A Tech-Backed Influencer Wants to Replace Teachers With AI

Backed by tech money, entrepreneur MacKenzie Price is growing a network of private K–12 schools that promises to replace all classroom teachers with an “AI tutor” that students learn from while glued to their laptop screens.

Hastings High School students prepare for TSI

Academic instruction in influencer MacKenzie Price’s schools is delivered via a suite of online education apps for two hours per day, leaving the afternoons free for Cybertruck construction and tech CEO make-believe. (Kirk Sides / Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)


MacKenzie Price’s “future of education” looks more like a Silicon Valley fever dream than anything resembling a classroom.

In videos that the Austin, Texas–based influencer and entrepreneur shares of students at her dozen or so K-12 schools, a ten-year-old boasts that he is a successful Airbnb manager, while another constructs a miniature Cybertruck. High schoolers take “business calls,” lounging in a WeWork–style open office space.

Academic instruction in Price’s schools is delivered via a suite of online education apps for two hours per day, leaving the afternoons free for Cybertruck construction and tech CEO make-believe. This is the brand around which her work revolves: 2 Hour Learning, which is billed as an “AI tutor” that can entirely replace all classroom teachers via a few hours spent glued to a laptop screen.

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