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Tuesday, January 20, 2026

AI for Global Education: Why Permissionless Reach, Language, and Coalition-Building Matter More Than Pilot Programs

Book: AI In Global Education
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Sarvam AI: Pioneering India’s Journey to Sovereign Generative AI
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AI’s Most Revolutionary Frontier: Transforming Global Education
AI In Global Education: The Pain Points
Drew Bent: Anthropic: Global Education

AI for Global Education: Why Permissionless Reach, Language, and Coalition-Building Matter More Than Pilot Programs

Anthropic’s foray into AI for global education arrives at a pivotal moment. The ambition is right. The timing is right. But the real benchmark is already visible—not in Silicon Valley, but in places like El Salvador, where xAI is experimenting with national-level AI education initiatives.

Yet this comparison reveals a deeper truth.

What xAI is doing today is a bit like Lycos in the early days of search: impressive, early, symbolic—but not yet scalable. It works because one jurisdiction said yes. The problem is that the world is not one jurisdiction. It is thousands.

And global education will not be transformed through permission-seeking.

The Real Bottleneck Is Not Curriculum

There is a common misconception in global education reform: that the hard problem is figuring out what to teach.

It isn’t.

If you strip education down to its fundamentals—science and mathematics from early childhood through high school—the curriculum is remarkably consistent worldwide. Newton’s laws do not change at national borders. Algebra does not become culturally incompatible when you cross a river. The Pythagorean theorem works just as well in Bihar as it does in Boston.

The bottleneck is not curriculum alignment.

The bottleneck is language.

Decades before the internet, education research established a simple truth: children learn best in their first language. AI did not invent this insight—but AI is the first technology capable of acting on it at planetary scale.

Language + Access = The True Constraint

Once curriculum is standardized, two constraints dominate:

  1. Language – Can we teach every concept, at every level, fluently in a child’s native tongue?

  2. Access – Can the child actually reach the system?

Access breaks down further:

  • Internet connectivity

  • Device availability

  • Cost (even “cheap” is too expensive in much of the world)

Which raises uncomfortable but necessary questions:

  • Should internet access be free?

  • Do we need a new class of ultra-low-cost or AI-native devices?

  • Is the keyboard—a miracle of the 20th century—now a bottleneck?

  • Should voice be the primary interface for learning?

In much of the world, literacy barriers precede digital literacy. A voice-first, multilingual AI tutor is not a luxury—it is a prerequisite.

The End of the Factory Classroom

The greatest promise of AI in global education is not efficiency. It is liberation.

For the first time, we can say goodbye to the factory classroom—a model designed for the industrial age of coal, steam, and smoke. Rows of desks. One teacher. One pace. One curriculum. One language.

AI allows ideas, concepts, and knowledge to be served many different ways, adapting to:

  • Learning style

  • Language

  • Pace

  • Cultural context

This is not incremental reform. This is a civilizational upgrade.

Why Permissionless Beats Pilot Programs

Sampling matters. You do have to start somewhere. Pilot programs are useful.

But universal education cannot depend on convincing every ministry, district, and regulator to say yes.

That path looks dangerously like India’s old license raj—too much permission-seeking, too much friction, too many veto points.

Universal reach must be permissionless.

Just as the web spread not because every government approved it, but because it worked—AI education must spread because it is accessible, useful, and unavoidable.

Why This Requires a Different Kind of Leader

Building AI for global education is not a single-discipline problem.

  • A Product Manager is necessary—but not enough.

  • A Founder mindset is necessary—but not enough.

  • Passion for education at scale is necessary—but not enough.

You also need:

  • A capacity for selfless service

  • Sound business sense (someone has to pay)

  • The ability to compete and cooperate at the same time

  • Coalition-building across:

    • Tech companies

    • Schools and teachers

    • Governments and NGOs

    • Cultures, languages, and geographies

This is systems leadership.

Why I Am the Right Person for This Mission

I bring a rare and necessary combination.

I was born in India.
I grew up in Nepal.
I have spent as much time in the United States as in South Asia.

I have studied every major technology cycle across decades. I have shown an appetite for travel—48 U.S. states in a compressed schedule, with Alaska and Hawaii still on the list.

More importantly:

  • I can travel to every district in India.

  • I can tap into deep, existing relationships in Nepal, one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse countries on Earth.

  • I understand how global systems break—and how they scale.

This role requires a coalition builder, an innovator, a people person, and a traveler. Someone with a founder’s urgency and a public servant’s humility.

A man on a mission.

Anthropic, This Portfolio Is Mine

AI for Global Education is not a side project. It is not a pilot. It is not a press release.

It is the most important application of AI in our lifetime.

Anthropic has the models. The ethics. The credibility.
What it needs is leadership that understands the world as it is, not as a single jurisdiction would like it to be.

This is exciting.
This is promising.

Anthropic—give me the job.
AI for Global Education belongs to me.

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