EP 76
Education and AI: Thoughts and Practices of Choi Seung-jun, Founder of Hanmi Kindergarten
Opening 00:00
Chester Roh Today, as we are recording, is November 11, 2025. It’s Pepero Day night.
Seungjoon Choi = Media Artist + Founder of Hanmi Kindergarten 00:06
Chester Roh Today, one of our co-hosts, Seungjoon, what exactly he does for a living, I thought we’d start by talking about that. The first time I met Seungjoon was in 2008. That’s almost 20 years ago now. When I met Seungjoon back then, Seungjoon’s official title was media artist. So he would create all sorts of fascinating things using things like Microsoft XNA and show them to me.
I found out his major was physics, but he also had another title. So Seungjoon has this strong engineering background, and while being a media artist, he also lectured at Kookmin University, and also gave lectures for several software programs, and was also very active as a writer. His interests seem to be spread very widely, but if you watch him, it always comes back to education. He talks about that a lot.
And that also became the impetus for us, in this age of AI, to ask how education must change. That was one of the major purposes for starting this podcast. In that regard, Seungjoon has been making a great contribution. So today is a Seungjoon special. It’s about why Seungjoon is all-in on education, what the connection is between AI and education, and what exactly Seungjoon does. We’ll delve into these topics today.
Seungjoon Choi Since you asked, let me talk about it. I myself enjoy following my interesting curiosities and learning, and I’ve also been involved in work related to education. At university, for students majoring in design or art, I taught coding classes for a long time. So I was very active in that area in the 2010s.
I also run a kindergarten. But applying the methods I learned at the kindergarten to university education was, how should I put it, an interesting time.
Why is education so difficult and controversial? 02:25
Seungjoon Choi So today, I think those kinds of stories will probably come out implicitly. What my thoughts are on learning and education. First, I titled this ‘The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed,’ quoting William Gibson to come up with the title.
I very much enjoyed reading Kieran Egan’s piece, ‘Why is Education So Difficult and Contentious?’ And reading it, I felt a bit of relief that I wasn’t the only one who thought that way, that there were scholars who believed there’s an inherent impossibility in education. The more you look at education, the more difficult it is.
So there’s a diagram here, Rousseau’s development, Plato’s academic Idea, socialization— all these things are gathered together in schools, and since they are all good things, we say let’s do it well, let’s create synergy. But in reality, on the ground, those things can sometimes hold each other back. So I won’t go into too much depth, but I empathized with the impossibility inherent in education.
How job disruption in the AI era affects education 03:31
Seungjoon Choi These days, many people are interested in education, and they say they want education to change, but that’s actually a very difficult thing to talk about.
But education, from my perspective, in this direction, I don’t think it can change itself. I mentioned impossibility earlier, and also the reality these days… As many people say, there’s a bit of a sense of defeatism.
If jobs are disrupted—we’re currently discussing AI in the Fugitives’ Alliance and we keep covering these issues. If those jobs are disrupted, sad things will happen.
Chester Roh You’ve put that in a very roundabout way, but saying jobs will be disrupted means the age of great layoffs is coming. That’s how we should read it, right?
Seungjoon Choi You could see it that way, and anyway, I think many sad things will happen. A world we have not yet experienced is approaching. But then, education is bound to be disrupted. If jobs are disrupted. So I used the expression “re-foundation” here. It has the feeling of re-laying the foundation stone. Because it’s shaking. Couldn’t this actually be an opportunity to get another chance? That’s what I’m thinking. So, hedging against the collapse of existing education, meaning, it might not collapse, but if it does, while hedging, we can explore new opportunities. It could be the right timing. In that case, the forces that oppose prophetic pedagogy might be able to regain strength, I think.
Critique of prophetic pedagogy 05:03
Seungjoon Choi But the term “prophetic pedagogy” here might be a bit difficult.
This is about taking something that’s already structured, injecting and transmitting knowledge. It’s not that it’s bad, but the side that leans too heavily in that one direction is prophetic pedagogy.
The side that believes if you program it, create a manual, and teach it, people will do well. And the side that even pulls in advanced learning to do it.
Chester Roh In Korea, the expression “cramming education” is common. Is cramming education related to prophetic education?
Seungjoon Choi They are related. It’s the approach of putting something on a track and making it go straight. That’s the kind of approach it is.
Chester Roh To put it in our terms, would it be supervised learning?
Seungjoon Choi As a prerequisite for that, having a lot of knowledge is something I believe has already been disrupted. I think it should be disrupted, and I think that has already begun. So, I tried to interpret that in a slightly different way, which is to wonder why we have to learn so quickly. Why do we have to learn things that always seem to have a correct answer? I’ve been curious about that for a long time.
Why, when we can learn slowly and joyfully, must we learn in a rush, chased by an uncertain future? Why must we sacrifice today’s satisfying learning? Why must we gradually lose motivation? I end up thinking about things like this.
But if things are going to turn out this way anyway, “this way” will be explained in the next chapter. How it will turn out. So, with a gut feeling, if not just OpenAI, but if everything is taken over like this, with no middle ground, if everyone is pushed out, if that’s what’s going to happen anyway. In that case, should we reproduce what we believe to be the current best practice? I start to wonder. We are heading into an uncertain territory where no one knows exactly how things will unfold. Is there a need to reproduce the education we believe is the best practice now?
Chester Roh Getting a grade 1 on my school report, a high score on the CSAT, and getting into a good department at a top university in Seoul, should we consider that the best practice?
Seungjoon Choi Right, in a way. Will that work?
Chester Roh I don’t know right now. Right now, in fact, it’s not just students, but office workers, juniors, and seniors alike, everyone is experiencing a kind of psychological anomie. I think we’re at the very beginning of it. People who caught on quickly—and many of our subscribers are those kinds of forward-thinking people— those people have started to think, ‘Wow, the world is about to be turned completely upside down.’ They’ve started to have this sense of the problem and crisis, but honestly, we don’t have the answer yet either. No one has the answer yet. But the feeling that the old ways won’t continue…
Seungjoon Choi There is that feeling.
Chester Roh It seems to have become widespread. Yes.
Seungjoon Choi That’s why I posed the question. So, an education that invests more in today’s satisfaction might need to be restored, there might be an opportunity.
Because we don’t know, so in that case, instead of hedging, worrying about the future, and constantly pulling things forward and studying in that linear way, if we invest a bit more in today’s satisfaction, since we don’t know what the future holds, being satisfied today might be the way to lose less.
That’s the idea I came up with. Because that might be possible.
All the answers were in kindergarten: The Reggio Emilia approach 08:38
Seungjoon Choi So now, I’ve built up my logic with the idea from ‘All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,’ which I think was an old movie.
Chester Roh It exists. There was a famous movie or book.
Seungjoon Choi Rather, from early childhood education, I’ve built up the argument that there might be something we can learn. That’s how I’ve built it up.
So, a place where I, where we, got a lot of inspiration is a small town in Italy called Reggio Emilia. If you go on a study tour there, I don’t know about these days, but they used to always show this image.
A 10-month-old and a clock: Children form their own hypotheses 09:11
Seungjoon Choi It’s an image taken in 1981. It’s a 10-month-old child. But if you look now, there are four photos in total, and right now I’m showing you three of them first. A child, no, not even a child, an infant. The infant points at a watch in a magazine with their hand and the teacher happens to have an analog watch, so she shows it to the infant like this. Then she lets the infant hear it.
The infant can’t speak, but communicates with facial expressions and a situation of curiosity has arisen. And there was an experience. What happens next is, from the image of the watch on the magazine paper, wondering if it would make a sound, since the infant is 10 months old, if you count from the embryonic stage, it’s a living being of about 20 months. It’s not speaking, but it’s possible to form a hypothesis and experiment even before uttering language.
And by leaving a record of this moment, that powerful image, that powerful meaning, the place that tells this story is an educational approach from a small town in Italy. Actually, it’s not a small town anymore, now people from all over the world go to see that educational approach. So there, they talk about the famous ‘The 100 Languages of Children,’ the story they tell, and we were also inspired by it and tell a similar story.
Projects, not programs: The unpredictable process of learning 10:39
Seungjoon Choi When asked what kind of education we do, we say it’s the opposite of programmazione. Programmazione is Italian for ‘program.’ So it means we practice an education that is the opposite of a program. Usually, when you say you’re doing education somewhere, “What’s the program?”, “What’s the program?” That’s what they say, right? The nuance of carrying out something fixed, something planned, is stronger in the word ‘program.’ But what it means to not be a program is that some initial assumptions about education turn out to be different from reality when you actually teach, and they change as you go. Because you’re doing it with people.
So, learning or studying is not a one-dimensional problem where the procedure progresses like a program in predictable, gradual steps. And the formation of knowledge is a process experienced by a group. And children, as you saw in the image earlier, create their own theories. If you give them the answer beforehand, robbing them of the chance to create that theory, you’re actually taking it away.
It might be repeating the history of people from the past, but it’s something I could have figured out and tried on my own. Giving the answer beforehand is a spoiler. There’s a philosophy that you shouldn’t give away too much of what can be figured out. You should support them so they can figure it out. That’s the kind of image this education has.
The role of teachers: Ariadne’s thread in the labyrinth 12:10
Seungjoon Choi So we were also inspired by that and tried to diagram it in our own way. In an uncertain situation, the child and teacher talk together, explore, and go through trial and error, and then think, “Oh, this play could become something.” We call that a ‘play seed.’
Even in a situation with such healthy expectations, it’s not a straight path. In this diagram, it’s drawn with curves. It means it doesn’t go straight all at once. At this point, our teachers use the expression “let’s protect the ‘time for pondering’.” A time to think, a time to ponder. Not teaching this, then that, then that, in quick succession to make something, but more of a meandering feeling.
But there’s a dot over there. That could be a time for listening to the child’s story, or it could be a time when teachers share those records and exchange feedback, or it could be a place to share such things with parents. But that moment is a very crucial point. Because it’s an opportunity to explore potential directions and proceed in a new direction.
That’s why, when we were recording our RL episode, Seonghyun, you talked about high-entropy tokens. When there can be various paths, in such an uncertain situation, it can be very decisive. Depending on which path you take from there, there’s a chance that the inference path can become much better. Depending on what you do at that moment, the quality of the generation changes drastically. You obtain a latent state.
So I think it’s a very similar mental image. It means you can keep unfolding and moving forward like this. You might meet again in different tributaries, or things can proceed simultaneously. So, in the field of education, this is often compared to spaghetti these days. Not just in Reggio Emilia, but the idea of things being entangled like spaghetti, with no beginning or end, the feeling of always branching out in new directions, is often discussed in pedagogy.
Learning is a process of constructing meaning. But in Greek and Roman mythology, there’s Theseus’s labyrinth, right? The labyrinth with the Minotaur. But the reason Theseus can get through the labyrinth is because a princess named Ariadne gives him a thread. If she gives him the thread, in the labyrinth, a record is left of where he has been. That’s what allows him to get through the labyrinth.
So these people believe that the teacher can play that role. The teacher is the person holding the ball of thread, and by weaving together networks of relationships, they make interaction and communication an important experience. So there’s a part that emphasizes the teacher’s competence and role. A moment ago, there was a metaphor of being entangled in something like a labyrinth.
The importance of documentation in tracing the footsteps of learning 15:14
Seungjoon Choi For a courageous voyage, leaving a trail can be important in a way. You get to know the direction, where you should go, you get to know the direction, where it was safe, and to know what experiments and attempts were made, accumulating data is actually important. Emphasizing that in education is what the aforementioned Reggio Emilia attempts to do.
So we were also inspired by that and have considered documentation work important since 1997. That’s why I can quote, “The future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed,” with some confidence, because I’m about to introduce our case. This is something I participated in.
What we tried in 1997, from the time we learned something from Italy, we digitized all the records. So, to give you a quick look, this is the very first record. We started in 1984, but we started recording in this way from 1997. The stories we had and shared with the children, the pictures they drew, the trials and errors we attempted, things like that, this was the first time we left a record of them. But this is still a readable record.
So when we were doing these things, in the early 2000s, a man named Harold Göthson, who was working on educational reform in Sweden, visited our institution and asked, “I see you’re doing a good job with the records, but who reads them?” I was a bit shocked then, and my answer was lame. We were just diligent about recording, but we were a bit weak on the structure of how it could be consumed.
From Trello to LLM: Evolution of educational documentation methods 17:15
Seungjoon Choi So, coming into the 2010s, in 2008, before the 2010s, we introduced things like Google Docs so that such records could be shared within the organization, but to do that a bit more proactively, around 2013, inspired by the Kanban system, was it Joel Spolsky? There was a tool he made called Trello. So, tools like that, where you leave a record and have to move it as a card, we’ve been using since 2013 to keep records about play, or learning through play.
But now, I felt that this doesn’t quite fit the current era. It’s very good, and as developers know, when Atlassian acquires something, it tends to get worse. Atlassian acquired Trello, so there were some parts that were a bit unsatisfactory, and so we’ve been moving away from Trello since last year.
As a tool for getting an overview of what happens in the classroom, it was excellent, but in the age of LLMs, I felt that we should input this directly into the AI. So what we made early this year was something you can input directly into Google Docs. A simple editor, if you drag an image, it immediately resizes it appropriately, and if you paste it into Google Docs, we vibe-coded a tool that can create a formatted version, and then… Also, Google Docs started supporting tabs early this year or so. Some of you might not know about tabs yet, but you can write continuously using tabs like this. So you can divide it into various categories and leave records. Using that tool from before, the teachers are recording in Google Docs how certain educational activities are progressing and things like that.
But actually, even though there are tabs, in Google Docs, it’s all in a serialized state. Then, for various play activities, there are multiple records, some are a bit entangled, but there can also be independent, unentangled flows. You can put all of those things into a single context and give it directly to the AI. If you just throw a Google Doc at it, but the reason that’s so easy is if you give a Google Doc as a source in NotebookLM, you can sync it. So if the document changes, NotebookLM changes as well, allowing the teacher to immediately get insights.
We’ve also tried experiments to make that possible. So this is something we’re currently trying out. We’re making an attempt to adapt to the age of LLMs.
So what I want to emphasize here is that when you’re trying things in an uncertain situation like this, leaving records can be helpful. But as you might have guessed, this requires a lot of work. Because to keep records, you have to take photos, organize them, and it takes time to write down your thoughts about it. The constant dilemma is, I know ‘doing it this way is good,’ but I was always wondering how to make it simpler. So, the stage I mentioned earlier still requires the teacher to do the recording. But because you think while you record, there’s definitely a good aspect to it, but it’s also very effort-intensive. So, I’ll just point that out for now.
Visiting the kindergarten of the future: A tour of Hanmi Kindergarten 20:52
Seungjoon Choi What I’m about to show you now is the actual environment. Let me show you this and explain again. There’s an outdoor playground like this, which is similar to any other institution. When you go inside, the children… this is something I worked on, things related to media art that I had worked on, the children can try them out. This isn’t just during class time; even during class, the children can explore the space.
So, as I mentioned earlier, they can come out to what we call the shared space and it’s possible for them to do things. If we skip ahead a bit, here in the youngest class, you can see them exploring these analog media. So this is something the children made earlier with cellophane, and these days, teachers use things like Veo to make them move.
Chester Roh It’s a Video, something that turns it into a Video.
Seungjoon Choi So it makes things like that move, but you don’t necessarily have to use digital tools like this. Sometimes, things like this motivate the children, and actually support them in making or thinking about things better. And this is also quite interesting.
Play 1: Building an elevator 22:30
Seungjoon Choi If I just explain it quickly, they wanted to build an elevator. The children also want to build it properly. But there’s a gap between what they can do and what they want to do. But instead of the teacher solving it for them, she suggests setting up a situation. A situation where they can think about it together.
That boy there was thinking of cutting that, but it seems he got a bit upset because his friends stopped him. But the point isn’t to eliminate such conflicts, but rather, experiencing conflict in a healthy way can be important. And now,
Video Hmm, why isn’t it going up?
Seungjoon Choi The teacher doesn’t solve it for them. She asked, “Why isn’t it going up?” Then they get a chance to think, a chance to ponder.
So now, a pretty plausible elevator structure has emerged, although it took some time.
The teacher then displayed that process on the wall. This was done by 5-year-old children. It has that kind of direction, and…
Chester Roh Seungjoon, I have a very commercial question here. The curriculum of this kindergarten, the educational program, does everyone just make it up on their own? Or is there some kind of government or some major textbook framework?
Seungjoon Choi Kindergarten is the only place sanctioned by the state where learning through play is permitted. There’s no set pace or progress to follow. The kindergarten curriculum has no textbook.
Chester Roh So every kindergarten has a different curriculum?
Seungjoon Choi It doesn’t matter if they’re all different. In the past, there were efforts to align them, but since 2019, the consensus has been not to do that. However, although I didn’t explain it in detail today, there are many cases where kindergartens are also programmed.
Chester Roh But in your case, Seungjoon, these kinds of programs are completely developed in-house, right?
Seungjoon Choi That’s the thing, it’s not a program. It’s a form that emerges with the teacher (and the child). Like that diagram from before. Anyway, let’s continue.
So if you look at the Video like this, you can see that even for the same age group, what they’re doing in each classroom is all different. So this is an attempt to express it in detail, to express it visually. And here, there are stories about all the pictures. And through this exhibition, they express the idea that ‘the environment is the third teacher.’ The teachers also do the work of giving it back.
Play 2: Creating stop-motion animation together 25:17
Seungjoon Choi Here, instead of doing stop motion with objects like in a typical stop motion, the idea came up to do stop motion with their bodies. So after discussing with the children, they agreed to change one side of the classroom into a studio.
About half of the classroom, well not half, but about a third, was cleared out to do this. If you look now, they are doing that based on a plan.
Recently, two researchers from another childcare policy research institute came, and after seeing it, they said, “Oh, isn’t this a cognitive level of an elementary schooler?” But through play, they become motivated to do it, so there’s a tendency for them to make a leap. So rather than doing it through early-start education, it’s because they want to do it that they sometimes go further and try things.
Play 3: Magic Chinese character card game 26:13
Seungjoon Choi Here, they are playing ddakji, and on this ddakji, Chinese characters are written. So if they play while saying ‘Fire (火)’, ‘Wind (風)’, they had the idea that the power would go into the ddakji. But writing Chinese characters is actually very difficult, but because they want to do it, they just try writing them. The children would then try to combine them. There’s a logic to this now. ‘Yeokgwonjeon’ has that meaning. Things like that, through the children’s curiosity and thoughts, manifest, and the teacher encourages it. To achieve it.
Play 4: Learning computational thinking through video dubbing 27:01
Seungjoon Choi This is a 6-year-old class, and the scene with the microphone earlier was, the teacher takes the pictures the children drew and puts them into Veo like before, creating an 8-second Video. Then you get 8-second units, like Lego blocks.
Then you can recombine their order, right? So they recombine the order and put it into something like iMovie, and the children do the dubbing. They make a plan, “Should we dub it like this, or like that?” They make a dubbing plan, and then they dub it one more time later.
So, recombining units is, in a way, very much computational thinking. Combining modules. So in a way, they are trying that out. But for the children, rather than doing that, it’s a process of having fun with their friends. So, cognitive things unconsciously… a lot of things happen when you play.
Play 5: Nature observation and MIDI picture scores 28:11
Seungjoon Choi And nature observation and things like that are also very important. So because of digital tools or AI, these processes shouldn’t be reduced. Things like actually experiencing and using their bodies. So those things are still important, but since we have to live in the present era, among the things currently possible, the work of bringing in the healthy parts can be incredibly important, in a way. It’s like the part where the school lives in the contemporary era.
So now, as they arrive at school, they all first go to see the chicks over there.
And another thing that connects to this is, by attaching a MIDI device, not sheet music, but a graphic score similar to sheet music, the teacher had an idea that it would be good to show that visually. Because of the teacher’s idea, I supported it by doing some Vibe coding. But it’s not just me doing Vibe coding these days, the teachers all do it themselves. Using Claude or Gemini.
Chester Roh It’s a kindergarten of the future.
Seungjoon Choi It’s a kindergarten of the present. It’s already here.
Play 6: Play that happens in space 29:25
Seungjoon Choi So here too, in the shared space, certain things are happening, and if you look, they’re similar yet all different. For us, the boundary between classrooms is a bit loose, so they can come and go. The part that emphasizes and shows that a bit is this fast-moving section now. During the daily routine, the children… in a shared space like the one before, there was a flowerpot, but they said it disappeared. But the search for that flowerpot became educational. “Became educational” is a bit of an odd expression; it became play.
So, while exploring various spaces like this, of course, there’s a plan to catch the thief, but they also go into other classes and play in other classes. Exploring here and there, in the old days, this kind of play would have naturally happened on the playground, but nowadays, this kind of experience is rather absent. So, of course, they can play at kids’ cafes, but if the play there is just a temporary, event-like thing, here, they can continuously do it with their friends. The opportunity to explore is provided, and the teachers add some kind of plan and meaning to it.
Play 7: Rediscovering the principles of Hangul 30:40
Seungjoon Choi And this is about Hangeul. This… What “whirlwind Hangeul” is, is this. Like the letters Rieul or Pieup, if you rotate them 90 degrees, you can’t read them, but if you rotate them 180 degrees, you can read them again. But this, the children named it “whirlwind Hangeul.” It wasn’t taught by a teacher. “Glue stick Hangeul” is because ‘ae’ (ㅐ) is like ‘a’ (ㅏ) and ‘i’ (ㅣ) stuck together.
So while searching on Street View, they found a karaoke room just now. There was an ‘a’ (ㅏ) and ‘i’ (ㅣ) there. So the children discover these things, meaning, they don’t learn through worksheets, but they can discover and notice them. Weaving together situations like these is an important role of the teacher. Then they get to learn about it in a fun way, and in fact, there’s an opportunity to learn it at a much higher quality. That’s how we see it.
So this is related to a maze.
Play 8: Spatial and picture mazes 31:50
Seungjoon Choi When the children build a maze with actual cups, it goes into the computer, and they say it became a maze that fell from the sky. So, the drawing that the children made and the maze could be combined. That was the teacher’s idea. So this is a story that is currently happening. So we’ve taken a look at the entire space like this. So through these things, what we believe is…
Good but difficult: The scaling problem of inquiry-based learning 32:25
Seungjoon Choi If we go back to the slide, to the part I mentioned earlier about prophetic pedagogy, let’s go back to that again. So what I want to say is, this thing called prophetic pedagogy, has an arrogance of certainty. The part where you try to predict and control things in advance, isn’t that wrong?
So, following the industrialization model, standardized curricula and detailed objectives… a movement to oppose their dominance in the classroom already existed in the 1970s. So these things were thought to be an insult to children’s creativity and potential. They thought it was a complete insult.
That’s why the alternative they proposed was to educate through experimenting, verifying, and inquiring. But the education world already knew this back in the 70s. But why is it happening less?
Yujin Kim But for a teacher to actually accept an inquiring mind that doesn’t take anything for granted, I think that would be very difficult.
Seungjoon Choi It’s not easy. I know it’s possible, but it’s not easy. Just as you said, it takes a lot of effort.
Running a program is easy. You just have to follow the steps.
But since this proceeds in a responsive manner, you have to think a lot, provide appropriate support, and it has to stay alive and moving.
Chester Roh In the end, doesn’t it follow the values set by the leader? Isn’t that what happens? This Hanmi Kindergarten too, Seungjoon sets these things as a philosophy, and because he implants it as a culture gene, a kind of cultural DNA, the people within it all share these things, and even if a new behavior emerges, it’s dividing from the same gene, so those things continue to spread.
It took you quite a long time, didn’t it? To create this, Seungjoon set the philosophy, recruited team members who fit it, well, calling them team members is a bit much, but teachers came, and teachers who don’t agree with this would leave quickly.
Seungjoon Choi Alignment is very important. The alignment of the organization’s values and the members’ values is, of course, true for any organization, but it’s extremely important here too.
Chester Roh Exactly. What Seungjoon said, since I’m a business person, I always hear it translated into that context.
The customers at this kindergarten are actually the children, and regarding the best value that should be given to those children, Seungjoon, as the leader, has set certain values. And the idea that the future should be brought in this way, along with what you mentioned earlier, things that you would likely see 10 years in the future, you’ve brought them and implemented them here.
Seungjoon Choi That’s right. What’s a bit unfortunate for me is that external educational institutions that visit our site, and people from overseas come as well. The fact that they are surprised by what is possible today is, in a way, a bit ironic. But as you keep saying, the reason this isn’t universally spread is that there are difficulties in implementing it. There are difficulties with that. It’s not just me who thinks this, but everyone from the director in our organization to the teachers are all aligned with these values, so we can do this. And because of that, the organization’s know-how becomes very important.
So there are some teachers who come back like a boomerang. Because the things they wanted to do didn’t work out well. It’s something that can’t be done without teachers, and it’s also something that can’t be done without members. And the members also, without the organization, it has become a form where they can’t do it.
Chester Roh Right. Seungjoon, I forgot the word earlier, programmazione and its opposite, the one without a program…
Seungjoon Choi Progettazione. It’s the Italian version of the English word “project,”
Chester Roh So can we see it as these two, project and program?
Seungjoon Choi That’s right. But in the nuance of Italian, because this is an adjustable plan, if you say “project,” it’s just a plan, but this means a mutually adjustable plan.
Chester Roh Yes, but in fact, companies too can be divided into two branches with that concept. There are companies where quickly copying others’ things, where “Better, Faster, Cheaper” is the organization’s DNA, and there are companies where innovation is the DNA. But unfortunately, Korea is a country where there aren’t many number one companies, so most company cultures are all “Better, Faster, Cheaper.” A culture that can wait for innovation from within and different thoughts, that kind of culture, unfortunately, exists in the US or other developed countries.
But for a company to embrace that innovation culture, it wasn’t like that from the beginning. Because of something like “Better, Faster, Cheaper,” because of the solid profit model that was created, there were cases where they gained the momentum to go there. These things that Seungjoon was talking about, for me, they get translated into the business side, and there’s a lot of resonance, and I learn a lot.
Seungjoon, in order to give the children a certain environment, you do the things that need to be done. In the past, we talked about how beautiful it would be if a world came where everyone becomes equal because AI becomes the ultimate leverage. You talked about that, and yes, I feel that all these things are connected. That’s the kind of thought it is.
Creating new professions: Atelierista and Pedagogista 38:02
Seungjoon Choi But I’m not sure if this fits today’s context, but the fact that they tried this in Italy, it works well in that town, but it doesn’t necessarily work well throughout the country. But they did some interesting work in that town.
What was it? They created jobs. Jobs other than teachers. There are two jobs: one is called “atelierista,” and they created a job called “pedagogista.” An atelierista is one per institution, a professional artist who is not a teacher. I’m not an atelierista, but there’s someone like me in every institution. In a different form. So the fact that they created jobs is actually a very big difference. Bringing in an external perspective and fusing it is not an easy task, but they do it. A pedagogista, as an expert in education, isn’t in every institution, but there’s one for every 3-4 institutions. It’s a bit different from the concept of a school inspector in our country. Anyway, that’s one of the important points.
So anyway, they set up a hypothesis, the children and teachers set up a hypothesis together, and there was a culture that aimed for a living laboratory to verify it. But the problem is that this has issues with scaling up.
Scaling educational innovation with AI 39:20
Seungjoon Choi I mentioned earlier that I tried an experiment at a university. Yes, so I think I did a rather interesting class, I’d say. The things I learned in kindergarten, and the things I learned from the IT, agile culture, I tried a lot of those things. I won’t go into the details of that story, but I got a little sick back then.
Because I worked too hard. Because I did it the way I learned in kindergarten, I took records, gave feedback, adjusted the direction, and tried to be active with people in small groups. I tried to do well, but it was tough.
Chester Roh Also, the participants, the subjects of the education, are not in the same state as kindergarteners.
Seungjoon Choi But to tell you a little bit, among the classes I taught, there was a class called “Deok-ming Out.” Yes, it was about what I’m a “deokjil” (fanatic) of, and in a safe situation, after talking about it a bit, the journey of pursuing it together… I had a class where we shared that. It’s actually talked about not as a myth, but as a legend. as one of the interesting classes the students talked about it a lot. It was so much fun.
Of course, later on, we did relative grading, so some of its value was undermined, but anyway, those kinds of things work. The fact that something similar to what’s done in kindergarten works… We experimented with it in college, but it didn’t scale up. It was difficult. But now, if AI could somehow leverage that process, it could open up another possibility.
Right now, I also, regarding this, don’t have a precise implementation, but assisting with documentation, discussing ideas where this kind of thing happens together, and then the things I can do are turned into prompts to some extent, and prompts are always newly generated, right? Even with the same input. Those kinds of things can slightly nudge the students in a certain direction.
Nowadays, there’s a fear of AI doing assignments for students, but we can also look at the new possibilities that can be leveraged with AI. Whether it’s university education or higher education. So, we need to generate ideas about those kinds of things. But I think the important sense here is contemporary sensibility. An awareness of what’s happening in the contemporary era and the aspect of trying to apply it. So, to conclude, the image I have… let me introduce it.
Like self-organizing snowflakes: The essence of learning 42:04
Seungjoon Choi This is a video showing a snowflake unfolding. If you look, the initial hexagon shape is similar for all snowflakes, but they say the way the branches grow is all different. The way a snowflake grows is by understanding the principle, securing abundant raw materials and ample space, and when the conditions are met, the snowflake grows.
I’ve come to think that the way learning happens is similar. If you provide a space for abundant growth and wait while adjusting it according to its value, what unfolds is something like learning.
But I didn’t write this story based only on my own thoughts. I think I used the words of Dario Amodei. I mean, in machine learning, models grow too, right? The space for learning, parameters, and then various conditions… if you set them, while it doesn’t grow randomly, it self-organizes and forms within a certain category.
So, the snowflake analogy, Jared Kaplan, who is the Chief Scientist at Anthropic. The person who wrote about Scaling Laws, from his lecture, I took that content and created an analogy. That’s what I did.
Chester Roh Yes, these are the kinds of stories Seungjoon often mentioned.
AX in the kindergarten field: Vibe coding for play support 43:32
Seungjoon Choi So, in that process of self-organization, receiving help from AI with a contemporary approach, I believe a certain kind of education is possible, though it’s still nascent.
As I briefly mentioned earlier, within our organization, our teachers started doing Vibe Coding last year.
So, of course, I gave a lecture to everyone once, but it didn’t just happen on its own.
Chester Roh That’s to be expected. Yes.
Seungjoon Choi This is ultimately an AX problem, isn’t it? AX, which many companies are focused on these days. In our case, DX has actually already been done. So we have the data, and it’s a situation where the teachers can be interested in such things, and it was a culture where we had to use many digital tools.
Yes, but just giving that one lecture of course didn’t make it work. But still, some teachers emerged who wanted to try. When they wanted to do something, I used my spare time to go and help them, and it started to work.
Just as the motivation works when a child is motivated and the teacher provides support, when a teacher has their own project that they want to try, then, in that context, the method of coding… I mean, the method of Vibe Coding, not just coding, but using AI to create some kind of software.
As I helped them have that experience, now, on that mailing list, I brought a small part of it. The teachers create artifacts in Claude, send me the link, and tell me how they’d like it to work, and when they do, I provide support. That’s what has been happening this year.
So now, even without my support, there are teachers who are just creating things freely. And if you look, there are cases where they implement things that I hadn’t even thought of. So I won’t show you everything now, but at a complex level, taking a picture with a webcam and doing something, through various procedures, I could see them creating things like web apps.
So, as I said at the beginning, this is possible in a kindergarten in the present day, 2025.
Seungjoon Choi = Founder of Hanmi Kindergarten + Media Artist 45:47
Chester Roh This is possible because Seungjoon is the leader. Yes, actually, the reason I’m recording this episode today is because I’ve seen what kind of work Seungjoon does, whether in private settings or in our conversations that didn’t make it into the recording, the things we just talked about privately, and from those talks, I’ve seen a lot. Those things have been a great inspiration to me.
And the prompt system that Seungjoon created with the teachers there, I copied it and implemented it at my company. It was really interesting. So…
Seungjoon Choi Thank you for the kind words.
Chester Roh I’ve been saying that at some point, we should take what Seungjoon does, organize it carefully, and that there’s a need to show it to the outside world… I’ve been saying that for a while.
But since Seungjoon isn’t the type of person who really likes that sort of thing, we kept missing the timing, but we finally got a chance.
So today was an opportunity to slowly introduce just what it is that Seungjoon does.
It was in our comments section too. “Who on earth is Seungjoon?”
There was even a comment that said, “I want to be Seungjoon’s son.”
Seungjoon Choi Yes, so… anyway, my public positioning, my external activities, I am positioning myself as a media artist. And that is also an important identity within the kindergarten. So, as you said…
Chester Roh Since you mentioned it, please promote the kindergarten a little. Where is the kindergarten? It’s in Ilsan, right?
Seungjoon Choi It’s in Ilsan. It’s been in the same spot for a long time. I’m continuing the work that my parents started.
Chester Roh Mirae Kindergarten in Ilsan, Hanmi Kindergarten. If my child were a kindergartener, if he were that age, I would have sent him there. And listening to Seungjoon, I realized many mistakes I made in educating my own child.
Seungjoon Choi So, various… I used the expression “hedging” earlier. So, hedging means when things are a certain way, you think about other options.
Anyway, it seems there are various possibilities, and if we see a child as a world of potential waiting to unfold, then now, when the future is uncertain, rather than worrying about the collapse of existing education, new opportunities were already latent. Throughout history.
So, once again, in opposition to prophetic pedagogy, these things take a lot of effort, but through AI or through things possible in our time, couldn’t more of these things happen?
So what I’m thinking is an education that invests more in today’s sense of accomplishment might be possible. And that could become the way adults help children.
In the AGI era, we may all need to become kindergarteners 48:46
Chester Roh Yes, but in about a year, the time will come when we might be discussing the era of AGI or ASI. At that time, I have a bit of a feeling of déjà vu that we’ll probably recap the stories we talked about today. I have a slight feeling of déjà vu.
Because in the age of AI, we might have to become kindergarteners. All of humanity itself… the things that we’ve considered valuable until now might disappear completely, and then the rewards we received for playing a role in the means of production might all become meaningless. A world like that is coming soon.
The thought that it’s coming, my conviction in that is growing stronger these days. A new, intrinsic human value… perhaps fun is a very important element.
Seungjoon Choi Play or fun, things like that can be very important.
Chester Roh To pursue this, what new value system do we need to create, and in accordance with that, how should the education system and things like it all change?
I think discussions on these things will probably start soon, and I feel that in Seungjoon’s kindergarten, that future has already arrived a little early.
Seungjoon Choi Yes, so I will also continue to work hard and try things out in the field.
Closing 50:06
Seungjoon Choi So, this is what I’ve prepared for today. Thank you for listening, and I feel encouraged. Thank you for your positive view. Right now, all early childhood education institutions are in their recruitment period. They’re doing something called “Cheoeum Hakgyoro” (First School).
Chester Roh I see. The timing is about right, too.
Seungjoon Choi So, I think I introduced this once before. That play is the life of a child, as stated by our history, culture, and environment, is something we now talk about with pride.
Chester Roh Today, AI Frontier co-host Seungjoon’s real profession has been revealed to everyone. Thank you again for the many lessons today.