AI Literacy in K-12 and the Workforce Gap with CIESC's Lena Darnay

K-12 has to expose kids to AI early, not block it. Lena Darnay of CIESC and Jason get into AI literacy, the workforce skills gap, and why Carmel Schools still keeps AI out of the classroom after training teachers on it for two and a half years. They cover Indiana's new diploma seals, the SAIL leadership work at CIESC, why philosophy and library science degrees are back in demand, anthropomorphism and sycophancy, the Character AI tragedy, vibe coding in Replit, and what Plato's Republic has to do with Sam Altman. Lena closes on grief, sci-fi, and radical acceptance. ABOUT THE GUEST Lena Darnay is Director of Communications at the Central Indiana Educational Service Center, or CIESC, the largest of Indiana's nine educational service centers, serving 35 member districts and about 220,000 students. A former high school librarian and instructional technology specialist, she moved into the service center world during the pandemic and now helps lead the SAIL AI leadership work through Keep Indiana Learning, CIESC's professional development arm. She holds an undergraduate degree in marketing and a master of library science from Indiana University. GUEST LINKS LinkedIn:   / lena-g-darnay   CIESC: https://ciesc.org/ Keep Indiana Learning: https://keepindianalearning.org/ TIME STAMPS 00:00 - The service center model most people never see 04:26 - Working behind the scenes like Purdue Extension 07:20 - What SAIL is and why Jason got pulled in 10:45 - Carmel Schools and the case for AI in K-12 now 13:06 - From the information superhighway to AI in thirty years 16:22 - The entry-level job is about to change 20:44 - The one skill every employer names: spreadsheets 22:31 - Why philosophy and library science degrees matter again 28:06 - Socrates, Plato, and AI's philosopher kings 33:21 - Ikigai, Alpha School, and exposing kids early 39:42 - Design thinking, scrum, and what schools should teach 46:37 - Anthropomorphism, sycophancy, and the Character AI tragedy 54:34 - Sci-fi, grief, and The Poppy Fields CONNECT WITH JASON PADGETT Director of Partnerships and Growth at CitizenAI [email protected] LinkedIn:   / jason-grant-padgett   X: https://x.com/NoCodeCAIO Newsletter (No Code CAIO): https://www.linkedin.com/build-relati... AGI PODCAST NETWORK School's Out Saturdays: https://schoolsout.agipodcast.ai/ All AGI Podcast shows: https://schoolsout.agipodcast.ai/network TOOLS JASON RECOMMENDS MindStudio: https://get.mindstudio.ai/q7n7u5cttkdq Riverside.fm: https://riverside.sjv.io/e1xyBr Wispr Flow: https://ref.wisprflow.ai/jason-padgett RESOURCES MENTIONED Central Indiana Educational Service Center: https://ciesc.org/ Keep Indiana Learning: https://keepindianalearning.org/ Alpha School, 2 Hour Learning model: https://alpha.school/ The Poppy Fields by Nikki Erlick Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson Replit: https://replit.com/ Notebook LM: https://notebooklm.google.com/ Character AI: https://character.ai/ People referenced: Ryan Murray, Tanika Kennardle, and Jenna Cooper at CIESC and SAIL, Dr. Nicole Adams at Purdue, Ann Leftwich at Indiana University, Geoffrey Hinton, Amanda Askell at Anthropic, Reid Hoffman