In this episode of Education Futures, we welcome Louis Rosenberg — technologist, entrepreneur, and long-time researcher in virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence.

Louis has spent decades building technologies designed to augment human intelligence and warning about the risks when we fail to understand what we are building.

In this conversation, we focus on a phenomenon Louis has recently written extensively about: AI denial: society’s tendency to underestimate AI’s capabilities as a way of avoiding an uncomfortable truth.

We explore:

• Why dismissing AI as “just slop” or “just autocomplete” is dangerously outdated
• How AI systems are becoming cognitive rivals, not just tools
• Why humans are especially vulnerable to anthropomorphizing conversational AI
• The concept of asymmetric relationships between humans and AI
• Why photorealistic, conversational AI represents a new and far more powerful form of influence
• How AI may reshape education, work, relationships, and childhood itself
• What skills children actually need to develop in a world of rapid, continuous change
• Why banning AI in schools is not a solution — but neither is naïve adoption

Louis argues that we are repeating the same mistake we made with social media: regulating yesterday’s risks while ignoring tomorrow’s.

He also shares a radically different vision for AI’s future — inspired by swarm intelligence and biomimicry — where AI is used not to replace humans, but to connect groups of people into collective intelligence, keeping human values, judgment, and responsibility at the center.

This episode is a call to move beyond fear and denial — and to educate the next generation with clarity, realism, and agency.

📚 Essential reading — Louis Rosenberg on AI denial

These recent articles are directly referenced in the conversation and provide crucial context:

https://bigthink.com/the-present/the-rise-of-ai-denialism/

https://venturebeat.com/technology/ai-denial-is-becoming-an-enterprise-risk-why-dismissing-slop-obscures-real

https://bigthink.com/the-future/what-happens-the-day-after-humans-create-agi/