Netflix’s Reed Hastings on the Impact of AI on Schools

Hey, this is Diane, and I appreciate you joining Michael and I for season seven of Class Disrupted as we're doing a deep dive into education in the age of AI. I think you might really enjoy this episode where we got a chance to talk with Reed Hastings, founder and longtime CEO of Netflix and a longtime education supporter. We talked to him about what he's seen hearing and thinking about AI and education. And I think coming out of the conversation, I would call Reid a pragmatic AI optimist. I think that's the best description I have for him. So much of our conversation is about what is possible today, as well as where we're heading in the future and what that might mean for the work we're all doing and how we're trying to think about it. I find Reid's thinking to be both clarifying and provocative at the same time, which makes for a really fun conversation. I really hope you will enjoy it. And please keep sending questions, thoughts, inspirations for where we go as this season unfolds. Thanks so much. Hey, Michael.

Hey, Diane. It is good to see you. As always, I'm looking forward to today's conversation in particular.

As am I. I think this one's going to be really fun. I am prepping for this. I asked Chat to do a little bit of a intro for Reed Hastings

and GPT to do that. Really?

I know. That's what I said to myself. I said, I can definitely write this, but it's out of habit now. And nonetheless, there was some interesting things in there. So, for those of you who don't know, our guest today is Reed Hastings. And according to Chat, you are a tech entrepreneur, investor, and educator with a long track record of innovation and social impact. That all tracked for me. It went on to basically describe two parallel careers, which also tracks for me on the business side, most notably co founder, longtime CEO, and most recently executive chair at Netflix. And on the other side, where I have spent my time with you is deeply involved in education, ranging from chairing the California State Board of Ed, along with a number of education nonprofits, supporting tons of educational entrepreneurs and charter schools and educational efforts. Here was the fun part for me. I think a lot of people don't know that you started out in the Peace Corps and that you actually taught for two years in Africa. And the pieces that I forgot were that you taught me math and that your undergrad degrees in math and you have a master's in computer science. And I forgot that because I know you're technical, but that's not where we spend our time, we mostly spend our time on leadership and people development and growth. And so that was kind of a fun reminder, all of that to say as we start this season, really exploring the intersection of AI and education. We knew we had to talk to you, so welcome Reed. We're grateful to have you here.

How fun. Michael and Diane. Well, chat. Got it mostly right. But actually I taught maths. So in the.

Right. Because in Africa they would say math.

Yeah, teaching O level. It's pronounced in the plural. I never did figure out why. And then relevant to this conversation, in the mid-80s, I got a master's degree from Stanford in AI. And now the AI of the time turned out to not work at all. So it's a mixed utility, but it certainly has been a long term passion.

Well, it's part of that arc, I guess, right, of AI dating back decades and decades or at least the thinking and study and hypothesizing about. And now this moment moments arriving, really. And so I'd actually love to start there with you. Really big sort of wide angle view on this because you, you know, a lot, you do a lot, you talk to a lot of people. What excites you at the moment about this new age of AI and education?

Well, there's a lot, I think both to be excited and concerned about, you know, to the degree that the bulldozer, you know, mechanized labor and digging, we're seeing the potential of AI of doing that for thinking, it doesn't do it for feeling. So for, you know, our, a lot of what we think of as core humanity, as our, our feelings. But in terms of thinking, you know, it's on track to be better than us at basically all aspects of thinking. And then there's a debate about whether that's two years or 20 years. But you know, that's sort of in the noise compared to it happening. So we're living in pretty dramatic times, which is exciting. But, you know, it's not clear that it will turn out for the benefit of humans. We'll see.

Yeah, and maybe that's that that was sort of the second thing on my mind of the worries you pieces of it. And so I maybe just like the quick narrative in your head of what are the signposts you'd be looking for if this is going in the positive direction or the negative direction. Like what are the things that you're paying attention to to sort of help us understand where this is headed?

Well, if you look at industrialization, you know, which brought, you know, mass products and Mass wealth. There were a lot of ups and downs. So I'm pretty sure you're not going to be able to judge it in the near term as to like, which vector did it take? It'll sort of take both in some senses. There'll be parts of it that are really good and parts of it that are worrisome. But how it plays out over 100 years is extremely hard to tell. And I don't think there's much because of the global competition. It's not like slowing it down is really a possibility. So instead we have to lean in and then try to channel it to make it as positive as we can.

Along those lines. We are most concerned with and care about education. And so you've spent decades working on education from multiple angles. I thought it would be helpful because I think this time calls all of us to rethink. What do we think the purpose of schools is or what are they here to do? And has it or will your vision of that change with AI?

Well, big picture, the vision of schools is to create both great citizens for the society and then give the individual great opportunity. So it sort of always had this dual mission. I don't think that that changes. I think probably what changes is more and more software based teaching that's individualized and infinitely patient and gracious. And 15 years ago I bought Dreambox Learning and invested a lot of money into helping Dreambox grow. And, and the CEO Jesse Willie Wilson gets most of the credit. But I bring it up just because it's evidence of sort of been interested in how software could improve learning for a long time. And that's now one product. But mostly students are going to ChatGPT instead of specialty applications. And so whether that's Khan Academy, of which I'm a board member of, or others, people are learning that, you know, the AI chat is a very broad and useful tutor. So if you need some help in physics, that's the first place you go. If you need to plan travel, if you want to ask a boy out, you know, it's like wide ranging, you know, counseling. I mean, you know, it's already there for younger people and they're using it, you know, at, at in huge numbers.

Yeah, that's. It's interesting because that we'll get more into, I think some specifics there. But how do you, how do you think about it with your other hats on in terms of where our GR. Our K12 graduates are going, the world they're entering from, you know, a workforce, career opportunity perspective. I know I mean, I'm not sure anyone actually knows what's going to happen, but there are certain things happening now. And what do you see coming on that front? Does that shift or help us rethink anything we might be doing at the high school level, the college level?

Well, let's see. I mean, AI has two broad effects. One I'll call why Bother? Which is why are we training kids in biology and in writing an essay? And they're like, you know, it's sort of like slide rule skills or square root skills. So that's one theory. And then the other is how exciting we're going to be able to use AI. So kids learn twice as much, you know, by age 16, they're at a college level and you can be incredibly ambitious about what it's possible to learn. And so, you know, those are the kind of two forces. And you can think about chess a little bit. So computers have been better than all humans at chess for 20 years now. And so you would have thought, well, what's the point of playing? You can never be better than the computer. And yet the number of chess players and most significantly the quality you know, of, say the average 10 year old, 15 year old, 20 year old playing chess is much higher. And that's because AI has been training them. So now as a 14 year old, you can play against these great AI chess tutors. And so you get much more scale to the teaching of chess and much more practice. And yet we're still excited to see two humans compete. It's like robotics is exciting, but, you know, I think we're going to watch humans play basketball, not watch robots play basketball, partially because we are human. So think of it as, you know, the good scenario is AI produces such a bounty that our societies become very wealthy, people work less, but that they actually learn more, which is sort of the chess path, and that they know an incredible amount about a wide range of things humans do and they're learning for the pleasure of it as opposed to the economics. So, you know, there's no real economics in chess. And so, but again, people are playing more and playing better. So, you know, maybe that's our future for biology and history and all kinds of other things.

Stay on that. Diane? I was gonna say.

Well, I was thinking so, you know, in my, at least in my experience over the last decades, you've, you've been more focused, you've generally focused on educational policy and governance and new school models, leadership, maybe with Dreambox as one of a notable exception, less on sort of pedagogy and the practice in schools. But recently I've experienced you moving more in that direction. First of all, am I getting that right? And second, you know, what's driving that? What do you think is most promising and why that you're. That seems to me to be kind of sparking your interest in those. How we actually do school.

Yeah, I would say it's accurate to say I've mostly been a governance person, which is how do we create organizations where teachers can thrive and build the public schools of their dream? A little more entrepreneurial approach and choice sort of in markets, essentially being the fundamental driver of enabling innovation. Still a big believer in all of that. I think there's an opportunity for some schools to rethink the schooling model. And we've had, you know, for economic reasons, we've had 300 years of, you know, 20 to 50 kids in a classroom and a teacher, the sage on a stage, gets up and imparts wisdom. And I think that it's going to be better to have individualized software, but it's almost always going to be in a school setting. So you know, parents are working, homeschooling will be, you know, 3 to 10%. But the vast majority of people want the custodial function also of schools. But in schools, I think the teacher's role is going to move more towards a social worker focusing on social emotional learning and discussion and you know, the mere imparting of facts, you know, know what was the history of the Roman Empire or how to do fractions, those kinds of things will be software. And so for teachers it's a huge change in their self image which has always included social emotional learning and discussion, but was still based upon sage on a stage. And that's a pretty deeply embedded paradigm. And so trying to figure out what are the schools of the future where you know, most of the fact base is building. And of course then the software advantage is that it's one to one and so it's really focused at the level that the kid is at and from that you get much more learning and engagement but then recognizing that parents and kids want more out of school than learning the facts. And there's this incredible role to focus on around social emotional development, how to work with other human beings that I think teachers will be able to focus on. So you know, I would say that's going to be a multi decade change as the software gets better. And so it's trying to see, you know, what can some schools do that really pioneer that. And at the same time the software has to continue to get better.

I mean, just sorry to cut off there. But it's interesting because, like, implicit in that is some pretty structural, big structural changes both to schooling operations, teacher identity and roles, processes, things of that nature. You've sort of been a student, if you will, of how schools do and don't work and the systems themselves. I'm curious, like, how you see that change management playing out over the next two, five, ten years. We know schools are often very good at blocking change at the classroom door, if you will. And so I'm sort of curious, do you think this is an entrepreneurial pathway? Do you see change in the schools? Is this a both and how does this come about, in your view?

Yeah, I mean, broadly, from a governance standpoint, we have a set of local monopolies. Public schools that provide services and monopolies can do terrible things. And so to control them, we pass regulations. And the only thing worse than the regulated monopoly that we have would be an unregulated monopoly. But as long as you've got that monopoly structure, you need a lot of regulations. And they work in the short term to ensure that kids get opportunity, but they become very rigid. And so it's extremely hard for the regulated monopoly public school system to adopt significant changes. And thus we see sort of the stability over, you know, 200 years of the model. So it's going to be quite a change to get the regulated system to be able to open up and allow a lot of change. So hopefully the unregulated side, or less regulated, which is private schools and charter public schools, will have some running room to prove out how much better individualized instruction is for the student and how the teacher's role really becomes very exciting about talking through things both in small groups and large groups and leading discussion and then really getting to know the kids in the social, emotional, learning aspect and help them work well with other human beings. So I think it's a time of invention. And, you know, most charter schools, so I'm on the board of KIPP and have been for 20 years, are like, let's do the classic model better. So let's work hard. Let's have classes on Saturday, let's have longer school day, okay? And, you know, probably Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy represent the pinnacle of that, which is an unbelievably excellent classic school model. And I think we need to keep those going. And there'll be another set of entrepreneurs that figure out how to do a school where the effective class size in the student Teacher ratio might be higher. So you could basically do 40 to 1, but with a lot of software have the results of like a one to one teacher model and that's what'll make the economics work of paying for the technology. And again, even at 40 to 1, that means the teacher could spend an hour with each kid on social emotional learning. If it was just one hour per kid, you know, it's probably not divided up that way, but you know, it could be so, but an hour per week of, you know, personal coaching and you know, helping them grow as a, as a human being. So there's again lots of opportunity. And then of course Alpha school is pioneering a variant of it where the payoff is two hour schooling. And so their fundamental insight is school is a lot more than learning facts and we'll spend two hours doing that, but then the kids get to do all the school stuff the rest of the day. Whether that's in some places it's mostly sports and in some places it's all kinds of other things. But I'll call it enriching activity beyond the classic curriculum. And so they've taken a very fresh and interesting tack which is it's about the shortest school day possible from the classic learning standpoint and that, that's the prize and incentive they serve a high end demographic. So it's hard to say what the replication of that will be, but it's very provocative and interesting as an example of a big picture innovation which is the two hour, you know, classic curriculum learning day and then four more hours of learning public speaking or learning community development or learning how to use AI. So that's a great sign of sort of the innovation ahead for us in the K12.

So just staying on that for a moment because I'm coming back repeatedly in my head to your chest point around AI and sort of how it produced a legion of players who are more intrinsically interested perhaps and pushing themselves right in chess and so forth. And part of that is also an on demand learning piece of the element, like I learning just in time almost right as it, as it comes. There's relevance in my life, maybe on the passion projects I'm pursuing or things of that. And like I have a thirst for more knowledge to up, you know, my skill set or what I'm able to create and do build whatever it might be. And I'm just sort of curious how you see that maybe against the backdrop of how careers might change as well. Sort of how much do you think is you need basic narratives around history and Science and human progression, perhaps. Just so people have like a. And Diane, you probably have a view on this too, frankly, like a progression rooted or stories right around the society we're in and things of that nature that's maybe narrow and thin, but, but an overview and then a lot of sort of on demand as you need it, exploration based on these projects and periods of passion that can actually drive some of the AI knowledge building, if you will. I'm curious, Reid, if you have a take on that and Diane, you may end up having to as well.

Lizzie, there's a lot that's wrapped in your question, you know, about future careers and jobs. And then, you know, let's take the case that AI gets stronger and stronger to the degree that a given society abandoned schooling and just says waste of time. The danger is that citizens learn everything as they need from AI. And if the AI tells them that the world's going to end or the AI tells them that, you know, such and such is the best leader, we're creating, you know, a lot of sheep as human beings in that society that kind of abandoned in education. So I think if you think of the historic role of education as one part for citizen and one part for employee or economic actor, the economic actor part will become less relevant because the jobs are different, that kind of thing. But schools creating a human narrative, a narrative of the country, a caring of your fellow citizens and some stable part of fact base so that you're not. The citizen is not totally reliant on AI for what's true. It will be very important, I think. So again, the role of creating future citizens, I think becomes a more important role relative to history of school. And then the economic actor part is tough because what are we going to do better than the AIs of 20 years from now? You know, it's really hard to see what those roles are. And we're in the first wave of AI now where it's trapped in the phone and in the laptop. So it can only do some things. It can design you a house and architecture, you know, and it can write a contract. So lawyers are under threat, but there's a lot of real world activity. But the low cost humanoid Android robots that we're likely to get is sort of the second wave of AI, you know, and at first they're really great because they do things around the house for you, and it's sort of a Roomba vacuum on steroids because it walks around and cooks scrambled eggs and cleans the house and does all those things. But Then it's like in the Starbucks and then they're flying the planes and then it's like basically every job. So, you know, again, hard to see how AI in combination with Android robotics become, you know, something other than really replacing our economic functions. And that could make for, well, almost surely will make for a very rich society. How those riches are spread throughout the society is unclear because that's a political process. And will our political process distribute those amazing gains of this new technology in a way that's cohesive so we avoid the French Revolution? That's an open question. Because if the inequality gets too extreme, you know, you get a French Revolution situation. So we'll have to see on the political processes of distributing the great gains that AI will provide. And you know, they'll provide gains, you'll be able to get much better medical care much cheaper. The, you know, the diagnosis, the intervention, all those things. So just think if the AI doctors are really good and you can get in easily and see, you know, we have all these expertises in medicine and specialties because no human brain can be great at brain and foot disease. I mean, you know, podiatry. So, you know, that's the, that's why it's carved up into all these areas. But an AI will be great at all of them. So when you do your consult with an AI doctor, you won't have to wait to go see the specialist. You know, just, I mean that alone you'll save enormous amounts of time and have better outcomes.

Our last conversation was with Tom Lee, who's the founder of One Medical, and Galileo, who's like doing exactly what you're talking about.

Exactly. So again, AI is such a big factor that its impact on K12 is kind of like 5% of the total picture. Now it's the 5% that three of us are really going to try to land and do well. But you have to think, I think of AI as a once in a thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand year change to society of pioneering this thing and, and for the next 50 years we'll be in the middle of it.

Yeah, it's going to be maybe turbulent, but fun ride for the next 50 years. I think the only thing I would add, Michael, is I, I keep going back to you. I think it's more important than ever for humans to know themselves and for us to do that work on who we are and what we think and what we care about. And so I see that as the opportunity and the need. Read a couple more questions. To take this big to Something specific. You've been thinking a lot about assessment and the potential for AI in assessment and how we use assessment in schools. And so I'm curious for you to unpack a little bit. Like, what are the challenges you've identified around assessment and the opportunities and how do you, how can you imagine AI or see it right now impacting how we think about assessment is a huge part of education.

Yeah, it's. I mean, it's one tactical part of what AI can do. So, you know, there's a number of problems in current assessment in terms of cost, terms of balancing formative and summative, in terms of building in confidence in the parents and the citizens who don't take the tests. And the way we do the things is the tests have to stay pretty secure, so then we can't really share copies and you can't take them multiple times. And you know, what you'd like to have is something where the AI was interviewing you as a student and assessing your knowledge like a human would of. Okay, let's talk about historical antecedents to this. Or let's, depending on the level. Let's talk about this biology problem and you know, basically probe and clarify things and question and then come up with a ranking which is a little. What happens in chess with, you know, it's a narrower domain, but you get a chess score and then as you get better and age up your, Your score increases. And you can think of that as, you know, ultimately we'd like to have an assessment system that was open and free and you could go to, you know, what do I know.org okay, and everyone agrees that's the standard. And what do I know.org it does a broad range of assessment and you could assess yourself every week if you want, and schools would assess you every now and then. Parents could assess themselves and their kid and see the kind politicians. And it's all open and free as to what do kids know and maybe even part of it. There's a chess strand and you get your chess score, you know, that's built into that, which is, you know, how good. You know, you play nine games and you sort of see how good is your chess level. So I think that will really disrupt the current assessment industry. And eventually some states will want to save money and they'll say, okay, instead of spending all this contract money, what if we just use what do I know.org and you know, and that'll be a proxy. So I think because of cost savings that will come in and be quite practical. So you know, there's, I think, a whole bunch of companies working on assessment and then the trick for them is, is that going to be the winning strategy or do you just wait for ChatGPT7? And in ChatGPT7 you say assess my knowledge on a scale of one to a thousand for, for math or for overall. And it just doesn't, you know, so, you know, you've got a, a couple different approaches to what that's going to come about. But think of it as computer based assessment will lead to much more understanding and accuracy and guidance and have a big impact on the current testing in terms of parents having more confidence, it being both helpful, that is formative as well as summative. And so just incredible amounts of positive change in that area paralleling the different approaches for teaching in the software.

Reid, just a couple more questions as we start to wrap up here. And one of them you talked about Dreambox, learning math and so forth. The flip side of this is we've seen a lot in recent years a big push toward teaching reading in alignment with the evidence around what's called the science of reading. And there often seems to be a growing number of folks right now who are using AI in meaningful ways with regards to teaching reading specifically. I'm curious what you're most excited about on that front and what's grabbed your imagination or attention.

Well, I'm tracking two companies, Amira and Ello in that and what they're getting good at is phonemic processing. So you know, the four to six year old is a struggling reader and then they, the AI listens and is able to process the sounds and then help the student sound out the words. And think of it as sound out the words is the science of reading and sort of, you know, grounded in that phonemic translation. But AI will also be used to help people speak English, whether they grew up with it or not. So I would say for, you know, for speaking English, that is knowing vocabulary and sentence construction and you know, at the high end in the U.S. people, you know, hire Chinese or Spanish nannies so their kids learn a second language. And so you can think of AI as just like the nanny that will teach you especially you know, for to, you know, where you learn language so easily biologically because you've got an AI tutor helping you with reading, helping you with, well for that matter, math, et cetera. So first phase you'll see a bunch of AI companies do like reading apps or this app or a math app, and then it will just be a learning app, right and the market will consolidate and parents will say, okay, what do I want to do? And then the open question is, will those app companies continue to add enough value first using Claude or ChatGPT or any of the. Or Gemini directly and just you, you may in the future to Gemini be able to say, teach my kid to read or I want to read. And like, you don't need all these separate apps, right? It's just like the general thing that it's one of the 19 things it does. It can also teach you physics and it can teach your kid reading. But right now they're moving so fast that only a few companies are focused on the particular types of phonemes and the typical reading problems that different kids have. So that I'll call that a specialized audio processing challenge with specialized training that the big companies are moving so fast they're not, you know, really trying to focus on that. So I think for, for a while, for five or 10 years, there's a market for independent products and that. So that'll be very exciting.

This season of Class Disrupted is sponsored by Learner Studio, a non profit motivated by one question. What will young people need to be inspired and prepared to flourish in the age of AI, as individuals, in careers and for civil thriving? Learner Studio is sponsoring this season on AI in Education because in this critical moment, we need more than just hype, we need authentic conversations asking the right questions from a place of real curiosity and learning. You can learn more about Learner Studio's mission and the innovators who inspire them at www.learnnersstudio.org.

michael and I along those lines, we all are learners, we're all lifelong learners. You always have amazing recommendations. Reed, what have you been reading, watching, listening to that we should know about that is capturing your imagination lately.

Interesting. I'm listening to Tony Fauci's memoir and you know, he's a very, you know, he's 80 something years old now, retired, and you know, he's worked his life in public health and some part of the citizenry reveres him and some part hates him and you know, he's become a sort of a test for many things. And so it's a, it's a fascinating life when he's just was a kid trying to become a doctor, trying to become a health professional, you know, to serve the world as best he could. And yet he was thrust in this amazing stew, both of HIV for a very long time and then of COVID So I think it's a, I'm only part way through the memoir. So. But I love that kind of very honest because I think he is being honest on his reflections and he reads it in his voice. So that's always cool.

That's awesome. That's awesome.

What's on your list, Diane? You got to share now.

Well, I, I got one this weekend. I'm curious if you guys have listened to this yet. It's pretty new. It's a podcast. I listened to the first three episodes called the Last Invention. And it's the story of basically this kind of 70 year quest to get to this moment where we are in AI. And if you want to call it the AI Revolution, I think it's a. It starts with a slightly sensational opening, but I think that's what you have to do in podcasts these days. But the, the history is engaging. It feels well told, feels relevant to me and provides a lot of useful context. And as you know, one of my kiddos is deep in this and it's helping me understand a lot of things that he says and what he's read in, in in a way that a layperson can understand. So I'm enjoying it.

Very cool. My other takeaway from that is that we need a more sensationalistic hook on our podcast. I'll go shameless pandering here just because Reed, you're our guest. But I'll say K Pop Demon Hunters. We watched it though during the two day limited theatrical release. So several, you know, weeks before we've recorded this. But the reason I bring it up actually is twofold. One, we are still like it is very present in my kids lives every single day, right. And like to the point where Reid, I have twin girls and they fighting on the way to something that I'm driving them on. And my answer now is to turn on a song like golden like that from K Pop Demon Hunters just to get peace for five minutes in the car. And it's incredibly effective. But the second reason. So my wife is Korean American and she tells the story that when she was in grade school her teacher said here's a map, you know, fill out where different countries are. And the teacher mislabeled Korea, you know, had it in completely the wrong place. And my wife had this big argument with her. And now sort of the unexpected twists and turns of cultural global influence has Korea squarely in the pop limelight even as it has its own demographic challenges right now. So it's just a fascinating sort of twist and turn through that's been that shamelessly pandering here. But it's always a good one and maybe a little bit more light hearted, Diane, for me than.

And that's a, that's a great one of human connection that was minimal AI creation, you know, all humans. And for every great hit we have like that we have three or four that don't hit and we're still not sure why and but it's great to see K pop Diemish crossover and so, you know, 65 year olds like me can watch it multiple times and kind of get a little more each time out of it. So it's got a Star wars or Shrek kind of multi layered aspect that really make it part of the cultural landscape. And it is amazing that because the Internet is so global, Netflix can be so global and so we can recruit and develop the best talent, you know, whether that's in Korea, you know, or Poland or Brazil or Hollywood, you know, or Kansas. So it's been great of the sort of Internet explosion of creativity that it participates in.

That man, it's phenomenal and a good way to speak to our feelings, which you let off with Reed. So huge. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Class Disrupted. And for all of you joining us, we'll see you next time. Keep, keep the comments, keep the questions coming. It is driving a lot of our thinking. We know that. And we'll see you all next time on Class Disrupted.