and so one of the things I actually do miss a little bit from my search is that nobody really edits me and so in this in in this instance you know I do find certain AI writing tools to be helpful for that like that kind of like for that like little bit of gut check. So I do use a tool called called Lex that I that I use today.

L E X L E X I copy you know I still d I still try to draft in Google Docs and have a more very minim you know I don’t know minimalistic by today’s standards kind of a composer and author intellects and I think what I like about it is it has it has a lot of like pre-programmed checks that are that remind me of what you know my editor you know Betsy and others at Surge would kind of like look for and I think it also gives me it also provides feedback and suggestions in a way that don’t feel like heavy-handed. And I would say, you know, like about half of those suggestions are actually like pretty good and what what I might expect from a human editor. And so, you know, I mean, my writing process these days is still, you know, I’ve added AI to the mix, but more as an editor as as an editor, kind of gut check.

Got it. Yeah. Yeah, I need to I I’ve struggled with the the like literally the user interface with LLMs because you ask for feedback, but then it’s it’s not yet able to actually go in and redline and do suggested changes.

I maybe I’m missing a plugin or something. Oh, try try Lex. We haven’t invested in Lux.

Okay, we should. You know, I think I think but the I think the other thing that’s interesting with AI and writing is like recently my colleague published a blog post about his you know he did a market research into some of the investment opportunities for AI and frontline workers right so for people who work with their hands in the you know and his original presentation was in the form of a slide deck because that’s what we do in in VC world like everything’s you know bullet points and some charts and so he did a lot of that research And you know he he shared that in internal meeting you know in the form of a slide deck and you know part of my job is to like you know take some of that and like publish that in the world. And so I asked him to hey let’s work together let’s take let’s let’s create a blog post out of this.

What he did was really fascinating like he’s not a he’s not an English native speaker. So he threw that deck into chat GBT and basically had a series of conversations like instructing instructing it on like how to turn that into a blog post. And when I read his chain of like conversations, you know, lengthwise, it’s probably like a third like the length of the actual blog post in itself, but to see him like actually like instruct and tell, you know, the AI and give it feedback on like what you know what the right sections are, who the audience is, and then like the rounds of edits, you know, that that that he provided like it was a really interesting way to see, you know, this other way of writing like, you know, instructing AI to write.

But you know based on research that he did you know more more or less on his own. And so when I look at the you know feature of writing you know I feel like this is like it opened my eyes like this is another possible kind of you know mode or process and it makes sense for someone who’s not like a native English speaker who you know it’s not that they have a voice that they’re trying to bring forward. It’s like they’re there actually it’s sort of this like this gate or barrier that they need to break through.

I so I’ I’ve gone through this like I just wrote like a very long or very wordy piece on jobs and you know I spent I spent a lot of time almost just for the sake of experimentation to see if could I get something workable as like even like a first draft. And I spent like a couple hours actually going back and forth and changing the reference material and sometimes you can provide too many reference documents and and at a certain point I in the process I started thinking about what do I actually want to say like what’s but at a certain point I realized like I’m actually ready to just write this thing. Mh.

And the closest I gotten to using AI is I’ll have a draft rather than go through the entire document. And I find I find it’s very bad at like my voice is also like not I’m not I don’t write like as a journalist. It’s very much more sort of like a little bit off the cuff just like not quite ramblings but you know purposefully not like trying to structure this as like a beginning, middle, end.

So so LLN have really struggled with that. I have it draft just like sort of individual sections and I’ll sort of like read it and then I’ll like usually it’s enough to like I’ll I’ll get like a single sentence or two that I’ll draw from it. But it always doesn’t it messes up the first the first sentence in a section.

It has like it’s always like a little too tryh hard in terms of it like quip and maybe that’s because it’s trying to emulate my voice a little bit and trying to be a little bit surprising or sort of unorthodox. It’s funny like when you see AI trying to like mimic you, I feel like it I’m als I’m sometimes like predisposed to like not like it in some ways cuz look, I think like for for experienced writers, I think we all have we all draw the line somewhere and it’s going to be, you know, different places of like is this piece still me like or like or or or is this piece, you know, have I have I delegated too much of this, you know, to AI? And I feel like that sense of ownership, at least for me personally, like did I like are these my are these still like my thoughts?

And to what extent did AI help clarify how I express these thoughts? That is an ongoing kind of like decision or struggle or back and forth that, you know, I do have, you know, when I use when I use AI to support my writing cuz you know, as a writer, you you take pride, right? You take pride.

This is your work. This is your voice, you know, I’ve always thought of writing as, you know, a a better my preferred way of expressing my opinions and my voice much better than talking, you know. But so, you know, for me like writing is a part of like my how I think of like my communication, my communicative identity almost.

I mean, I just I don’t know, maybe this is controversial. I just think it’s unequivocal like AI is a shortcut and it is going to harm and deteriorate writing skills like because I I also studied it was a blend of history and political science was mostly just like interesting professors at Ohio State and the only common thread of my education was just like lots and lots and lots of writing and you know the hardest part for me was always just sitting in front of the blank piece of paper and figuring out how to put my thoughts onto that piece of paper and by the time I could figure out the like literally the first two sentences, the rest kind of just flowed. And so I realized like like most of my writing process was actually just truly understanding what it is that I was writing about.

Yeah. I really just I I do not think that prompt engineering like the computational thinking and like understanding the models and like figuring out the reference like those are all really interesting skills. I think they’re valuable from a like it’s like it’s problem solving.

There there’s it is not completely negligible. It’s not to say that that that skill set isn’t valuable. I do I think it’s distinct.

Like I think that someone who’s prompt engineering their way to like a newsletter 5 years later if they’re they will still emerge with the inability to write a newsletter, their instinct will always be let me just go and ask for that. Right. I mean I do worry about that for future generations of you know you know the students now when they come out to the world you know 10 you know 15 20 years from now like what like how are they going to write and I feel like not having that practice and you know that just like repetition.

Yeah. I I think there’s just way too many tempting like this the shortcut is too tempting and it’s too easy and too readily available. I mean, I don’t think it’s any surprise that some of the most like popular like AI study tools are ones that just spit out essays and homework for you and, you know, like throw some citations in there and make it like look like, you know, a research paper like like you did some research.

I do genuinely like worry about that. You know, I I’ve been looking, you know, I did a little bit of looking into just like ra like what is the state like state of writing proficiency like these days and you know they I guess you know by one measure you know the like the NAP the last time they did a writing test was like in 2011 and I’m like I mean I’m shocked it hasn’t like hasn’t been another one since but like you know writing proficient was still like pretty low like it was like a third like a third of proficient one third proficient they actually did do the test again in 2016, but they threw out the scores cuz part of it was like digitized and they were they thought they were comparing apples and oranges. But like I but there are some other measures like I think last year on the Texas like star assessments like there are a lot of zeros like on on on the writing proficiency test.

And so given that this is what the state you know what the current state of rent proficiency is now and and going forward like the all the all the shortcuts and temptations that AI affords you know I that is you know one concerning part you know about this you know about the applications of AI for the future of learning that that raises for me. Yeah it’s I mean it seems inevitable that we will basically get to a point where we say well maybe we just need to lower the standards for what we’re testing. Because you don’t like like that would be sort of that’s the alternative, right?

It’s like well no it’s all about students using AI and so we shouldn’t really care if they can write on for themselves. It’s more about can they use AI to write you know I worry a lot about this is actually my piece I was supposed to publish it today. CJ’s probably editing it right now.

It so you look at the like the story of technology is always one of technology came it created more jobs created jobs that didn’t exist before. And so that’s sort of like the the salve that everybody is sort of like like waiting for is like yes AI is clearly going to displace jobs. I mean that’s right in front of us.

We can see it. We don’t really know what the jobs of the future are but they’re coming. And and so I look at like the loom and like the spinning jenny and so basically the disruption of cottage weavers to in favor of factories and it is true way more jobs are created.

People had the like like mob economic mobility in terms of the geog they could move to different cities and they had this sort of skill that they could take that city and go into a different factory and and when I learned about the industrial revolution it was like this story of like growth and you know progress but you know you dig into it it’s just like you know if you were a weaver and a cottage a cottage weaver you you worked from home you chose your own clientele you actually had like deep expertise and skill it was like you were actually creating full garment end to And there was taste involved and they lost their jobs and then they found themselves in these like windowless like choking smoke filled factories where they’re working six days a week. Mhm. And they had very little agency because the the skill set that they had was just sort of commoditized that they were pulling a lever or push you know whatever.

I actually don’t really know what what happens in a garment factory, a textile factory. I I worry about that because maybe it’s the case that AI will create more jobs, but I but I I worry about are those like is that going to be work that’s that we’re going to want? Like if you’re just sitting there sort of like doing the the whatever the modern equivalent of pulling a lever, pushing a button is and you talk about taste and it’s like okay well to get to taste I feel like AI is really not it doesn’t feel like part of the equation.

Maybe it’s maybe it helps. Yeah. Day one of computer science class.

Abs. Every computer science class should start day one. We’re going to vibe code a video whatever like something cool.

This is what you can do. Now we’re going to do the hard part. We’re going to actually learn some like coding languages because in order to really build cool stuff to go beyond sort of just like that oneot prompting you need to learn the basics.

But I don’t I actually don’t think even computer science changes that drastically. They’re just like less time maybe spent learning specific languages. Yeah.

I mean I think entry level right we’re we’re we’re redefining what it means to mean what what an entry- level job is in in in the age of AI. Say more about that because a lot of entry level I mean well entry level programming right a lot of debugging you know a lot of sy you know more more the basic level stuff and I think that you know like back not like not even too long ago like the past decade all the coding boot camps right and you know and what they what they thought were going to be the skills that you need to create entry- level coders who are going to be like good fit you know for entry- level jobs you know I think all that is being kind of aed out you know a lot of the you you know at least from the coding boot camp for the coding coding boot camp industry I think you know we are you know for us ourselves at the reach you know we hire you know we have interns like every year and I think like the the things that we expect to be able to do with AI in terms of like prepar you know in terms of like how much like preparation that they do in terms of you know how fast they can get up to speed on research right support of some of our market research work like all those expectation, you know, that that bar is like that bar is getting higher, right? And so, you know, I I I still think like I think that the bar for entry level is is getting higher and higher across the board.

I think this ties back a little bit to, you know, some of these AI first memos that we’re seeing across the board. I I think this I mean I I think optim like the optimist part of me thinks that this could be a good thing if you’re raising the bar you know for you know generally raising the bar you know is a good thing does it mean that you’re displacing folks you know I think there will that I think some part of that is usually inevitable it happens yes definitely dis but like what happens to those folks who are displaced because I think that’s the story is and it probably will come to pass to some degree is like like IKEA did this they replaced all of their call or most of their call center workers but they retrain them to be sort of like design consultants right that feels like a plausible I mean like that’s the story I think that and I think the the question is like what does it actually look like in other spaces can we we start to tell the story and I and and I think this is a role that VC has right in terms of like investing in the companies and the and the founders who are sort of like charting that course because it’s sort of a decision we make we can use these tools to just replace people or we can augment I mean I mean As much as we displace I think like yeah we do we are seeking founders who are help you know a lot you know a good number of portfolio are in companies that help upskill workers right and help help them like prepare for these transitions whether it’s in the same field you know whether it’s in like software engineering like getting you know just becoming a better more well you know more AI first enabled builder whether it’s transitioning into like other careers you know where you know that may that may be different I think that you know I think the the the the the opportunity for upskilling workers is just as I I I want to say it’s commensurate to kind of like the threat of like displacement and the fact that they don’t do you know they end up in like worse situations right look you know one of the things I learned from being a VC is you know they’re they’re very rarely pessimistic VCs right and so you know it’s actually one of the the funny transitions from being a journalist where you might be more inclined to look at the bad side where things don’t you know they say that there’s a quote I think like what is it pes pessimists may be right but it’s the optimist that kind of help impact and change the world right and that’s kind of like the side that you know I like to look at I like to try to come from when I look at the the impact of AI on on on on labor force and you know displacement versus replacement versus upskilling you know and productive transitions it feels like the jury may be out on the like how prominent like AI tutors should be let’s say in K-12 it feels like very obvious that if you’re trying to reskill you know mid-career workers who don’t necessarily want to go to school and have already gone through that process like they don’t want to necessarily do it again and I also it’s interesting almost thinking about reskilling in terms of like where is their transferability of taste where where companies need someone that has sort of like some built-in expertise but now we’re lowering the barrier Lowering the barrier to entry for mid-career is like a much it is much more interesting because there there’s presumably there’s some place of existing value let’s say in terms of whatever the person was doing. Yeah.

Well, I mean, I think that the history of human innovation is part of what I like is the the transference of taste and craft from one discipline, you know, to to deepen to others, right? And I think AI actually has ideas for helping them bridge that thoughts. But I think like human innovation that’s kind of where you know if something hasn’t happened I think like the the most impactful and most memorable kinds of learning experiences and kind of developments come like when you like kind of make that like connect the dots between two you know between two things two fields two lines of work that were you know previously not really thought of as having any relationship with each other and so I think reskilling and upskilling you know for the future of work you know like the reality is you know like there there are still a lot of like jobs that are very like human and relationship centered all right in education in work you know in in workforce development in care that I think like I’m not sure if AI is really going to like create like fully supplant you know what humans bring to those jobs so for example like I think learning right I think there is a biology to learning you know I’m looking at you right now you know we’re making eye contact we just take a late I think all of this like there are like neurons like firing happen like right now that kind of make memor like moments like these right a little bit more memorable than you know if I was talking to Alex the chat you know the the chatbot right now and so across care across learning across upskilling and and just human development you know I I I do think there’s going to be or I hope right I I hope that there is going to be an apprecization and appreciation for you know some of the biology of learning that I think humans will always you know like like play a critical role in an irreplaceable role in Yeah, could not agree more.

21, Thank you so much for joining.