AI Is Improving Education and Health—Don’t Let Fear Regulate It Away

Originally published on Substack. 

Across classrooms, homes, and hospitals worldwide, artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping childhood and health. Not in some distant, futuristic way—but right now. This advanced computing is helping children learn to read, teenagers overcome language barriers, parents support their kids’ education, and doctors diagnose and treat patients faster and more accurately. AI is creating customized, affordable tools for learning and care—tools that were once only available to the rich.

And yet, much of the political response in the U.S. and abroad has been marked by one thing: fear.

Instead of welcoming these advances, too many governments are trying to clamp down—regulating AI development before they even understand it. They’re trying to micromanage algorithms instead of holding people accountable for results. That’s backwards.

As The Economist put it in a powerful recent piece, “children are the pioneers—and guinea pigs—of artificial intelligence.” The question isn’t whether they’ll grow up using AI. They already are. The real question is: will we empower families to adapt and thrive—or will we smother progress in red tape?

​Let’s talk about what’s working. Many students and teachers in U.S. high schools are already using AI frequently.

In India, children using Google’s Read Along app were 60% more likely to improve reading than their peers. In Nigeria, students using Microsoft’s Copilot improved their English by the equivalent of two full school years in one. In Taiwan, kids using AI-powered language bots reported significant gains—and found it easier than speaking with real teachers.

And these aren’t one-off experiments. AI is scaling what used to be expensive private tutoring and making it accessible in rural villages, overcrowded classrooms, and multilingual regions.

In Belgium, students use immersive tools to hear lessons in their native tongue while learning Dutch. In China, kids are building neural networks in school as early as elementary grades. Singapore has made AI instruction part of its national curriculum.

That’s not dumbing down education. That’s accelerating it! And yet, the pushback keeps growing.

In the U.S., some school districts have banned or restricted the use of ChatGPT in classrooms. Senators have proposed banning AI chatbot “companions” for children. California tried and failed to pass sweeping AI regulation so vague that it would’ve buried startups in lawsuits. And at the state level, we’re seeing a patchwork of inconsistent, innovation-killing regulation emerge.

Texas just passed the Texas Responsible AI Governance Act (TRAIGA) earlier this year. While better than it started, TRAIGA remains flawed. It still tries to regulate too much of AI development itself—not the outcomes, which are mostly already covered under existing law. TRAIGA’s vague mandates and compliance burdens will grow government, raise direct and indirect costs of innovation, and discourage experimentation, especially for small developers and schools trying to stay ahead.

What lawmakers should consider is regulating harmful behavior, not the underlying tools, and most of these are already regulated. We don’t regulate pencils because students might cheat. We don’t regulate spreadsheets because someone could fudge numbers. We regulate fraud, not formulas.

The same principle should apply to AI.

AI is also making waves in healthcare—offering better diagnostics, reducing administrative overload, and giving patients faster answers. In underserved areas, AI is already functioning as a first line of triage, helping people access care when no doctor is around.

But again, regulators are focused on edge cases and hypotheticals. They’re worried about what AI might do someday, rather than what it is doing right now to improve lives.

The U.S. has a chance to lead with smart policy. But if we let every state build its own AI rules—and most of them are rooted in fear—we risk raising barriers to innovation, increasing costs across the board, and ceding leadership to countries that embrace experimentation.

The better path is clear:

• Focus regulation on outcomes, not abstract development processes.
• Empower families with school choice so they can pick tools that work for them.
• Encourage AI in healthcare by cutting bureaucratic red tape and giving patients more control.
• Protect freedom to innovate—don’t assume that every tool is guilty until proven safe.

AI won’t raise our kids or treat our illnesses alone. But it can make both dramatically better—if we let it.

So let’s not strangle the future in fear. Let’s not hand our competitive edge to countries with central planning. Let’s build a framework that champions human freedom, personal responsibility, and free-market innovation.
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Let’s Let People Prosper in the age of AI.