We Don’t Need AI to Teach—We Need It to Coach
Why Socratic AI, personalized learning, and a little fiction from The Diamond Age might hold the key to education’s future.
🧠 We Don’t Need AI to Teach—We Need It to Coach
Why Socratic AI could unlock a new era of personalized, resilient learning
Earlier this month, two AI announcements quietly redefined the future of education.
📍 OpenAI made ChatGPT Plus free for college students in the U.S. and Canada—putting GPT-4-level tools in the hands of millions.
📍 Anthropic released Claude for Education, including a new “Learning Mode” that uses Socratic questions to guide students to answers, rather than simply giving them.
At a glance, these moves seem like technical upgrades. But they represent a deeper shift:
→ From AI as an “answer machine”
→ To AI as a thinking partner
And as a new parent with a five-month-old daughter, this evolution doesn’t feel abstract. It feels urgent.
Because in a world where information is everywhere, the real skill we need to teach is how to think clearly, retain deeply, and reason independently.
🤖 Why “Human > AI” Might Be the Wrong Debate
A few weeks ago, I spent time watching the Stanford AI + Education Summit. One study compared real tutors to AI tutors—and unsurprisingly, human tutors performed better.
But the “why” behind that result stood out to me.
AI gave the answers directly.
Human tutors asked questions.
The tutors didn’t just hand over solutions. They challenged students to think, reflect, and reason their way there. And that made all the difference.
It reminded me of a conversation I had with my sister—who happens to be a professor in Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Cape Town. We were talking about The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, a novel both of us admire.
The story follows a young girl learning from an advanced AI companion. But as my sister pointed out, what’s powerful is that her true transformation comes from human mentorship—not just the AI. That's what enables her to grow into a leader.
Of course, The Diamond Age is fiction. But it raises a relevant tension: should AI education replace human connection—or simply enhance the way we learn?
My answer: it’s not about replacing people.
It’s about democratizing access to the kind of thoughtful, guided learning that was once only available to the lucky few.
🧠 From Memorization to Meaning
Like many of us, I went through an education system built around performance metrics. Cram. Test. Forget.
I had teachers who walked us through answers step-by-step. Helpful in the moment. But the next time I saw a similar problem? Gone. I had no method—only memory.
This is where AI can go either way.
Used incorrectly, it becomes just another high-speed Google—providing knowledge we don’t retain because we didn’t earn it. But used intentionally, AI could nudge us through the hard parts. Help us pause. Prompt us to reflect. And ultimately, let us discover the answer ourselves.
And that, neurologically, is when learning sticks.
⚙️ Personalization at the Core
What excites me most about AI-powered education isn’t that it can scale instruction—but that it can personalize it.
Each person has a unique learning velocity, retention pattern, mode of understanding, and even emotional state when they engage with material.
AI, done well, can adapt to those inputs:
✅ Ask me a question when I’m in reasoning mode.
✅ Remind me of something I forgot yesterday.
✅ Present a visual if that’s how I process best.
✅ Slow down when I need depth, speed up when I’m flowing.
In other words, AI could become a tuning fork for cognitive bandwidth. Helping you learn not just more—but better. Translating information into insight. And insight into wisdom.
That’s a far cry from flashcards and fill-in-the-blank tests.
👶 A Parent’s Perspective
Since becoming a parent, these questions hit harder.
My daughter will grow up in a world where AI tutors live in earbuds, classrooms, maybe even toys. And while I hope she has access to amazing human teachers, I also know we can’t rely solely on that.
What I want for her isn’t just information. It’s resilience in reasoning.
An ability to ask questions that haven’t been asked.
To make sense of ambiguity.
To retain, reflect, and apply what she learns.
And that’s what I believe AI, if guided by the right values, can help provide—not just for her, but for millions of others who might never have had access to a great teacher.
🚀 So Where Do We Go From Here?
Claude’s Socratic Learning Mode and ChatGPT’s student access program are more than features. They’re signals—pointing toward a future where education is more interactive, adaptive, and intentional.
But they also pose a challenge to builders, educators, and parents alike:
✅ Can we design AI to ask, not just tell?
✅ Can we create learning systems that teach how to think, not just what to know?
✅ Can we match wisdom to bandwidth—so students retain, not just repeat?
This moment isn’t about replacing teachers.
It’s about reimagining the architecture of learning itself.
And if we get it right, we may not just build better students.
We may raise a generation of deeper thinkers.
💬 What Do You Think?
Have you seen AI used in classrooms or parenting to prompt discovery rather than provide answers?
What kind of questions do you want future AI tutors to ask your child—or your younger self?
Which parts of the learning journey should always remain human?
Let’s shape this future together—with more questions, not just answers.
💬 I’d love to hear how you’re thinking about AI in education, parenting, or your own learning.
I also kicked off a discussion on LinkedIn—feel free to chime in there too!
🔗 References
Claude for Education: Anthropic
ChatGPT Plus free for students: OpenAI
Stanford AI + Education Summit: YouTube
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson: Wikipedia
🧭 Coming Up Next: How I Use AI to Learn
In my next post, I’ll share something a bit more personal: how I’ve been using AI in my own learning journey.
From building a “paper researcher” that doesn’t just summarize research papers, but helps me reason through them with voice interactions, to digging into the etymology of Chinese characters to deepen my language retention—these tools have become less like search engines and more like collaborative thinking partners.
For me, it’s not just about memorizing.
It’s about connecting ideas, drawing abstractions, and shaping patterns that stick.
And I’ve started to realize: when AI adapts to your thinking process—not just your questions—it becomes a radically powerful tool for learning.
More on that next time.