Ivy: Hundreds of thousands of elementary and middle school students in New York City are now a control group. Whether they know it or not.
Marcus: And that's where we start today. I'm Marcus.
Ivy: I'm Ivy.
Marcus: And this is AI All Day for Friday, September 4th, 2026. We're here to get you caught up and ahead on what matters in AI.
Ivy: Let's get into it.
Marcus: So, that massive experiment in New York: The city is banning generative AI for its youngest students. Is it protection or a handicap?
Ivy: Next up, Tesla has a web form that could change everything, asking a simple question: want to own and run a fleet of Cybercabs?
Marcus: And we're ending with the money. A company that turns wasted energy into AI compute just landed a three-billion-dollar funding round… at a thirty-billion-dollar valuation.
Ivy: Alright, let's talk about those kids in New York. The country's largest school district just banned all generative AI tools for every student up through eighth grade.
Marcus: It's a city-wide ban! This is the biggest educational experiment of the AI era. We're going to get actual, large-scale data on what happens when a generation grows up without AI copilots.
Ivy: Or, we'll see what happens when you let children develop foundational skills without turning them into prompt monkeys before they can do long division. The district is framing this as protecting childhood.
Marcus: But are they protecting them or isolating them? These kids will eventually compete for jobs against students from districts that went all-in on AI literacy from day one.
Ivy: Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The argument from educators is that critical thinking, writing skills, and basic numeracy have to be developed first, before you introduce a tool that can do it all for you.
Marcus: I see it as an amplifier, not a crutch. An AI can be a personalized tutor, a creative sparring partner... taking that away is like banning calculators, or the internet.
Ivy: The internet wasn't writing the five-paragraph essay for you, Marcus. And there's a real equity issue here. Not every student has support at home to help them navigate these tools responsibly.
Marcus: So a blanket ban is the answer? That feels like a failure of imagination. Why not focus on teaching responsible AI use and digital literacy from the start?
Ivy: Which is what they're proposing for the high schoolers. This isn't a Luddite-forever policy. It's sequential. Learn the basics, then learn the tool. It's hardly an insane position.
Marcus: It's a huge strategic gamble, though. Creating a 'blank slate' generation in the middle of a technological revolution... I don't know, Ivy.
Ivy: Well, what this means for you, especially if you're a parent, is this debate is coming to your school district. New York is just the first domino. You'll have to pick a side.
Marcus: Alright, shifting gears from classrooms to cars. Tesla just put up a web form asking a deceptively simple question: do you want to buy and operate your own fleet of Cybercabs?
Ivy: To be clear, it's just a web form. No prices, no dates, no guarantees. Just a non-binding way to gauge interest.
Marcus: But the implication is enormous! This isn't a centralized, Tesla-owned fleet. It's a decentralized network of owner-operators. It's like becoming an Uber driver, except you own a fleet of robot cars.
Ivy: Or it's like a fast-food franchise where you buy the expensive, rapidly-depreciating robot and take on all the real-world risk, while Tesla takes a cut.
Marcus: Imagine buying five Cybercabs, and they just… go out and earn money for you while you sleep. That's the dream they're selling.
Ivy: The dream. Now let's talk reality. Insurance? Vandalism? Daily cleaning? What happens when a passenger… redecorates the interior on a Saturday night?
Marcus: Those are operational details! But this is how you scale quickly. You can't build depots in every city, but you can empower thousands of people to run their own small businesses.
Ivy: Or, it's a genius way to offload capital expenditure. Tesla sells you the pricey hardware, promises you income from its still-not-fully-approved software, and washes its hands of the messy day-to-day.
Marcus: You call it offloading, I call it democratizing the future of transportation. It's a literal business-in-a-box.
Ivy: And I'm saying that box might be full of headaches for anyone who doesn't read the fine print. This has shades of the 'Tesla Solar' experience.
Marcus: [sighs] Okay, execution is everything. But the concept is brilliant.
Ivy: The marketing is brilliant. It creates buzz, gauges demand, and costs them nothing. So, what this means for you is, don't quit your day job to be a Cybercab tycoon just yet. But Tesla is curious if you're interested.
Marcus: I may have already filled out the form. For a fleet of ten. [laughs]
Ivy: [dry] Of course you did.
Marcus: Okay, for our last story, let's follow the money. We're talking about the AI picks and shovels. A datacenter company called Crusoe has reportedly raised three billion dollars.
Ivy: At a thirty-billion-dollar valuation. Let that sink in.
Marcus: It's an incredible story. Crusoe started by putting data centers next to oil fields, using the wasted flare gas to power servers for crypto mining.
Ivy: A very clever energy arbitrage play. But crypto was just the start. The real story here is the pivot to powering AI.
Marcus: Exactly. AI training needs two things above all else: chips and power. Crusoe has the power. And now, it seems they have an enormous customer.
Ivy: And 'enormous' might be an understatement. This funding is apparently tied to a thirteen billion dollar contract with the quant trading firm Jane Street.
Marcus: Thirteen. Billion. With a B. That's not a pilot program. That is a massive bet by one of the world's most sophisticated trading firms on dedicated AI compute.
Ivy: And that explains the thirty-billion valuation. This isn't about flare gas anymore. It's about securing the power and land to build the next generation of AI data centers, period.
Marcus: This is the true infrastructure play. It’s not just about Nvidia's chips; it’s about where you can physically plug in tens of thousands of them without taking down the grid. Crusoe is solving the energy problem.
Ivy: So what this means for you is the AI arms race is creating its own gravitational pull, warping the energy and industrial markets in ways we're only just beginning to see. The demand for power is the real story.
Marcus: In a gold rush, sell picks and shovels. Or in this case, megawatts and server racks.
Marcus: Alright, let's do a quick recap.
Ivy: So, New York City schools are creating an AI-free zone for their youngest students, betting that fundamentals have to come before prompts.
Marcus: Tesla wants to know if you'll be a robotaxi fleet owner... as long as you buy the cars and clean up the mess.
Ivy: And a company called Crusoe just showed that solving AI's energy problem is a multi-billion-dollar business, landing a massive contract and an even bigger valuation.
Marcus: Before we go... a new AI paper dropped that claims it can listen to your voice and generate a plausible high school yearbook photo of you.
Ivy: [laughs] Oh, absolutely not. I do not need to see an AI-generated 'Yearbook Ivy' with frizzy hair and braces. Hard pass.
Marcus: I'm looking at my 'Yearbook Marcus' right now. It gave me a glorious, feathered mullet. The worst part is... it's not wrong.
Ivy: And on that horrifying image, we are out of time. I'm Ivy.
Marcus: I'm Marcus. We'll be back tomorrow. Maybe my mullet and I will have invested in a Cybercab fleet by then.
This show is made with AI: the hosts’ voices are synthetic and the scripts are AI-assisted. Every story links to its original source.