Joe Liemandt shows AI software exposes state education's waste
By Bram de Vries · Reporting from Amsterdam ·
On a16z, Joe Liemandt showed AI software compresses school academics to two hours, proving market competition builds higher capability than subsidised state monopolies.
Students at Alpha School say they prefer going to school over going on vacation. On the podcast "a16z", Alpha School principal Joe Liemandt argued that software engines powered by large language models can teach core academics ten times faster than a traditional classroom. He was joined by host Erik Torenberg and Horowitz Andreessen Academy co-founder Gagan Biyani. Liemandt reported that Alpha students complete their academic workload in just two hours a day.
The two-hour academic trade
Education is a supply chain of human capital. Traditional K-12 schooling spends hours a day delivering an instructional design. That model protects an incumbent state monopoly of administrative bureaucracy and legacy labor structures. It delivers stagnant academic returns at compounding cost to taxpayers. Alpha expanded from 12 campuses to 50 campuses in a year because market demand is surging. Its learning software keeps students in an accuracy zone. That dynamic feedback loop eliminates the deadweight loss of bored high achievers and stranded struggling students. The system doubles academic learning. Capitalism yields productivity gains everywhere else. It is time schooling delivered the same ROI.
Efficiency is not a threat to character
Critics of educational technology argue that automated instruction reduces schooling to mindless screen time. Skeptics insist that state-regulated public schools are necessary to build civic socialization, discipline, and equal baseline standards. They claim private software models sacrifice deep human mentorship for algorithmic speed. That opposing case misunderstands where human value lies. In traditional classrooms, group projects are dysfunctional anti-patterns where a student works. Liemandt pointed out that 50 percent of Wharton MBA candidates fail a basic Mount Everest teamwork simulation. Alpha spends its remaining afternoons training real-world life skills. Third graders enter escape rooms while artificial intelligence evaluates their collaboration transcripts. Students must achieve an 85 percent threshold of team-oriented language to pass. Fourth graders pass the Wharton MBA challenge before middle school. Labor markets do not pay for seat time in a lecture hall. They reward team execution, financial literacy, and agency.
Mechanization demands a new curriculum
The historical record is clear on structural labor shifts. In 1910, over 30 percent of the American workforce labored on farms. Americans possessed only an eighth-grade education. Then the Case tractor arrived and displaced millions of farm hands. American communities did not fight productivity. 130,000 towns voted to tax themselves to invent the modern high school. That industrial education model served the market well. Artificial intelligence is the modern tractor for knowledge work. Undergraduate lectures in rows are obsolete cargo. Alpha's Founder School guarantees high schoolers will start a business earning profit or refund their full tuition. The Horowitz Andreessen Academy allocates a student travel budget to force real-world exposure. Protective regulation cannot preserve credentialism against market forces. When technology expands productive capacity, education must grow the pie or face bankruptcy.
The choice for parents and taxpayers is straightforward. We can continue subsidizing an inefficient educational monopoly that holds children hostage for seven hours to deliver two hours of results. Or we can embrace market competition that compresses instruction and breeds actual capability. The future belongs to the builders who move faster.