President Trump Is Right on AI Education: America Cannot Wait
In the Institute’s classrooms, 78 percent of students were already using AI before anyone taught them how. Only 13.6 percent had received any guidance.
President Donald J. Trump signs executive orders alongside Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in the Oval Office, April 23, 2025. Official White House Photo.
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 8, 2026 - Seventy-eight percent of the students in the Artificial Intelligence Institute’s classrooms were already using AI before anyone taught them how. Only 13.6 percent had received any guidance.
That finding, from two school years and more than 20 school sites, is why the Institute believes President Donald J. Trump is right on AI education: America cannot wait.
The President’s April 2025 executive order called for early AI exposure, educator training, public-private partnerships and an AI-ready workforce and created a White House Task Force on AI Education. First Lady Melania Trump has taken the mission to students through the Presidential AI Challenge. The administration, which now calls the technology Super Intelligence, has the direction right: America should lead, not retreat.
“The children are not waiting,” said Richard Awni, Executive Director of the Institute. “They did not wait for permission, or for teachers, districts or parents. Students tell us they were using AI as early as second and third grade.”
Access arrived before readiness. A student can use AI to extend their thinking, or hand the thinking to the machine. The Institute calls the difference cognitive amplification versus cognitive offloading.
Concerns about safety, privacy, academic integrity and dependence are legitimate. But restricting school access does not remove AI from children’s lives. It can move use to places where they get less guidance.
China is already moving in the opposite direction. Its Ministry of Education has issued national guidance for age-sequenced AI learning from primary school through secondary school and, in 2026, released structured AI-literacy resources for students at multiple grade levels. America should be just as ambitious, and more thoughtful.
The Institute’s approach is led by its President, Dr. Russell Knight, a senior technologist of AI at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for more than 26 years. It is a roughly five-hour, behaviorally structured program built on one principle: Think First. AI Helps Second.
In the Institute’s own field data, students using AI the right way rose from 15.8% to 88%. Students verifying what AI tells them rose from 14% to 89%. Students who knew how to use it safely rose from 14% to 90%. School districts have adopted the program. The National Science Foundation has expressed interest in the field data, and the Institute is lining up academic partners for independent evaluation.
“Taught well, AI does not make children less capable. It makes them more,” said Dr. Knight.
America does not have to choose between embracing AI and protecting human thinking. It can do both.
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About the Artificial Intelligence Institute
The Artificial Intelligence Institute teaches people across ages, grades and professions how to remain in command of increasingly powerful intelligence systems.
Its proprietary behavioral architecture trains learners to move from cognitive offloading to cognitive amplification, questioning, directing, verifying and controlling the technology rather than surrendering thinking to it.
Think First. AI Helps Second.
The goal: turn advanced intelligence into a personal superpower without surrendering human judgment, authorship or control.
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The Artificial Intelligence Institute grew from more than two decades of Family First Foundation work with children, families, schools and communities.
Follow Family First Foundation for the human, family and community side of this work and follow the Artificial Intelligence Institute for the frontier of AI readiness and human amplification.
Permission to reprint granted with attribution to the Artificial Intelligence Institute, Frontier News Desk and a link to artificial-intelligence-institute.com.
Media Contact: Richard Awni, Executive Director, Artificial Intelligence Institute | richard@familyfirstamerica.org | 818-726-7207
Artificial Intelligence Institute - Frontier News Desk | artificial-intelligence-institute.com
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