Scaling laws
Earlier this week a high school senior stood up in front of our class and grew in front of our eyes.
Emmanuel (a pseudonym as always) was giving his capstone presentation, which 11th and 12th graders in my purpose-development and career-connected learning program deliver throughout the spring. In these presentations, students share where they’re coming from, where they’re going, and how they’ll get there.
As part of that narrative, students share what they accomplished in the six “loops” they cycled through in our program. Here are some of the projects Emmanuel undertook this year:
Loop 1: Creating a pitch for a student micro fund that would empower high school investors with $50 grants via philanthropic donations.
Loop 4: Creating the proposal for a student-led course on day trading and pitching the proposal to decision makers at school. He used our class’s AI assistant to support this work since he’s never taught or created curriculum before.
Loop 5: Launching and teaching that course, which met twice a week for all of second semester and was designed entirely by Emmanuel and his friend. About 10 fellow seniors signed up to take it.
Loop 6: Finalizing the launch, with other friends, of an official 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to supporting unhoused people in our local community. As they prepared to launch, they used Claude Code to create their website.
At the end of each presentation, the assembled audience (which usually includes the presenter’s friends from other classes, family members, and former teachers) shares affirmations with the presenter. Audience members raise their hands if they want, and get called on by the presenter, to answer this question: “How do you know the presenter is going to be successful?”
Several of Emmanuel’s peers shared how much he had matured during senior year, how his procrastination habits had gotten slowly better and how he was starting to find a path forward that he felt passionate about.
After audience members finish sharing their affirmations, I share final thoughts with the presenter. My goal in these moments is to help students see something about themselves they can’t see from the inside. Here’s the gist of what I said to Emmanuel (who also shared in his presentation that he loves basketball):
Let’s click back to that slide where Emmanuel shared all the projects he worked on each loop this year. Take a look at that again everyone, in case you missed it the first time. Look at those six projects. You too, Emmanuel. Look at that trajectory.
The NBA playoffs are happening right now. Emmanuel, I’m sure you’ve been watching right? Have you seen the Knicks’ recent run? They’ve been running up a historic margin of victory against their opponents. The Knicks are peaking at the right time. (Fingers crossed this post ages well here especially.)
You’re peaking at the right time too, Emmanuel. Earlier this year your late assignments outnumbered your on-time ones. It felt like you were adrift at times. But now look at that slide on the screen. You got a lot done in our program this year, and what’s most impressive to me is how you kept leveling up each loop.
You started off creating a deck pitching an idea that never got off the ground, and you’re ending the year having launched a nonprofit and taught a semester-long course. And watching you up here, speaking with confidence about these accomplishments, shows me this is just the beginning.
We all gave Emmanuel a final round of applause and he went out into the courtyard to take photos with the friends who had gathered to support him.
Yesterday I had my usual bout of FOMO regarding ChatGPT 5.5. The latest OpenAI model, which Ethan Mollick among others has touted as the new AI gold standard, was released a couple of weeks ago.
Like many others, I cancelled my subscription to ChatGPT after OpenAI’s decisions during the Pentagon-Anthropic showdown earlier this year. But GPT 5.5 has been singing a siren song since its release, leaving me barely hanging onto the mast.
As I’ve plumbed the depths of my FOMO, I realize that the intrigue for me is in seeing firsthand whatever new capacities and nuances the newest model provides. As soon as Claude Opus 4.8 comes out, I’ll feel relaxed again knowing I’m seeing the bleeding edge of AI unfold word by word on my screen. That is until Gemini 3.2 drops. Then GPT 5.6. And so on…
That AI-specific FOMO is commingled with the same feeling planned obsolescence has been conjuring for decades now. We discuss that phenomenon every year, and students are taken aback when they see the consumerist logic linking the 2027 Camry, NBA 2K27, and iPhone 17. They realize new models are a constant background in our lives, like the seasonal rhythms they attempt to emulate.
Those of us engaging in the AI-in-education conversation are particularly susceptible to FOMO of all kinds, because we want to ensure that we’re on the cutting edge and our students are too.
New AI models are developed according to “scaling laws,” whose proponents argue that the more data and compute companies put in, the more AI capability they’ll get out. Another way of putting it is that the more “experiences” an AI model has through the combination of training data and compute, the more it grows.
But those of us in education focusing on AI’s growth need to remember that the growth that matters, students’ growth, is already happening in our classrooms. AI can support that growth — Emmanuel used our class’s AI assistant on many of his projects this year — but only up to a point. Emmanuel needed to teach the class AI helped him design.
A different kind of scaling law applies in schools. Training data and compute become lived experience and reflection. Emmanuel went through six loops this year, each time trying out a different career path while remaining headed in the same general direction. And that was just in my classroom. He was having different ongoing academic experiences the other six periods a day.
Meanwhile he was having innumerable personal experiences, in the hallways in between those classes and especially in his life outside of school. He spoke in his presentation about how much he appreciates his relationship with his older brother, who he’s stayed connected to after his brother went off to college.
Even the presentation itself seemed like another ingredient in Emmanuel’s growth. He always gives me a handshake on the way out of class, and that day it felt a little different, like he was reintroducing himself to both of us.