Orange County mother almost sent her child to the AI Alpha School. After touring the school, she pulled her deposit: ‘It felt cold and sterile’

Zoe Lu (@leadwithzoe) claimed she toured an Alpha School in Orange County, California, where she planned to enroll her children. But after the tour, Lu said she pulled her deposit and is no longer interested in sending her children to the AI-led school.

Lu, a tech executive, clarified that she was not anti-AI. She told TikTok, “I believe in AI, I believe in AI education, I think that there’s a place for it, but the way that Alpha School—specifically the one we toured in Orange County—executed it? I’m just not supportive right now.”  Even though Lu believes in AI in education, she doesn’t support its implementation. She gave three reasons for not sending her children to Alpha School.

The first reason concerned the guides. The children didn’t have teachers because Alpha School uses AI to educate children. Essentially, the AI becomes the teacher and personalizes the children’s learning. The guides, on the other hand, were there to motivate the students. “I saw some texting. They didn’t seem to have the same connection to the students that a teacher would,” Lu said of the guides. Even if some students fall behind in traditional education, like this college student who mistook a peer evaluation for an exam, teachers can still steer them towards the right direction. Lu doesn’t believe the guides at the Alpha School were distracted or less connected with children than regular teachers.

She’s concerned about the AI school’s learning environment

The second reason she cited is the school leaderboard system that allegedly exists at Alpha School. Unlike traditional grading systems, the leaderboard is a screen that updates children’s rankings based on their “experience points.” Lu explained that children earn these experience points by completing different learning activities. While it doesn’t reveal students’ grades, it ranks children based on their participation in activities. “It felt horrible to have this stack rank of children in kindergarten,” Lu commented.

She asked about the student with the lowest score and whether they tend to stay in the lowest bracket.  Lu believes the student may struggle for months or years and was uncomfortable with the idea of comparing children through a leaderboard system.

The third reason Lu gave is the school environment. She said, “But the reality is, it was dark. It felt cold and sterile.” Lu said she would pay $50,000 a year per child at the Alpha School, and she had high expectations for the school’s environment. Instead, she said the environment felt like “a mediocre tech office” instead of a place for learning. Lu compared the Alpha School to the school her children currently attend.

Unlike the sterile environment she described, their current school allegedly has art and lets her children express themselves through different media, like colored pencils and clay. Meanwhile, she observed that Alpha School had only desks, iPads, and a rewards cabinet where kids could get goodies when they hit certain goals.

For these reasons, Lu isn’t convinced that Alpha School is for her kids. Some students, however, are staunchly against AI. When this college student from Atlanta found out her art professor had allegedly been using AI, she pushed back and almost reported the incident to her department.

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