A Techno Optimist's Guide to Raising Kids for the Age of AI (nymag.com)

Julia Wise’s essay “Raising Children on the Eve of AI” crystallized a new parenting anxiety: how to prepare kids for a world where AI could radically reshape work, risk catastrophic outcomes, or create a post-scarcity society. Wise and other tech-minded parents (including Effective Altruists and Silicon Valley figures) are entertaining a range of futures—from mass unemployment and a cognitive elite to outright disaster—and questioning which traits (vocational skills, social nimbleness, creativity) will actually matter when facts can be generated instantly and “proof of work” is undermined by generative models. One concrete response is the rise of AI-driven schools like Alpha, which markets an adaptive “TimeBack” platform that claims students learn 2.6× faster by personalizing lessons, enforcing 90% mastery per subject (echoing Bloom’s Two Sigma insights), and freeing time for entrepreneurship and soft skills. Alpha uses AI proctors and a “vision model” that logs screen activity, eye movement, and facial expressions and applies tools like an AI speech coach (Yoodli). For the AI/ML community this signals both opportunity and responsibility: large, labeled behavioral datasets and personalized tutoring algorithms could accelerate learning tech, but raise privacy, surveillance, bias, and feedback-loop concerns. More broadly, educators and ML practitioners must reckon with a shift from credentialing to demonstrable ability and design systems that preserve agency, equity, and robust evaluation as AI reconfigures what “future-ready” skills mean.