I attended The AI Show @ ASU+GSV

I was in San Diego over last weekend for The AI Show, which preceded the ASU+GSV Summit. I'm considering career options in education technology, and I had a few objectives for the weekend.

Get the lay of the land. I have a deep background in education, technology, and instructional design, always orbiting EdTech without ever being truly inside. How has it changed since I was a teacher myself? What influence is AI having?

Connect with people. To find the right opportunities, I need a broad network of people who are not in the industry, but operating at the forefront.

The show

The show was pretty specialized, so I wasn't surprised that it's an order of magnitude smaller than something like ISTE. I can't speak to the size of the ASU+GSV conference that it preceded, either, and I assume that that was larger as well.

That said, the small footprint contained plenty to discover. The single large-ish hall was divided into several zones, including:

There was a second, smaller hall "divided" into 10 rooms—with flimsy noise-transparent curtains—each hosting a running schedule of talks.

I spent a lot of time on my feet, trying to absorb as much as I could. I hung out in the learning zone a good bit, and attended pieces of multiple talks.

The lay of the land

It should be unsurprising that there's a conference show dedicated to AI in education. I was fascinated with all of the ways it's currently manifesting, though much that I saw confirmed my instincts. Here are some key takeaways.

Things are booming. It still feels like a Cambrian explosion. I'm guessing there will be some natural selection down the road, but to my untutored eye, it hasn't really happened yet.

There's lots of duplication. I saw lots of products that were doing similar, if not identical, things to solve the same set of problems. An AI startup's big challenge may be simply differentiating itself from many other solutions.

Imagination is unevenly distributed. While some products felt innovative and valuable, there were plenty of others that seemed to be thin wrappers on top of LLM APIs, or LLM tech grafted onto pretty traditional stuff.

At least some are truly grappling with the implications. Several talks featured thoughtful conversations about the place of AI in education, and there's definitely not a consensus yet—aside from the obvious acceptance that it's not going away. I was encouraged by the amount of healthy debate.

There's a lot of uncertainty. This seems obvious, but it comes in many flavors. The current volatile political environment is a huge one. AI is evolving so quickly that it's hard to know what things will look like three months from now, much less a year or two out. And it's hard to tell if or when the education world will reach consensus, and which narratives will emerge.

Making connections

I managed to strike up several great conversations—sometimes after a talk, sometimes by happenstance in the learning zone, sometimes using a direct approach. I made some new LinkedIn friends and have already had a couple of follow-up conversations, with more on the way.

I'm optimistic about making inroads, and I think I can definitely find a place where people would value my talents and skills. I'm a little less sure that the path to a career in education technology will be a smooth one.

But I'm definitely motivated to learn more, put myself out there, and find opportunities!