Week in Edtech 9/15/26: Gates Commits $1B to Equitable AI, Low-Tech Tutoring Shows Learning Gains, AI Safety Under Scrutiny, and More! Feat. Dorka Horvath of BOOKR Kids & Nitesh Goel & Zareen Poonen Levien of Padlet

Tuck Advisors was founded by entrepreneurs who built and sold their own companies. Frustrated by other M&A firms, they created the one they wished they could have hired but couldn't find. One who understands what matters to founders and whose North Star KPI is the percentage of deals closed. If you're thinking of selling your EdTech company or buying one, contact Tuck Advisors now. So Ben, you are paying very close attention and I've been following it pretty closely as well. This absolutely crazy week where you had this guy, Jacob Coxon, come out from Anthropic and say, I'm quitting because I think this is actually really dangerous and the chance of humanity ending, you know, changes are quite high. You have executives from Anthropic weighing in, going all the way up to Dario Amadei saying, yeah, this is getting a little fast for us. Maybe we should slow down. And publishing this essay talking about this sort of formal slowdown among all of the top Frontier Lab providers, which is creating a huge amount of buzz and chat about what this means and how scared we should actually be

You asked me before we started recording, is this a hype job ahead of an IPO or is this real? And when we think about the probabilities thrown out, you know, 10% likelihood that humanity is extinct, I think it's hard to discern what's real and what's not real. I think from the people that I talk to who are working at the companies, and I was just in San Francisco a week ago and had some really good quality time with great quality people, and I'm not going to call them out here, but you all know that many of the folks at these big companies, they care that the outcome is good. It turns out they're human,

they want to

survive. But also, many of them have worked in EdTech and have mission-oriented goals around humanity getting to a better place with AI.

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Remember to subscribe to the pod, check out our newsletter, and also our event calendar. And to go deeper, check out EdTech Insiders Plus, where you can get premium content, access to our WhatsApp channel, early access to events, and back channel insights from Alex and Ben. Hope you enjoyed today's pod. Hello, EdTech Insider listeners. It's me, Ben, straight from my bunker as we await the AI apocalypse. In the meantime, while we wait for our AI agent overlords to come and get us, I'm joined by Alex, co-founder and czar of All Things AI. Alex, welcome. What are you doing? It looks like you've got a bunker look back there. Are you hold up ready

for the end of days? I have been recording from this little phone booth here that is like incredibly small. It's basically just the size of the right out right out of the screen on either side is the edge of my walls. I'm like, it feels like a Superman phone booth, like an old school phone booth. I'm still not scared. Maybe I'm just, maybe I'm missing the boat here. I know that this stuff is moving incredibly quickly. I get why people are afraid. My wife, every