The Reformation of Education

Metatrend #1: Increasing Abundance

What it is

The United Arab Emirates is set to become the first country in the world to provide free ChatGPT Plus access to all its citizens, a move that can fundamentally transform education. While the traditional education model has remained unchanged for 400 years, it has limited students to a narrow set of subjects and is constrained by teacher capacity. AI proves this doesn’t have to be the case: students are already learning 2-4x faster, with instant access to thousands of subjects tailored to their interests.

This is the power of hyper-personalized education: students learning what’s more relevant to them, at their own pace, and it’s already delivering results. Last month, a Texas school landed in the top 2% in nationwide scores after students spent only two hours per day with AI tutors. Education 2.0 is on the horizon.

Why it matters

As the father of two 14-year-olds, I think about education reform constantly. The 4-year university model is already broken: rising costs, declining job guarantees, outdated curricula that haven't changed in hundreds of years.

Education is one of two massive industries (the other being healthcare) that AI will completely disintermediate, disrupt, democratize, and demonetize.

Here are a few implications:

1. AI Forces Fundamental Change in Teaching and Learning: The traditional concept of a curriculum is fundamentally flawed. We're limited to 12 or 15 subjects because we only have so many teachers. But with AI assist, you can access 20,000 or a million different subjects. Students aren’t merely learning at their own pace, they’re also learning whatever is most relevant to their path. When students are learning 2-4x faster with AI, this will overwhelm traditional universities. Hyper-personalized education means learning math from your favorite sports star or having lessons modeled on your favorite stories and themes.

2. Nations Are Already Making Bold AI Education Moves: The UAE's forward-looking move goes beyond just providing free access to its citizens. This is about building sovereign AI capability that reaches half the world's population within a 2,000-mile radius. When an entire nation commits to AI-powered education at this scale, what happens to countries that don't? The competitive advantage isn't just individual, it's national.

3. We Might Be Returning to True Meritocracy: Stanley Zhong, a California high school grad with a 4.42 GPA and 1590 SAT score, was rejected by 15 colleges... then hired by Google. Meanwhile, around 5% of Thiel Fellows have become billionaires: from Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum) and Dylan Field (Figma) to Ritesh Agarwal (OYO Rooms) and Austin Russell (Luminar). Does this suggest we're wasting our most productive years in university instead of building companies? 

4. Universities Must Redefine Their Value Proposition: Colleges and universities may survive, but for completely different reasons. If they want to make it through this transition, they must embrace what they're actually delivering: credentials and relationships between human beings. For example, the friendships that turn into company formations—that's the dominant factor keeping them alive. Universities that recognize this and build around human connection rather than information transfer alone will thrive in the AI age.

Other Key Tech Developments This Week:

1

Manus triggers AI agent boom in China as startups bypass domestic restrictions to target overseas users

2

World's leading mathematicians struggle to outsmart AI reasoning model at secret Berkeley meeting

3

Johnson & Johnson's potential multiple myeloma cure shows third of terminal patients live cancer-free for years in trial

Until next time,

Peter