AI in education is a problem, says Code Ninjas CEO Navin Gurnaney. But it’s not a scam. It’s probably passivity.
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In a Study.com overview launched just after ChatGPT went viral, 89% of college students said they had used it for homework, 48% for a take-home test, and 53% to write an essay. Three years later, it is unlikely that these numbers have decreased.
But those are probably not the numbers we should be most interested in. The scariest number is the percentage of kids who now just automatically look up an AI chatbot before even trying to solve a problem themselves.
That’s the real problem in the AI-in-education frenzy according to Navin Gurnaney, CEO of Code Ninjas, the world’s largest children’s franchise.
“If kids are taught or led in the direction of, ‘Hey, this is a great tool that you can just use and you’ll get the answers,’ and that’s what you see most kids doing, then they’re not learning anything,” Gurnaney. he told me on the TechFirst podcast.
The solution, says Gurnaney, is to get kids to build with AI.
“What is an LLM? How does it work? How do you create an image in AI? What is a sensor? How do you visualize that data?” says Gurney. “Through all these activities they learn the fundamentals.”
In this sense, the divide in education is not between kids who use AI and kids who don’t. It’s between kids consuming AI and kids building with it.
A team outsources its learning. The other group charges their own training.
Artificial intelligence is forcing tough conversations, and not just in education. Oracle announced layoffs. Snap announced layoffs. Cisco just shared more, the same day the company had record profits. The pace of AI-driven job cuts went from quarterly to monthly to weekly, meaning parents could worry as much about their own jobs as what will be available for their children in the future.
Gurnaney’s answer is to be part of the change.
“If you’re just following AI and just using it and being a passive consumer, then you’re definitely at a big disadvantage,” he said. “That’s the fear people should have, that I could be completely left out. Whereas if you know how to create with it, now you’re a leader. Now you’re telling the AI, setting the scene. That job will never go away.”
So what does a future-ready child look like in the age of artificial intelligence?
Gurnaney’s answer was not about direct engineering or even technology. It was a rather old-fashioned character trait: the squeak.
“Among the top three or four skills that differentiate people who don’t make it and people who make it, cutting is definitely one of them,” he said. The foundational stack he described: critical thinking, logic, problem solving, communication, adaptability, and the ability to fail at something and keep going.
AI literacy — including really understanding what an LLM is and why it sometimes confidently lies to you — sits on top of that foundation.
I ended the podcast with a question: if parents are going to do just one thing right now, what is it?
“Start early,” Gurney said. “Artificial intelligence is here and it will be everywhere in the future. So instead of being intimidated yourself or keeping your child away from AI, thinking it’s bad or dangerous, you have to approach it and understand it.”
Gurnaney told me about a 9-year-old boy named Adam at a Georgia-based Code Ninja. He left with his hands up, shouting “I am sensei today” because he had earned the right to start teaching at the age of 6. His mother, watching from the parents’ waiting area, was teary-eyed, saying her child felt like Superman that day.
With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, we probably need more Supermen and Superwomen.
