The Gap Between What's Possible and What's Allowed

AI Education Meetup #4 Recap

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AI in Education Meetup #4 · Luma

AI & Education Meetup #4: January 22, 2026

We're three meetups into this AI and education thing, and a pattern's emerging that nobody's talking about: the gap between what's technically possible and what institutions will allow isn't shrinking. It's widening.

Twenty people showed up at Ethos Lab on a Wednesday night, and what we witnessed wasn't a polite panel about "AI literacy best practices." It was a raw accounting of the actual terrain.

The Union Grievance

Jay teaches at Capilano's IDEA School of Design. He used an AI note-taker in a committee meeting. A staff member told him: "You're taking my job. My job is to take notes at this meeting. If you do that again, I'm filing a grievance with the union."

He's now negotiating with the union about whether recording and transcribing meetings constitutes job theft.

Meanwhile, every room we walk into has surveillance cameras recording us for "security." Every bus, every building, every public space. The difference? When an institution surveils you, it's safety. When a person records for productivity, it's a threat.

Jay said: "We all started Zooming before we started AIing. We've been recording and transcribing for years. I thought we were past this."

We're not.

The Technical Counter-Narrative

James showed up late with something that changes the conversation: fully functional AI running entirely on-device. Zero cloud connection. No privacy concerns. No corporate training on your data. No power/water/centralization objections.

He's been building in stealth for six months. Apps called Eli5 (Explain Like I'm 5) and Definably (an endless dictionary where every word drills into the next inference). All running natively on iOS. No internet required.

His thesis: "We have supercomputers in every pocket. AI doesn't need to be done the way it's being done."

Julianna (who starts Monday at UBC launching their new Learning Innovation Technology Center) immediately saw it: "This might be easier to sell to unions. Just a Mac Mini on a desk in the classroom. Seven hundred bucks for hardware that supports a whole class."

If this works at scale, it sidesteps half the objections educators have. It's the counter-narrative to Davos hyperscale data centers. It's what Curtis from Decontrol has been advocating for with decentralized systems. It's technically possible right now.