Press

We asked ChatGPT what jobs are safe from being taken over by artificial intelligence.

Its response, while sensible in many areas, left some reasons for doubt.

Alicia Carpenter didn't plan on becoming a tutor, let alone an executive at a tutoring firm, but when she realized her passion and skill for helping students excel, along with the chance to shake up the industry, she never looked back.

"You don't always end up where you think you will, and even when you do, it doesn't always turn out the way that you think," Carpenter says. "So if you make the most of each opportunity you're given, you'll probably end up where you need to go. I feel like that's been a real theme in my life and choices."

Alarm bells are tolling for students of all ages and literacy levels, from trends in COVID-19 recovery, to fundamental reading pedagogy, to reading in higher education, to the features of cognition itself. When it comes to discussing the current literacy crisis in the United States, we have a classic reading comprehension problem—an ambiguous reference. Why? Because there isn't just one current literacy crisis, but many overlapping crises.

In the last few years, AI tools have taken on an increasingly diverse set of educational roles, from teaching assistants to study buddies to administrative support. While AI’s growing presence in classrooms is beyond debate, a more profound question remains: Can AI match the best teachers in providing the highest-caliber education—and if not, what is standing in the way?

A few years into his finance career and working as an equities trader in New York City, Steven Menking was unfulfilled. He’d done everything he was supposed to do—he graduated cum laude with degrees in math and economics from Williams College, and had completed several internships, which he parlayed into a job in investment banking right out of college. But he quickly realized he wasn’t willing to sacrifice his work-life balance for Wall Street’s golden handcuffs. “If they have young kids, I don’t know how much they're seeing them,” says Menking, 36, about the executives he worked with. “Everybody makes the choices that they think is best for them. And for me, that wasn’t a tradeoff that I was wanting to make.”

At the nation’s top schools, including many in the Ivy League, acceptance rates hover near all-time lows.

“College admissions only ever gets more competitive and there’s a lot of stress from families about the stakes and how to get in,” said Thomas Howell, the founder of Forum Education, a New-York based tutoring company.

For some families, getting their child into a top school is an investment, and to that end there is almost no limit to what they will spend on tutors, college counselors and test prep.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the U.S. public education system, resulting in unprecedented setbacks for students. When quarantine measures were taken, schools were closed abruptly and indefinitely, requiring the rapid introduction of remote learning environments. Teachers adapted curriculums on the fly, often leading to inconsistencies and gaps in instruction, and the stress drove many experienced teachers to leave the profession. Students were often disengaged with remote learning and were increasingly absent. An Education Recovery Scorecard report found that students in third through eighth grade lost half of a grade level in math achievement and a third of a grade level in reading achievement between 2019 and 2023. For 13-year-old students, math scores dropped by nine points in the 2022-2023 school year, and reading scores dropped by four points, according to a National Assessment of Education Progress report. In only three years, decades of learning gains were lost; math progress regressed three decades, and reading achievement fell to levels not seen since 1975.

Classrooms have become a battleground in the media frenzy around new large language models and other developments in artificial intelligence. 

On the one hand, proponents of the technology jump to tout its promise for students. In each of its recent product launches, artificial intelligence forerunner OpenAI has partnered with marquee ed-tech companies and organizations to cast a feel-good halo around a technology that strikes many as apocalyptic. 

The contrast between the two presidential candidates is perhaps nowhere as stark as in their different approaches to schooling America's children.

And that distinction is perhaps most embodied by their clashing running mates: One is a liberal former high school teacher and coach who struggled to have children and now has a son with special needs and a daughter with his longtime educator wife. The other is a former venture capitalist who overcame a difficult childhood of his own, met his wife when they were both at Yale Law School and now has three children.

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have fundamentally different interpretations of the purpose and function of the American education system. Their visions are largely aligned with how their parties' value hands-on and hands-off policies.

AI attempts to scale education fly in the face of all we know about learning—that learning is social, and that the more human attention, the better the outcomes.

In the U.S., school start dates vary significantly by region, with some states like Georgia beginning the academic year as early as July. No matter the age, starting the school year on the right foot and establishing good work habits are crucial for academic success. When students start the year eager and prepared, they not only set a positive tone for their studies but also make it easier for teachers to identify any changes in their performance.