There are fears that AI could put some people in the “permanent underclass”, but there are some ways in which it could also act as a big equalizer.
Marc Andreessen, the legendary Silicon Valley investor and co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, recently laid out a compelling vision for how artificial intelligence could democratize one of history’s most exclusive educational advantages: personalized, one-on-one tutoring. Speaking with characteristic enthusiasm about technology’s potential to level the playing field, Andreessen draws a direct line from the privileged education of royalty to a future where every child could access the same quality of individualized instruction.
“If you just have an individual kid and the goal is to maximize an individual kid, by far you get the best results with one-on-one tutoring,” Andreessen explains. “This is something that every royal family knew in history. It’s something that every aristocratic class knew in history. You have a kid and a tutor, and they’re in this very tight loop with each other where the kid is able to constantly be on the leading edge of what they’re capable of doing, and they can move incredibly fast and they get correction in real time.”
The economics of education have historically created an unbridgeable gap. “You get these better outcomes, but it’s never been economically feasible for anybody other than the richest people in society to be able to provide one-on-one tutoring for kids,” he notes. This is where AI enters the picture as a potential game-changer. “AI provides the very real prospect of being able to do that.”
Andreessen paints a picture of what this could look like in practice: “If you have a kid that’s super interested in something and they can ask an infinite number of questions and they can get instantaneous feedback, and in fact you can even tell an LLM, teach me how to do the following, and you can say, wow, I don’t quite understand what you’re saying. Dumb it down for me a little bit. Okay, now quiz me. Do I actually understand this? People can just do this today. There’s this massive opportunity for parents in many walks of life with a little bit of time and focus.”
The implications of Andreessen’s vision extend far beyond individual academic achievement. If AI tutoring reaches even a fraction of its potential, it could fundamentally reshape educational equity. Google recently created a feature on Gemini that allows students to take practice SAT and IIT-JEE exams for free, and plenty of ed-tech startups have sprung up that use AI to help education outcomes. These early implementations suggest that the technology is moving from theoretical possibility to practical reality. The challenge now lies not in whether AI can provide quality tutoring, but in ensuring access is truly universal—requiring not just technological development but also thoughtful policy and investment in digital infrastructure for underserved communities. What was once the exclusive domain of aristocracy could become the baseline expectation for every child’s education.