When High School Students Get AI: A Firsthand Look at the Education Revolution
by BrainStream CEO Steve Alcorn
Dan Lewis, who writes the popular daily newsletter Now I Know, shared a fascinating firsthand account this week of how AI is already transforming education—not in some distant future, but right now, in a high school classroom.
For the past four years, Dan has been volunteering with a local high school program called “Start Up,” where students form small teams and build real businesses over the course of a school year. He serves as a judge at their annual pitch event, where each team presents their idea, market analysis, and prototype to a panel.
This year, he says, was “very, very different.”
From 3D Printers to Working Prototypes
In previous years, most student teams built physical products using 3D printers. The results were often underwhelming—broken prototypes, unrealistic cost projections, and ideas that would take years to develop into something viable. These are 16- and 17-year-olds, after all, juggling college prep alongside a classroom project.
This year, most pitches were software solutions. And they were good. Teams with no prior programming experience had built well-designed wireframes, product flows, and in some cases working prototypes—all enabled by AI and what’s now called “vibe coding.”
Even more striking: the teams with physical products had leveled up too. The software teams had raised the bar so high that everyone had to match it. Dan noted that at least four teams—three software, one tangible—presented products he could actually see using in the next few years.
An Enabling Technology, Not a Replacement
Dan is careful to distinguish between using AI as a creative replacement and using it as an enabling tool. As he puts it: he writes his own newsletter because he likes writing—why would he outsource the fun? But for things he doesn’t have the skills or time to do, AI is a force multiplier.
That’s exactly what these students demonstrated. They didn’t use AI to avoid learning. They used it to go from idea to prototype in a way that would have been impossible a year ago. The thinking, the market analysis, the problem identification—that was all theirs. AI just removed the barriers that used to stop them cold.
What This Means for Education
At BrainStream, we’ve been building toward exactly this kind of future—AI that supports and amplifies human learning rather than replacing it. Dan’s account from a single high school classroom confirms what we’ve believed: when AI tools are put in the hands of motivated learners, the results aren’t just incremental. They’re transformational.
These students aren’t the engineers of tomorrow. They’re building real things today.
We’re eager to see what next year brings.
Dan Lewis writes Now I Know, a free daily newsletter with over 100,000 subscribers. His account of the Start Up pitch event appeared in the March 6, 2026 edition.
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