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it sometimes seems like our school system was designed to crush creativity every aspect of society has changed dramatically yet how we educate kids and the content itself has remained somewhat constant the industrialists wanted their
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future Factory workers to be able to sit quietly in a room for 8 hours parents thought well we turned out okay they must be doing it right and then in the pandemic they got a front row seat to their kids education whether you like it or not a major Dynamic of our education
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system is outcomes you got to do good in K through 12 because you got to get into a good college so long as success in America sending your kid to college it's harder to change K through 12 I just want to see how they solve problems AI you help with the pathagory and Theorem
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But ultimately they need to believe in themselves they need a North star they need motivation and that's the role a mentor human figure can [Music] play well hello everyone it's Jim oanes with yet another infinite Loops you know I always go on and on banging on and on
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about our education is broken we need to fix it we need younger people involved and lo and behold what did I find but my next guest Audrey wish co-founder Oaks and CEO and teacher I love that part of that of curious Cardinals an edtech
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empowering K through 12 students through mentorship now you have all sorts of accolades you've been Forbes 30 under 30 you're a Stanford grad oh my goodness welcome thank you thank you so much for having me today so I'm absolutely fascinated by what what's the origin
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story here why did you why did you figure out we need a different way of getting kids to get excited and uh I think you have accomplished it thank you so it started I was a history major at Stanford I thought I was pre-law wanted to be the next Ruth Bader Ginsburg and
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thought I had my 10year life plan set and then Stanford sent us home my freshman year because of the pandemic and I decided to start tutoring kids um I had done some teaching at Stanford with um teaching English to members of the janitorial staff that was a
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highlight of my week so I kind of nerded out with the pedagogical aspect of it um and I said I'm home all my extracurricular is on pause why don't I just tutor some kids I can make some money so I reached out to a bunch of family sent my resume around and started
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in March of 2020 working with a seventh grader in ninth grader on zoom and working with them observed how disengaged and uninspired they were with what they were learning in school and how they were absorbing and regurgitating what they reading in a
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textbook but they didn't know why they were learning what they were learning so that inspired me to apply what they were learning in school to their interest the r around them in hopes of making their learning feel like it actually mattered
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um one of them asked for math help I was not as passionate about math so that's where Alec my eventual co-founder came into the picture Alec was an aerospace engineer at Stanford and he started applying what they were learning in math to how airplanes fly and fast forward
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they began telling all their friends and I'm a natural compulsive super connector um someone came in and said I love science and um Love Soccer and struggling in math and I said oh my God my friend's the human biology ta and he's on the soccer team he'd be the
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perfect match and so on and so forth making these personalized connections and for me in that gloomy dreary time of the pandemic it was my personal North Star that motivated me that helped me set goals maintain motivation and I'd always been someone who was super goal
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oriented um recently I found my 10th grade goals I set and I was like wow I thought I changed a ton I haven't changed all that much and there's not space to identify your why to find your North Star in the classroom and that was just exacerbated in the p mic and so
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that's it started observing firsthand this disengagement and seeing how by being someone close in age who could draw the connections between what they were learning and the world around them in their interest how that could ignite a flame of motivation and inspiration
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and in tandem enable a student to accomplish phenomenal learning results you know there's a great quote uh attribute it to everyone uh from Abraham Lincoln on up you know how the disputed quotes go but it's uh the definition of insanity is trying the same thing the same way
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again and again it doesn't work but we just keep trying it that way I thought that one was Albert Einstein yeah I don't think it is there's a great uh resource on the web quote investigator uh and I I do a lot of quotes so I'm always over there who actually said this
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um but why do you think that is what why do you think that we have steadfastly uh retained the old way of educating kids that really originated during the industrial era and and I think one of the sneaky motives was really the industrialists wanted the
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their future Factory workers to be able to sit quietly in a room for eight hours and have the correct answer machine installed in their ad your way is so different how how did you get the kids that you were mentoring and tutoring to come alive so to speak because I
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remember sitting in grade school and boy old boy they made me sit with by hand with Christmas tree like that because I was rambunctious let me start with a big picture which is you're 100% right why hasn't our education system changed every aspect of society has changed
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dramatically yet how we educate kids and the content itself has remained somewhat constant what I think was so fascinating about the pandemic as I said I was this girl who had my 10-year Life Plan set and Lov school and Academia more than
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anything so I never thought I would leave Stanford early to pursue this full-time um but when we when the pandemic here wrapped up and we saw everyone going back to school we realized stamford's not going anywhere but this opportunity could and everyone
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had always been a little bit complacent with K through2 education because parents thought well we turned out okay they must be doing it right and then in the pandemic they got a front row seat to their kids education and actually started questioning is this right is
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this working and so that's a fascinating thing we observed where we saw parents psychology alar and realize that this was an opportunity to go further with this and really try to scale this to reach way more students um what was so effective I think it was just this
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Relentless commitment to getting a kid's genuine engagement um I remember my co I haven't told this story much but my co-founder thought it overheard me I was working with one of my first students again they told everyone we were doing
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the maximum number of classes you could take at Stanford online and then we started just tutoring all these kids because they were telling all their friends I was working with a fifth grade boy in writing and I was like what are you interested in and he was like
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nothing and I was like what do you like to do in your free time and he was like not much and he was so covid frustrated and bored and I literally go what are what are your favorite things to have for dinner and he said chicken nuggets and I said great we're gonna write a
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story about chicken nuggets and my co-founder was like cracking up in the background like Audrey will do anything to meet this kid where they're at but I think it was that it was this Relentless commitment to meet a kid where they're at and show you
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that I will get to your level whether we're talking about chicken nuggets or Cosmetics or video games I will get there and I will show you how we're going to apply that to learn how to write and construct effective sentences how to learn grammar how to convey your
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ideas most effectively how to communicate how to write in the active not passive tense I'm going to show you how we can do all those things that's going to empower you to be an an effective Communicator long-term right now a strong human student in your
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classes and I'm going to do that by connecting it to the things you get excited about you light up about so I'm curious what were the kids that you were tutoring were there was there any commonality between what they were really other than what did you do at
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school today nothing uh did you have any favorite subject no how was there uh like a group of things chicken nuggets video games that kids seem to really like up when when they got to it real things I would say how could they be focused with geometry
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or Shakespeare when they were scrolling through their Tik Tok feeds and seeing millions of people dying in the pandemic wildfires and all this talk about climate change in California racial Injustice and protest outside on the street literally peering outside their
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window they were seeing all these things that felt held enormous gravity and that Drew their interest even if it was Sports um so many we have so many it happens to be more gender that's way more boys sports analytics and sports journalism are some of our most popular
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tracks because all kids love sports and you start with a thing that they watch on their TVs or they look on their phones and there's I think the things in the real world that have real implications are what captivated students interest and engagement and
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genuinely effective way so I think you'd be the perfect uh person to ask this question to you always you know there's always the moral Panic about social media especially Tik Tok um have you found that kids who are on Tik Tok can can really go deep on a subject if if
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guided that seems to be also maybe one of the uh aspects of your mentorship program that where you where you could help them out or no I our attention spans shortening I think 100% attention spans are shortening um I just read Jonathan Height's book The anxious
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Generation Um which is getting a lot of press and it was funny I'm kind of kzero um I I often don't like to reveal my age I was born in 2000 I was one of those babies that did grow up on social media I think I turned out okay reading the book I did see a lot of wow that wasn't
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so easy to grow up and go through middle and high school on Instagram that definitely affected my um sense of self in certain ways or selfconfidence when you're going through that pivotal change and transition um I also think I developed some of entrepreneurial skills
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on social media I built um a foodie Instagram account and then I was a very competitive track runner I made this track Instagram account that had got like 12,000 followers and then one of the big ones banned us I was super upset said about that and so I was learning
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how to be Savvy kind of what hook compels people how to make content that interests a niche audience um could I learn effectively I don't think you can go deep enough I think it's a little too superficial aspirational um and I would say that I've always been someone who's
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had mentors um some of them have been people I'm still close with my seventh grade ballet teacher we are still in touch when I go back home to New York City we get coffee every once in a while um my sister's High School boyfriend who's no longer her boyfriend was my
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track Mentor he I ran the best mile time in middle school and he signed me up for my first race he's actually now in venture capital and we're still close friends he's still like a mentor figure um and having those real connections was
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so meaningful for these in crucial life figures who were mentors to me and then there were a few people who I looked to and followed on social media and looked up to as mentors and it was I never was a ble to humanize their success humanize
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their Story by following them on social media and I think the same translates to topics that you're learning or I don't don't even get me started with the news and the sound bites that kids learn about or engage with through their feeds um I think it's too superficial and I
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think it's too instantaneous and real relationships and real relationships real relationships and real learning necessitate your focus and your engagement and going deep yeah and obviously you're a very high agency person what kind of tricks uh or
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methods did you develop to uh get the kids that you're mentoring to act with more agency to um you know uh it it's one of those perennial debates right is agency something you can learn or is it something that you're born with what do you think and I'm constantly going back
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and forth myself um that spring I worked with a ton of kids I ended up really working with one girl who I started with in March of 2020 when she was an eighth grader and she's a senior um she's graduating high school she invited me to
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her graduation I can't make it um but when I'm in New York City we're going to have a celebratory dinner and so I've had the honor of mentoring her for four years and I've been on the lookout for my next Mente I want to do the same thing with another student and I was
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reflecting on this yesterday cuz we had our first session there very different um and I've been thinking I think part of the the beauty of it and someone who's a great mentor they love the challenge they are committed to this Challenge and I we a week ago too we had
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dinner with some of our first curious Cardinal mentors and the best mentors it's like a craft they take so much pride in driving results and change in their students I think if you have that someone that dedicated to you you can drive change but how many students have
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someone that dedic ated to them and their betterment very few very few people come across that person um but at the same time there's it's almost Timeless um my grandpa who's 90 years old recently was telling me about his fifth grade teacher
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that changed his trajectory he said he wasn't that good of a student once and then the teacher sat him down and said I'm going to give you one more chance to deep this test and if you do it well you're going to fine you're going to not have to repeat sixth grade um but I
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really believe in and I want you to put in the work and he said that changed everything for him he realized that he liked working hard and how good it felt to be a good student um and so a lot of people that's a little bit like a universal thing that teacher who changed
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your life and so we hope to be that person for every student can you enact can you instill and cultivate agency in a kid um it depends I think if you have the benefit of time you can but it can often take a lot of time that's interesting because mine was a uh we
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called all our teachers professor at the school I went to so mine was in seventh grade and his name was Professor Buzz marzo sounds like an astronaut right uh but uh that's a really interesting thing I bet if you ask virtually anyone
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they'll be able to say you know that one teacher who really changed their likes and and that kind of leads me to how do you go about picking mentors it's got I know that by reviewing all of the background on you that they're hand fit and I know that you look for specific
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qualities but share with our audience H how you go about doing that and then what what happens if like what happens if you really take off how do you scale something like a onetoone mentorship program yeah so starting with how we pick mentors tactically we have a very
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thorough interview process that we've been iterating upon since the beginning once was me doing all the interviews I'm grateful to now have an awesome team doing it um it's a three-part interview process in the past year we've had 1,957 people apply to be mentors 67% of
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which go to Harvard y Stanford Princeton Duke we don't do any recruiting it's all organic it's all word mouth referrals um so what does that mean that means that there it's a little um biased to who's applying what typically happens is
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a mentor is working with their kid and they're obsessed with their kid they love it they go to the Harvard cafeteria after their mentorship session with their friend group and they're like oh my God I'm teaching this kid coding he's like a mini me it's so fun they talk
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about it all their friends hear about it and then the whole friend group applies so we have friend groups we have have couples we have siblings it's and that's that's great because it attracts a person who wants that who hears how much this Mentor takes pride in being a
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mentor how much they love it how much they light up with this relationship and so we're really lucky that we are attracting the right type of person to apply generally speaking what does it mean to be a good Mentor um being a great mentor is like being a great
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leader we are honestly betting for future fantastic managers a great mentor we want every curious Cardinal session to have a a uniform structure so we recommend mentors start with rose bud Thorne um often that's more for the student than for them mentors or tutors
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don't typically tell a kid about their week or their life and me the kids love that these mentors are aspirational to to hear their Rose Bud Thorne the final they had the party they went to it it's cool it makes it exciting for the kids um so they start with rose bud Thorne
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and then the mentor says here's our goal today here's what we're setting out to accomplish in today's session so they align on a goal and they basically set an agenda so kids learn how to follow an agenda what it means to set an agenda
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and then the last five minutes of the session they say okay this was our goal did we accomplish it great here's what I need you to do for next time we didn't accomplish it why didn't we what what went wrong what set us off cour Trask and then the mentor is supposed to say
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okay to stay on track here's what I want you to do for next session they're essentially learning to be a manager with with a direct report and build not just that accountability relationship but that friendship and connection and so I would say that one of the things we
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observe in a lot of our mentors is they've either been mentored they have a real profound story of someone who's believed in them taking a chance on them change their life trajectory forever whether it was that soccer coach or that teacher um or they have some experience
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mentoring themselves they were one of the high school students tutoring to make money on the side or they are ta at school or they're in a leadership position so I think having that experience of guiding and mentoring or having been LED in some shape or form it
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doesn't have to be super formal is somewhat of a commonality across the board with many of our mentors um and then people who take pride in the relationship people who are really committed to bringing something out in a kid or helping a kid develop a sense of
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confidence in themselves um and again I think that comes from people who someone has done that to them before they done it before and it's been so rewarding Rose Bud Thorne is interesting because I we didn't have that when I was a kid my grandchildren absolutely love
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that every time I'm over uh my son's house for dinner I I'm as I'm driving over there I'm like okay what I gotta think about this what what are the Thorns do I have any Thorns today and I'm Amazed by how much the kids just absolutely love it um you also
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talk about kind of a near peer relationship uh explain that a little bit and why do you think that works better is it just because of it's easier to relate to somebody who's closer to you and age or you tell me so near peer mentorship learning from a college or
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recent grad student who's not too much older an age than yourself why so they can set out the path to where they got to and make it feel attainable as much as I looked up to Ruth Bader ginsburg's journey I could barely reverse engineer her path it was
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daunting looking at the Decades of oh my God how would I get there and one of the things I I had a light bulb moment when I was working with one of my first students she read my research paper that was published in the Stanford historical
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journal and came to the session and was like oh my god Audrey how did you even write that she was like it was 30 pages it sounded professional and I looked at her and I said Jane you are so much further ahead of where I was when I was your age Imagine where you're going to
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be when you're my age and she literally jaw dropped she was like and that was this light bulb moment for me of oh my God this is really empowering this is really motivating because I'm not only shedding light upon where I how I got to where I am today I'm making it feel
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attainable and I'm telling her I believe in her to get to where I am or surpass that and so I think it's the proximity um the closeness to the experience I was I was there I remember High School I remember middle school and so I can relate to her experience and then I
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think the other element of that is you've you know the classic parents says something to their kid and they say you don't get it or you're not in my situation and our mentors also grew up on social media they also had their education halted by the pandemic they
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get it they speak the same language and so I think that sense of relatability is key especially when it comes to such remarkably accomplished mentors they're learning from it humanizes that success during the pandemic uh it one of my
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hypotheses is that a lot of trends that were nent got really sped up by the pandemic Zoom being one of them uh and uh the kind of interaction becoming normalized what we're doing right now right this is a zo and I wonder did you think when you were doing it if only
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traditional education could do X Y or Z like what would your prescription be for the traditional educational method that most say let's just keep it General most public schools in a America uh follow a curriculum what would you change in addition of course
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to getting kids mentors about the about the nuts and bolts of what they're doing right now love that you're asking that and let me also acknowledge that um I was someone who wanted to go into the public sector and was always driven by social impact and so when I started
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curious Cardinals I a little bit was having a identity crisis like I'm supposed to be pre-law what am I doing and um in high school I always I was always toggling between do I want to be a Supreme Court Justice and affect millions of people but in a potentially
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itty bitty way or do I want to be a teacher and have 20 kids in my class and have a real deep impact on them so I was always thinking about the two and I thought I want to be a Supreme Court Justice because I can represent an individual and I love people and
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building relationships but we can have an impact that can result in a systemic change that impacts millions of people's lives and so working starting curas Cardinals I realized at its core this is the same never in a million years would I have thought of
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Technology as the vehicle to enact that systemic impact but this is all about championing individuality and enabling onetoone human connection and personalized learning and we're using technology as the vehicle to do so at scale and so so I I bring that up
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because um one of the challenges of our model is there's no or please tell me if you know of any there's no direct to Consumer education companies I've heard of that have prioritized and enabled equity and access as well as like true systemic impact reaching all sorts of
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students and so um a lot of my or my personal philosophy is we're a little bit taking Ruth pburg approach which she asked how am I going to appeal to a court of nine male justices I'm going to start with cases that are sexist that hurt men so her first case was a case
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about in Ohio if you were 18 and a woman you could buy beer you had to be 21 to be a man and that's inherently sexist or but it affects men more than women and so she was like I'm going to start with the cases that affect men more than women a little bit out there um
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philosophical extrapolation I don't tell people often but I think about the same thing that we have to work within the system in order to reform this disrupt the system basically and so we're working within the system where our mentors
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represent who parents want their kids to be they go to these amazing Schools they're aspirational in every way um but do I think that navigating that system and the tensions of doing this to get into college or all the things within our current system are right or working
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absolutely absolutely not I'm hoping that we can build the trust and credibility and footh holding to do something much more disruptive um and I say that because um it's so hard i' we've worked with schools we work with schools in some capacities um I think we
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have to start from zero there's little baby reformations happening even when you look at the history of edtech quizlets the epitome Innovation where let's take flashcards which we all know it's not actually changing how we learn but it's digitizing and in efficiency
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and it's time I believe for us to really think how do we learn and let's have the Innovation start there so what would I I say I think that I I hope that we can really start from zero and rethink this whole system um it will be really difficult to do especially it's so
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entrenched with um government and um bureaucracy um but K why it's so arbitrary that we learn from 8 to 18 years old and then the learning ends anyone who's an entrepreneur knows that learning is a lifelong journey it never stops um and so I would really rethink
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education as it is today on a Ted um to start you got to start small um I think one of the biggest things is AI is a real call to action that we have to change how we educate and inform kids and so I think I I I really hope we can we can change the curriculum we can
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change the learning delivery um um but I have a million and 10 ideas for the changes we could make and um I think that every every there's there what I'm excited about is the emergence of innovation happening and I hope it it can um coincide and supercharge one
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another's efforts to enact the necessary change so part of oan Adventures is a uh seed stage and early stage investment fund and we've invested in in AI companies stability AI others we've also invested in edtech uh using AI synthesis
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school um and I'm a big believer in what they call the senar model of AI human plus AI I think that AI alone is not going to solve any of our problems but humans using AI can do miraculous things seemingly miraculous things one of the things that we found when we review
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synthesis in particular is that AI tutors that learn on the student that they are tutoring are incredibly effective because much like your mentors and when you started mentoring you know what are you interested in uh whereas the AI simply just constantly learns
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what they're interested in right so marrying that to a human mentorship program sounds like a kind of a brilliant way to get kids fired up um uh what drawbacks do you see from The increased use of AI uh specifically educationally and specifically with younger
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kids yeah so let me so so many things what drawbacks do I see um look I've been teaching AI workshops to parents in the past last year I've now taught nearly 40 workshops it started um and my whole AI journey is another story in itself um but I'm incredibly passionate
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about teaching parents and Educators about AI because the social media era we're talking about the ramifications now part of the issue is that adults in the room said I'm a tech dinosaur I don't need to understand this and now they're looking at the data and they're
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seeing how the onslaught of Mental Health is that um kids have undergone and they're realizing oh shoot maybe we should have known maybe we should have been a little bit more informed and look AI is such a massively different technology but as it pertains to kids
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and equipping the future generation I've been saying there's no excuse the adults in the room need to understand this need to engage with it and need to best support kids to navigate this future because it's going to change everything and it's going
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to permeate every aspect of Society so I would say what are what some of the risks are adults not being aware and adults not being informed such that one I I hope that educators are going to fundamentally change how they teach and raise the bar um cheating there's people
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have always kids have always been cheating there's always been Che or spark notes or different capacities to cheat um Cara swier said this she was like what's with all the headlines on AI and cheating like they've all been cheating always this is nothing new it's
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not the story guys I agree it's not the story um but I think that if adults are not informed they're not going to be able to help kids navigate it in a thoughtful way um what I would say is in order to use AI most effectively you have to know how to ask
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the right questions I say that I arguably can use generative AI whether it's chbt or claw more effectively than any of our very accomplished very smart software Engineers can and I can't code do a line of code uh because I'm really good at asking the
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right questions I was the president of the debate team in high school I got my research published in the Stanford historical Journal I'm great at asking the right questions and it requires problem solving critical thinking researching and questioning to use AI
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really effectively and those are um sophisticated skills that kids don't always get to in middle or high school so typically they can p teachers can see this is a very unsophisticated use of AI I can tell you use chaty PT to write the answers so I think um there's a lot of
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fear that kids are not going to have to learn how to write they're not going to know the foundational elements of writing your communication arithmetic and I think it's that Foundation that's going to be the unlock to leveraging AI
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so effectively um so the drawbox are the the people who are actually teaching them whether it's your parents at the dinner table or you're teaching in the classroom not being able to articulate the dos and don'ts or the wise or why not of AI um and I think that that some
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kids are going to exploit it I've had parents in these workshops I teach before being like my kids's a little cheater I do not want them doing anything with this I'm like great you know their maturity level you put whatever boundaries in place awesome
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other kids know their kids are rule followers would not want to do anything cheating and this could be a massive unlock for them and so I think um to each their own and that's the whole thing with education every kid is different every kid needs something
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different and so we can't take a one-size fits-all solution for um empowering kids to learn how to leverage AI um and similarly um Con Academy is amazing such an awesome tool but it's best for the autodidact it's best for the kid who's already motivated enough
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to look at the resource on their own and I think AI will be the same where if you know how to ask the right questions if you have the motivation to keep going awesome you can keep going through it but a lot of people need a human a lot of people need accountability and a more
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dynamic or relationship based way to engage or affect them and I think again again the drawbacks are going to be taking a one-size fits-all solution to a technology that can radically improve all of our lives but in very unique ways yeah and as you were speaking I was just
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thinking about how it seems almost every Innovation is in some sense hated by the elders right I mean go back to the Greek philosophers and they thought writing was a very bad idea and you know if you if you check out pessimus archives every
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major Innovation was had people just bringing out the pitchforks and saying this is awful my own experience was calculators were relatively new I'm 64 so calculators were relatively new and I wanted that's all I wanted for a birthday and back then like a simple
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calculator was really expensive and then I I re I remember bringing it in the teacher not not the one who changed my life not Professor marzo but another teacher scowled at me like you can't bring that in here where's your slag Rule and I said something really
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smartass to him and got sent to the principal's office um but I I was just reading I was just I saw Galileo the musical and it's all about galo's amazing Innovation and the church is massive discomfort and um condemnation of his Innovation and I
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could not stop thinking about these AI workshops I've been teaching and how this discomfort with new knowledge that radically changes professions and how we view the world and how we view relationships and our own skills and craftsmanship has been is timeless
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there's this discomfort and this resistance has been Timeless so 100% I've been thinking about that a lot in this past week as well do you think that uh the younger generation uh it's just like digital natives right I have a lot of young people who are team members
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here at Oar Ventures and one of the things that I absolutely find fascinating is they can do things in like five minutes on an iPhone that an old like me would be going ah so so do you think that this will evolve the way a lot of the adoption of Technologies evolved
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uh with the younger generation becoming native in it and using it and then maybe a couple of the more switched on olds uh figure out oh I should I should be using this and doing this and and my next question there too is do you do you have a lot of parents who are skeptical or uh
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don't want AI to be involved so jim I've now taught AI workshops to parents for the past um nine months I've probably Tau to 400 parents um so I've had very hand front front and center view to this um there's such a range some parents are very
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uncomfortable um and some are very excited and ex and curious um I 100% am seeing way more than I realize that a lot of parents struggle with technology more than I realized and I would say that um part of why my workshops are so effective is
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because I'm I was not a stem person myself I'm vulnerable I'm wearing bright colors and I feel like I make it relatable and perhaps if I was a little bit more serious um or a little um less able to make the information intelligible in a super accessible way
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and these workshops would not be effective um and that's goes to show I think a lot of the discomfort is um people are uncomfortable with things they don't know and don't understand because it takes time um and time requires patience which requires
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resilience and I think that's not intuitive to most people so a lot of the discomfort is just not knowing um but I think that one of the interesting things about kind of young people will this become more will all the genen Z be AI Savvy I've been shocked so we've
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released some AI product features with our mentors and I've thought all the mentors are going to be Mass adopters it will be great and a lot of the mentors who are college students have come with their own resistance and fears and it brings back I would say kind of what are
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the skills that matter most in an era of AI critical thinking and problem solving research and questioning the social and emotional skills leadership collaboration communication emotional intelligence that's going to be so much of what differentiates you and then
39:27
fourth is adaptability and lifelong learning curiosity is crucial we all know the person in any workplace who's uncomfortable with change or you come in with a new idea and they roll their eyes or they get a little frustrated and I
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actually think um that's more of a nurture versus nature that's usually more of a Ane equality someone has being curious being open to change I think we really need to prioritize teaching the Next Generation how to be okay with change and how to embrace change and be
39:58
adaptable and lifelong Learners or they will not be able to thrive in the society that once AI is truly infused in every aspect of our society is going to change more exponentially than ever before and so I think that um I'm optimistic that the younger generation
40:15
will be AI native and AI Savvy but I think I've seen a lot of people uncomfortable with change more so than I've anticipated and I think we need to place more emphasis on lifelong learning and questioning and curiosity and openness um rather than this rigidity
40:29
and um resistance to change yeah the Curiosity I think it was Breen Brown who said curiosity is a starter and uh I always love that quote because it's true and the I I often wonder about you know you mentioned nature versus nurture I often wonder whether you can teach
40:51
somebody to be curious can you you can but it's not easy one of the things we try to empower all mentors to do is lead with Socratic method and I think that when you ask a kid a ton of questions and you get them to get to the answer finally um you're
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that's like one little way to sparkk curiosity I also think our school system often eliminates yeah yeah it it it sometimes seems like our school system was designed to crush creative yeah it's like a nine-to-five job you clock in clock out go through the motions I think
41:32
a fascinating so I was working with my initial mentee um and helping her we usually worked on her blog but sometimes I would help her with preparing her first resume or some school things um and she was super stocked she had a Shakespeare essay she had to write which
41:49
was rewrite this scene from the tempus and make it a contemporary version and so we were brainstorming okay it was according each other scene how what what what is courting each other in a contemporary um version look like okay they cour each other on Snapchat so it's
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going to be a Snapchat dialogue we're going to use emojis and she was um we kind of got that we were excited and then she was she got quiet she withdrew for a second she used to be more shy she's come out of her shell and our four years working together and I said what
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you not like that idea and she said isn't my teacher going to think that I'm a bad writer if I'm using like a Snapchat dialogue and I said oh why do you think your teacher's giving you this assignment she said I don't know I said what was your last assignment analytical
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the assignment before analytical what do you think your teacher is trying to evaluate again I didn't tell her I asked the questions and asked the questions till finally she goes oh she wants us to show that we know that the themes of
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Shakespeare are Timeless and so if I do this contemporary version as a Snapchat dialogue that's probably going to be super creative and original yes she didn't even know why the teacher was assigning what they were signing and most kids have no idea what teachers are
43:08
evaluating them why they're assigning what they're assigning and so that inherently epitomizes Curiosity has been killed that kids are not even asking why am I learning what I'm learning or what's my teacher hoping for me to prove or demonstrate to them about my my
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understanding my knowledge um and so we I would say that that act of questioning and helping a kid asking all the questions to get into the answer is one way to invoke curiosity at least from what I have seen but it takes time it takes patience you mentioned
43:42
Shakespeare and I was a nerd and so I hear Shakespeare and I immediately think let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments love is not love which alters when it alteration finds nor bends with the remover to remove an no love is never fixed Mark which looks
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upon Tempest and is never shaken it is the star to every wandering bark whose worths unknown although his height be taken what do you think about memory what do you think about one of the reasons why I'll I'll be brutally honest I I memorized all these poems basically
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to try to get dates with girls but but there is an aspect where when you have it in your own hard drive so to speak in your own mind you can immediately draw up that particular Sonic by Shakespeare it leads to a bunch of other connections do you think that
44:42
that's end danger with it all being at our fingertips yes um I do and I think I'm constantly torn between this Albert Einstein in a pre-digital age said never memorize what you can already look up and we are in a post Google era we're in an AI era it has
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never been so easy to access any piece of information at your fingertips and so that's where my whole with the emergence of AI it's a it's a catalyst it's an impetus we must make change we must change how we educate the Next Generation because we're still asking
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them to absorb and regurgitate what they learned at textbook but does that mean that memorization in its entirety is not is not a noble thing is not helpful in certain ways no um I think that another interesting aspect of memor is it's often a lot easier to memorize things
45:45
when you care about them might have struggled to memorize whatever formula or equation for math or science but when I was track obsessed in high school I knew everyone's personal record times every famous runner I knew their 800 time their mile time maybe
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sometimes they even memorized over the years how it progressed I couldn't help myself it was ingrained in my head and now I M guys our Mentor database I can't help myself I was in San Francisco at the farmers market someone comes up to
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me and they say Audrey hi it's like I'm so sorry who are you she was like I'm a mentor Emma I was like what's your last name I go I know who you are you were in the mental health club in high school you're an Earth Systems major at Stanford you're mentoring this girl and
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this girl she was like how do you know that I can't help it I I just I look through I get excited seeing our new member mentors and I memorize that and so I would say and you you clearly memorize sonnet 116 because you cared about impressing girls with your
46:51
Shakespeare knowledge So It's Tricky um I think memory and I ALS so I love the state song I remember like the state song the state and capital song and I'm grateful I I memorize those songs I'm grateful I memorize those maps and so um I would say I toggle between Albert
47:09
Einstein's quote and kind of the value of people memorizing things I think that's so much of what makes us human um especially in a in a learning sense and part of that leads us back to uh you saying that uh really the ability to ask
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good and better questions to structure them better um is going to be a big part I think of getting the most out of AI so if you don't mind walk us through uh how you would structure uh a question instead of I let's just off the top of my head uh tell me why Shakespeare was
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such a great uh poet that's the the uh simple prompt that you put into one of the large language models how would you change that I don't mean to put you on the spot here but how would you change that to uh get a much more compelling a much richer uh answer from the large language
48:10
model than that simple query so I would follow I would ask you the follow-up question tell me why Shakespeare was such a great poet to who is it like in the great Canon and um Society worldwide is it to English teachers I would ask who who definition
48:28
of great that's the first thing I would ask so if we're doing prompt engineering what what would your answer be in that case my answer would be um why was Shakespeare seemingly so gifted in the analysis of humanity in terms not just of Love or jealousy or uh Envy or uh
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bravery uh but um that he also managed in addition to these deep insights to put them into killer uh uh couplets and plays so that was a much that was a much better question why was Shakespeare seemingly so gifted um at capturing not just love
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Envy jealousy but also in addition to these deep insights putting them into killer couplets and plays and then I would the followup I would ask is like why do you care are you curious about his personal history are you curious about his craft are you
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trying to understand um why he was so talented like personally as a human what his history and track record was or what about his ability to capture these human sentiments love Envy jealousy so effectively and convey them so beautifully and his cupets and plays
49:52
like what about his craft made it so powerful so I would ask those follow questions and really try to get at like what are you trying to answer because that's a much more specific question but it it's still quite broad so that's you use a Socratic method of
50:10
iteration to get closer and closer to what they're really looking for right and what I find fascinating is when playing around with AI I'm often confronted by my uncertainty or my lack of knowledge I I get a response that I'm dissatisfied with and I say I realize that I don't
50:32
actually know what I'm trying to ask and that forces me to be a lot more specific that with what I'm trying to get at and the more specific I am with the input typically the more satisfied I am with the output you know one of the uh other
50:45
ways that I've actually I experiment a bunch of different ways to prop large language models and uh one of the interesting ways is to ask the model itself is to say hey I uh I'm trying to figure out some let's stick with Shakespeare I am trying to figure out why this Willie
51:07
Shakespeare die is held in such high esteem and I'm interested in this poem or that PO and oh what how can I make this question better and then it depending on the large language model it it does a pretty good job of prompting in a very similar manner by the way uh
51:27
well why do you want to uh learn about Shakespeare what specific aspect so that's very helpful as well that gets back to kind of like curiosity in a way though doesn't it right because you've gota you've got to have that innate or initial let's not call it innate you
51:46
have to have that initial curiosity to even go and ask a large language model about Shakespeare right and and so it would seem to me and correct me if I'm wrong here and I'm I'm just inferring this from our conversation uh it would seem
52:04
to me that you and your mentors would rather than do that would first try to figure out what animates this child what is this child passionate about because then it makes it a lot easier right if it's baseball or whatever um music or Tik Tock or any any any anything really
52:27
I bet you could turn those into a series of questions and that ultimately become PRS uh to to get the child to get kind of reved up wait a minute what this is so cool do you buy that yeah yeah and I would say um what's interesting about our model is there's two sometimes we hit them all
52:50
and that's like home run amazing but there's two nodes of connectivity for spark interest there's one is the actual interest they love sports they love cosmetics and starting with that the other is the connection with the mentor someone a parent can come to K's
53:08
Cardinals and say I want a mentor to help my kid in school who also has ADHD who's a guy he only has female teachers um he just got diagnosed with ADHD he thinks that he's not going to be a good student now and I want him to work with
53:24
someone who also has ADHD is thriving and help him realize he's going to be okay and help to mystify what tips and tricks this person developed to thrive as the young adult they are and so that's the other thing it's not just the interest it's also the identity it's
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seeing some like seeing is believing you are who you can see seeing someone who you connect to or relate to that's also I think it all like the common denominator is tapping into kids why tapping into what they care about what they value you and part of what they value is
54:00
themselves who they are and so when they can work with someone who shares a lot of who they are what they care about what's unique to their experience or Viewpoint um it makes them more motivated it makes them feel like okay well this person's liked me in a few
54:15
years I should care I should try a bit harder um so I think that's the other interesting part is AI can really help with the topical interest level part can it help with the seeing is believing I'm not sure and that's that's arguably where girus Cardinals wins is
54:34
we acknowledge that our mentors may not be the best at breaking down the Pythagorean theorem um to a seventh grader because maybe they've done it with a few other students but AI has done it hundreds of times and millions of different ways and we can say this is
54:50
their learning style this is what their interest is AI you help with the Pythagorean theorem But ultimately if this kid's going to do the extra work put in the extra time they need to believe in themselves they need a North star they need motivation and that's the
55:05
role the mentor human figure can play yeah the human makes it relatable in a way that the pure Tech just simply doesn't I think you know I guess we have M neurons for a reason and being able to have a mtic uh role model so to speak is
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going to be very very helpful do you think that when you first came you said you have an interesting story about how you yourself got involved and interested in AI would you mind sharing that yeah yeah so as I said I was a history major major Humanities gal my co-founder has
55:48
always been the one pushing me to embrace technology more enthusiastically and I've come a long way um I think that um if anything I was resistant because I thought the two were contradictory to one another like the the human connectivity aspect of it and what
56:10
technology would do and I realized that was wrong and um I guess through being open-minded and ever curious my perspective evolved dramatically um but I still was someone who lacked confidence in stem did not consider myself a stem person and felt myself
56:27
um felt that feeling of Audrey the only girl in her honors math class who um everything else came so much more easily and math was a little harder and these negative voices would seep into my head I felt that when I was hearing all the hype around crypto
56:42
and I was like I don't understand this I don't get it and I really forc myself with that you cannot just feel uncomfortable and keep that discomfort you have to learn and be curious and overcome that discomfort like you're you are not going to repeat the same
56:56
patterns of your high school self that you're teaching all these younger girls to not be susceptible to as well and so when AI launched in October 2020 uh 2022 I probably went to Chachi PT I played around for a second and then probably was uncom was frustrated with
57:15
an answer and X out and didn't get that excited um of course the fact that got to a million users in 5 days which is unprecedented caught my attention I found fascinating but I wasn't doing the learning I wasn't like I got to learn
57:29
this I got to figure this out in January of 20203 no 202 yeah 2023 um a curious Cardinal's mom who became a mentor um called me and was like Audrey you want to change the future of K through2 education you have got to hop on the AI bandwagon and that was kind of my like
57:51
you know what okay no questions asked I don't understand this right now how it works how to use it how I can leverage it for my benefit but I I that's not okay that's not an acceptable answer I've got to overcome that discomfort and I'm going to commit to becoming an
58:05
expert here so busy with work still I said I'm going to spend 15 minutes every day playing around with chat gbt um that was the first month in January 15 minutes turned to I'm a scrappy startup founder I work 12 to 16 hour days using it in every single hour of my working
58:24
day it changed my life it changed my output my productivity um I was so excited I wanted to teach our whole team how to leverage it to our advantage and then we've always had this star-eyed vision for personalizing learning at scale and so that was the playing around one night
58:42
oh my God we H the technology is here to actualize this Vision this is amazing and so I would say my journey was one of not being comfortable not being Savvy or native at first but really knowing that this is an exciting amazing Innovation
58:59
and I got to be curious and figure out why I should care and Learn by doing figured out not only will this save me personal time and value as an operator and a builder but this is going to change the trajectory of the company we're trying to build um and so that was
59:17
my journey and now I have literally taught 40 AI workshops to parents all over the country um and I'm really passionate about demystifying it and powering others with its superpowers um and really passionate about how we can leverage it in our product to scale this
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human model effectively as well as how it's going to completely revolutionize the education system as we know it I tend to agree and I always uh one one thing that I use large language models for a lot is I I put in you know an essay I've
59:51
written about something or whatever and then I ask it to play Devil's Advocate and show me all Steel Man the opposing argument to the one I have put forth here that's really really useful and then another more fun way of doing it that I've gotten a lot of uh uh older
1:00:13
people interested in Ai and is I would just sit with them and they would you know poo poo it you know I don't need that and I'd say hey what are your favorite books if were readers uh what are your favorite TV shows if they're music people what are your favorite
1:00:31
bands if you're classical do you like b or do you like bth over you love both Etc and I would elicit from them like here's what I like I like these shows I like these books I like this and I said come here and we put them all into a large language model and say recommend
1:00:50
some uh uh Stories books TV shows music uh that someone who loves all of these might really really like and it it is almost magical as I watch them look at the screen and they're their ex their eyes widen and they're like oh I didn't mention that one but I do love that one
1:01:12
and then oh my god I've never heard and then like they'll do a piece of paper and they'll start writing down everything I'm I get I'm now get DMS from parents every day I would love to give you one of my AI workshops and we can invite all your AI skeptic friends
1:01:27
because that is the exact same thing that happens they get so excited realizing how you can tailor it to your interest to save time and add value in your life um one of the things I like to say to people is you can think of AI in two buckets AI for idea generation or AI
1:01:46
for idea refinement and polishing I am an ideas gal I have no shortage of ideas if anything maybe you've been able to tell I'm work more on brevity um so I'll more use AI to polish and refine my ideas I will it takes me a nanc to J out
1:02:05
all my thoughts and ideas what really takes the time is the process of editing and refining and polishing because people have a short attention span and less is often more um and so I think that's also the what I've noticed and found really awesome is the Frameworks
1:02:20
to educate people on AI that people find very empowering and Illuminating do you think that there will come a time where um the the classic uh K through 12 uh system that we have right now is just like totally revamped around things like AI that we've been discussing or or or
1:02:45
do you think maybe modified would be a better uh way of thinking about it like uh do you think that that the standard K through 12 education could begin to morph into something that does all of those human centered things that AI is never going to really be able to do I
1:03:06
mean as you mentioned with your mentors could could your type of system actually become a replacement for traditional K through2 I hope so I'm optimistic that one day yes school does so much um and school is the epicenter of so much schools off to
1:03:28
child care and play so many other wears all the hats um so that's a really challenging and unique Dynamic of it in it all I would also say that um it's going to take time there's so much discomfort and resistance right now that I'm observing on the ground um what
1:03:46
I think is also one of the the obstacles in making change in K through 12 education is college and so so long as success in America sending your kid to college and college is the key to unlock many future career opportunities it's harder to change K
1:04:07
through 12 um and so that's another interesting trend is sentiments around college and the university system changing um sentiments around whether college is necessary to have a great career um and so that that I think I I think the tides are returning um we have
1:04:27
influencers so many influencers who've never even gone to college who have millions of followers and have so much influence and so people are turning on its head what it means to have influence to have credibility um and so and there's a lot of protests on college
1:04:45
campuses right now and a lot of talk about um whether these are truly um institutions cultivating um different perspective Ives and curiosity and openness and don't have to go into the politics of it all but I think there's a lot of conversations and a lot of questioning
1:05:04
coming out of the pandemic about the systems we have in place right now and questioning if they're right and if they're working and so I think true systemic change in K through2 education is going to require change in college and the system
1:05:19
there in secondary um learning as well there's a good book called uh paper belt on fire that talks about um what's going on with universities and the changing ideas about um it it's written by a a fellow who ran Peter Field's uh fellowship program um and I
1:05:42
am really interested in the I I had one friend who joked to me that the ultimate Flex was well actually you you've made the ultimate Flex the ultimate Flex is somebody who gets into an Ivy but then leaves to do something else you're you're demonstrating hey I
1:06:02
could get into to Yale Harvard Stanford uh but I'm I now I got now I really gotta go do this I I I wonder do they go hand inand or or are they independent variables does what needs to happen on the change in college it is that uniquely separate from K through 12 or
1:06:26
are they intermingled great question love that framing of it well I would say that right now whether you like it or not a major Dynamic of our education system is outcomes outcomes with grades outcomes with standardized tests outcomes that are supposed to unlock Future
1:06:50
opportunities and so so long as the outcomes are in service of what's next which is very much the nature of K through2 and school I was talking to a um one of our mentors at Stamford who was saying that part of how I got here was I was always
1:07:06
so motivated by what I'm doing today and how that's enabling me to get to the next thing to get acceptance to Stamford to get the job the internship and now I'm at Stamford and I'm almost graduating and I'm like whoa am I always gonna be like this like when am I going
1:07:19
to just be grateful for where I am and that's not something our schoolst system teaches it teaches like do this to get that it's very much a means to an end and so I think that I think right now it's set up such that success from K through 12 is is acceptance into a
1:07:38
college and a college unlocks OPP other opportunities if anything I think it's the workforce that could change it the workforce showing you don't need a four-year degree to thrive and whether it's climb this corporate ladder or gain professional success in another um
1:07:56
medium I think showing that there's different paths and there's variabilities that unlock again success everyone has a different different definition of success but I would almost place my bets on the workforce as we know it to to change K through2 more so
1:08:12
than College interesting yeah I think that's a good answer because uh you're right the the standard operating procedure today is you got to do good in K through 12 because you got to get into a good college and then you know you got to get that certification and that
1:08:31
imperator uh to prove that you know what you're talking about and and I definitely see that kind of not not it's not a momentous change but I definitely see people much more open to for example um I honestly very rarely um even ask somebody I'm thinking
1:08:54
about hiring where they graduated from and because we our process is uh we we like to have somebody come on as a consultant first because I think that a single interview is kind of a stepshot and I want to watch a movie instead and that way you know it's I guess what
1:09:19
would the crypto guys call it proof of work right um and I I think that um I'm odd in that respect because uh my my daughter who graduated from Yale will if she listens to this she will really get after me but uh I definitely think that on the margins you're seeing more and more of
1:09:42
that when you're hiring someone do you care what they've learned or do you care what they can do I care what they can do um and it what they can do tends to demonstrate what learned I was just say typically what they've learned is an input and output
1:10:00
is what they can do with that learning exactly yeah and so I I also give extra uh uh credit if as it were to I I just want to see how they solve problems um you know back when I was still doing Asset Management I I was the scourge of the people who uh were
1:10:23
interviewing interns because because uh I never used any of the classic question where do you see yourself in five years you know or uh what's your greatest weakness my greatest weakness is I just try too hard and I just give everything I have to the job I'm doing and and so
1:10:42
what I would do is give them things that uh I knew that probably weren't going to get the right answer to so for example one of my Classics was remember this is asset management so one of my Classics was the Dow johnes Industrial Average is a price weighted index of
1:11:02
30 uh companies that does not include the reinvestment of dividends the S&P 500 is a cap weighted index that does include the reinvestment of dividends if we started in 1927 with both indexes where would the Dow be today if it included the reinvestment of dividends
1:11:22
now clearly I was not asking for them to give me the right answer what I wanted to watch was how are they going to tackle that and and the the person who got my highest recommendation literally took 20 minutes a queried me can I ask
1:11:40
questions of course you can ask questions what was the average dividend yield of the Dow over that period you know what was its lowest what was the highest you know and and then can I have a calculator and literally I watched him work out exactly what he thought it
1:11:56
would be he was way off but um that that gave you the opportunity to talk about the magic of compounding but yeah I want to I I'm much more interested how they approach problem solving how they um how creative they are how open admited they
1:12:13
are um because I those at least in my history uh have been much more indicative of the type of work that they could go on to do yeah well that's that's the value of showing your work on your math test kids except if you got the wrong answer in a math test and ultimately negative
1:12:35
five even if your work is beautiful unless you've got a great teacher that is a critical point and a really good one for you to pick up on I did not care that they got the right answer what I cared about was how they tried to get there and I would say especially in
1:12:56
entrepreneurship it doesn't matter if you got the right or wrong answer what matters is you have the resilience to keep at it and continue your curiosity driving you to be in the pursuit of the right answer day after day exactly well I can't believe that I'm already getting
1:13:13
the hook from my producers here um Audrey this has been really fun uh I love what you're doing I think that um it's a what a great time to be alive right with all of the Innovations and people like you who are making use of them and improving hopefully uh what I
1:13:35
think has become a kind of a woefully bad way of trying to educate kids I mean they're our future right and like if we if we don't take very very seriously um the all of these new ways that enhance the ability to learn and continue to learn that's the other one
1:13:58
I'm I'm passionate about uh where where can everybody find you and uh Curious Cardinals curious.com check out our website connect follow me on LinkedIn I post a lot about what we're doing and my AI philosophies at curious Cardinals on
1:14:15
Instagram I know you brought up Twitter we're not I am on Twitter but we're not as proa prolific on Twitter but Instagram LinkedIn and go to our website G's Cardinals sign up for our newsletter and I didn't even talk to about how we are using AI in our human Centric AI
1:14:32
empowered model which is we're really trying to get at the core of mentors are best at teaching and showing up and engaging and inspiring kids but part of being a great mentors so much more it's the follow-ups it's the accountability
1:14:45
it's the summary of what we learned it's the recap and so we are trying to use AI to provide lesson summaries and performance takeaways identify and create the best educational content hold students accountable outside of sessions synthesize data to tailor learning offer
1:15:01
personalized recommendations and identify key trends highlighting student needs and so essentially AI at every other touch point of The Learning Journey with this this thesis that never going to tell parents that a mentor bot will engage in instill confidence or
1:15:17
Inspire their kids better than human again because I don't believe it every will but we can use AI every other touch point of The Learning Journey to deliver the most efficacious datadriven and impactful learning experience perfect way to uh end the
1:15:33
conversation on Curious Cardinals we do however have one last question for you and we ask it of all of our guests and and it is this we are going to wave a magic wand and we are going to make you emperor of the world and you can't put anyone in a re-education camp and you
1:15:52
can't uh put anyone uh you can't kill anybody but what you can do is speak into a magic microphone and say two things and the entire population of the world is going to wake up the next day and they're going to think I've just had two of the greatest ideas ever and
1:16:15
unlike all those other times I'm actually G to begin acting on them right now what two things are you going to incept in the world's population the world's population be curious and be compassionate assume miscommunication not malice oh I love both of those those are
1:16:40
great Audrey this has been so much fun thank you very much for coming on I wish you absolutely all the best uh and we will definitely be watching your progress thank you thank you so much for the amazing conversation today and thanks for having me on