Last week I was invited to sit on a panel about AI — surprise — at of all places, a local high school here in Los Angeles called Harvard-Westlake. It was part of an event they called NextGen where they bring in people from various fields to talk about what the future might hold.

Now, I won’t tell you that I had any particularly special insights to offer, but I suppose if you’re an earnest Gen-Alpa/Gen-z’r there’s the possibility that any insight or answer offered in the moment of confusion we’re in could be special.

But, I don’t want to talk about the panel or the specifics about the topic or any of that. It was the students themselves. My goodness — spend a half a day at a place like that and you will come away feeling that there is hope.

First of all, the students put this whole Future Day on themselves. They arranged these pre-calls with the panelists, they had booths with their various start-up clubs, panels on like..video games, jobs, etc. They had walkie-talkies and music and food.

Now, I know Harvard-Westlake is, well… unusual. And expensive. So you’ll certainly have your enthusiastic, committed, and charismatic student. But there was a level of engagement in the questions — from, like, thirteen-year-olds who referred to you as “Dr. Bleecker” — that felt as earnest as it was insightful. It assured me that, were any one of these students to find themselves in a position to make a positive change in the world, they would succeed far beyond proportion.