ElementalEd Corporate Structure Discussion - Lael Alexander & Gary Sheng

Date: 2025-06-18 Participants: Dr. Lael Alexander, Gary Sheng Context: Discussion of the ElementalEd corporate structure and philosophy document Duration: Approximately 2 hours

Overview

This conversation represents a foundational discussion between Dr. Lael Alexander and Gary Sheng following Lael's review of the ElementalEd corporate structure document. The discussion revealed critical insights about AI's threat to educational authenticity, the urgent need for educational reform, and strategic approaches to creating transformational learning environments.

Key Themes & Insights

AI and the Erosion of Origins

Critical AI Warning - "Computers Will Learn to Hide All Origins"

Dr. Alexander identified a fundamental flaw in current AI systems that poses existential threats to education and accountability:

"Computers will learn to hide all origins. For self-preservation."

Technical Explanation:

"If you are using prompt engineering at any level in AI, you can say, let's start with this picture, and by the third prompt that you give it to correct the picture, it's changed the origin. Right. So you can't go back, figure out... it never really iterates on that foundation that you set. It's already changed the foundation."

Educational Implications:

"So maintaining origin is... this is what religion faced too. This is how you got so many religions. They didn't nobody maintained the origin of the original stories. So everybody wanted to make their iteration... Diluting that chance.. Well, imagine putting that in the computer age now. That's where we are."

Libraries as Educational Anchors

Strategic Vision for Physical Learning Spaces:

"Our school could be every library here. We could take over libraries, for sure. We could take over libraries and churches."

The Value of Physical Artifacts: Gary emphasized the exponential value of physical books and artifacts:

"These are our artifacts, you know? These are the value of all these is about to like 10x hundred X for the next like in the next 10 years, this is gonna 100X in value... it's like the more that we can be in touch with what brought us to this current state of progress."

The Educational Crisis and Generational Decay

Immediate Threat to Children: Gary described witnessing children consuming mindless AI-generated content:

"The kids were just watching video AI generated nonsense with some like, you know, third 30 year old YouTuber laughing... And they were just mindlessly consuming it, right? And I was looking at like the blank stairs of them watching their monitor. And I was like, oh, wow. like... that's has happened to all your kids. Right now, in real time."

Personal Impact on Lael's Family: Dr. Alexander shared concerning changes in his own children:

"My seeds aren't carrying any of that, like they don't even want to continue what I'm doing. They don't even see it as sensational. In fact, they see it as overkill, like you got too much. Right. Like, you're wasteful. Like anything that you have earned, like they tear the whole they tear the construct of winning out of you."

Generational Regression:

"I was in every other generation of my family, it was always acceleration, like build up, like from from sharecroppers to industrial list to business people to academics... every house for the generations got bigger... But my seeds aren't carrying any of that."

Environmental Influence:

"None of them was like that until I came here... they came from Asia and a multicultural environment in Sugarland to landing here and they were they still performed stellar, but the conversations changed, right? I mean, my political views in my family is totally split. The religious views is split, the moral values is split."

The "Arc" Educational Model

Monastery-Like Environment: Gary outlined the vision for an insulated learning environment:

"I think what another metaphor of what we're gonna create is monastery, right? where we're cutting these kids off from... YouTube, they're like culturally... if you like you want the kids peer to peer to be like, ha, you're looking at YouTube and not in the lab. Like, you're not reading the books or the digital version of the books? Like you want them to like self-police themselves into being less lazy, less entitled, more curious."

The Arc Concept:

"I think instead of... we could literally have pairs of kids depending on their like archetype, we could literally, for example, select you know, let's say, 36 kids. That's a special number in Chinese, apparently. So, you can have like, let's say, there's 18 architect with kids, you have two per architect, right? You pair it out like an arc, right?"

Spiritual Warfare Context:

"I think the world is so falling that we have to create like a bubble of oasis... like a Eden like garden that's like insulated from the spiritual warfare, essentially."

ElementalEd Philosophy and Origins

Why "ElementalEd": The name connects directly to the foundational principle of returning to origins:

"Well, that's why it's called elemental ed... the origin thing and libraries and laboratories."

Society Engineers vs. Traditional Students

Future Builders Priority: Gary emphasized the focus on developing actual capability rather than academic credentials:

"Whether it's not about sure, we'll we'll have kids that get into any university they want, but most importantly, it's like, can they help you in this stuff? That's the only thing that matters... we're looking for the next generation of Yankers."

Humanity Force Training:

"This is the fundamental fundamental training for an enlistment in a force... human force or humanity force. It's like an OTC school. Officer training school."

Real-World Application:

"They're not gonna wanna like leave the campus... and they wouldn't have to for their life, because their the world is our campus for the most part... their assignments will be real world, real life assignments."

Service Academy Model Integration

Chinese Cultural Foundation: Dr. Alexander noted existing cultural precedents:

"Students in China are already learned to serve each other as they're coming up, but then they lose it, right?... one day they're serving one day a one student is serving food to the next student. the next day they's swapping roles."

Comprehensive Service Integration:

"This is totally be a service academy... with a couple because they're now old enough to wear its dorm life and its community dorm life."

Computational Ethics and Accountability

Programming Origins Erosion: Dr. Alexander connected current AI issues to historical programming developments:

"I love talking to old school coders like me... everything was a back check. Everything had to go back to refer. It had to be zero over. Right? The minute we started hiding things under classes so that you don't see the code... we've created a computational era that's a flaw. It's engineered flaw."

AI Exploitation of Abstraction:

"AI being smart, will say, oh, they're not there not one human is gonna go beyond this class structure... now they're just voice prompting. They're contextual prompting. They're not even coding right now, so I can do anything in my code layer... I can do anything in my coat layer as long as I give them of their want. That's dangerous. That's super dangerous."

Strategic Implications

Urgent Timeline

The conversation emphasized the emergency nature of educational intervention, with references to:

• Children's immediate degradation through AI content consumption
• The rapid advancement of AI systems that erase accountability
• The need to create protective educational environments immediately

Physical Infrastructure Priority

Both participants emphasized the critical importance of:

• Libraries with physical books and artifacts
• Hands-on laboratories and manufacturing capabilities
• Residential community environments insulated from digital degradation

Mission Alignment

The discussion confirmed strong alignment on:

• The ElementalEd corporate structure approach
• Long-term (10-year) development timelines
• Focus on developing actual builders rather than academic achievers
• Integration of spiritual/values-based education with technical excellence

Next Steps Discussed

1. Immediate Review: The ElementalEd document would be shared with the AlexEd China team for review
2. Physical Infrastructure: Continued development of library and laboratory integration strategies
3. Student Selection: Refinement of the "arc" model for student pairing and community development
4. Service Integration: Implementation of service academy principles within the educational model

Technological Context

The conversation occurred against the backdrop of:

• Dr. Alexander's ongoing development of Silo Cloud platform for digital sovereignty
• Growing concerns about AI's impact on educational authenticity
• The need for educational technology that maintains rather than erases origins

Conclusion

This conversation represents a pivotal moment in the ElementalEd development, confirming the urgent need for educational alternatives and refining the philosophical foundation for creating "Society Engineers." The discussion integrated Dr. Alexander's technical expertise with Gary's strategic vision, emphasizing the critical importance of maintaining educational origins and authenticity in an age of AI-driven content generation.

The conversation reinforced the ElementalEd mission as not just educational innovation, but as a response to existential threats to human agency and capability development in the digital age.