The Pursuit of the Future: Bold Minds for a Changing World

By Mark Dzula, Director of Academic Resources and Innovation at Webb

At our commencement ceremony this past spring, valedictorian Andrew Huang ’26 shared an ancient Chinese fable that has resonated with me ever since. The fable, Jing Di Zhi Wa, or 井底之蛙, is the story of a frog who lived contentedly at the bottom of a well.

I looked up the story afterward, and in one version, to this frog, life was comfortable and predictable. He had mastered his environment; he knew every patch of damp moss on the stone, every crack in the wall, and every rhythmic drop of water that pooled at the bottom. When he looked upward, he saw a clean, perfect circle of blue sky. To the frog, that small circle was the absolute truth of the universe.

Then, one afternoon, a Sea Turtle from the Eastern Ocean arrived at the edge of the well. The turtle described an ocean so vast that a thousand years of floods could not raise its coastline, and a thousand years of droughts could not lower its horizon. The turtle’s message left the frog utterly crestfallen. His hard-won mastery and his sense of agency were suddenly rendered local, limited, and fragile.

For the last few years, many of us working in education have felt exactly like that frog. Some spent decades mastering the traditional “well” of classrooms, linear assessments, and predictable academic structures. We knew how to measure excellence and safeguard integrity. Then, our own sea turtles arrived, bringing with them a massive wave of generative artificial intelligence.

The initial response across the global educational landscape was defensive. Schools panicked and tried to build a lid for the well. The conversation focused almost exclusively on detection tools, cheating prevention software, and restrictive bans. We tried to police the boundaries of a world that had already fundamentally changed.

But as the 2026 Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence report recently detailed, this anxious, defensive crouch is largely a Western phenomenon. Globally, more integrative perspectives are emerging, frameworks that view technology not as an invading opponent to defeat, but as an ecological partner to engage with.

At Webb, we realized early on that we cannot afford to keep building lids for our wells. The ocean is already here. Our task is to teach our students how to navigate it with curiosity, ethical judgment, technical fluency, and a deep sense of responsibility to one another.

This is precisely what we are doing through the AI Project@Webb. We are helping students move beyond passive consumption of technology and toward ethical co-creators who know how to use emerging tools to solve real-world problems.

This philosophical ideal matches the hard data of modern learning science. Researcher Jiping Zhang has demonstrated that integrating technology into robust, Problem-Based Learning environments drives higher-order cognitive competencies. By focusing on teachers’ transformational leadership and unburdening students from repetitive data sorting, advanced tools allow them to focus deeply on designing systems, refining ideas, and making creative connections.

We see this theory come to life every day in our Tech and Innovation Seminar. Our students are not letting the future happen to them; they are actively shaping it.

For example, Patrick Kang ’28 appropriated computer vision to build an affordable, motion-tracking soccer analysis platform designed to bring high-level athletic data to resource-strapped public schools. Colin Leung ’27 looked to help students navigate executive functioning challenges and engineered a digital schedule planner, which required him to collaborate with peers and teachers to map out our complex institutional calendar.

We watched Thomas Li ’28 integrate a vision system with a uFactory robotic arm to dynamically recognize and stack blocks, while Kaydon Fidak ’28 built an institutional athletics communications hub from scratch. Kano Sugie ’28 connected with family back home in Japan, making an alarm clock for her sister, as well as an earthquake simulator to better understand seismic activity and architectural design.

When Harry Chen ’28 hit the physical hardware limits of training a massive large language model, he didn't give up; he pivoted to build a highly optimized small language model, eventually presenting his architectural findings to doctoral students at USC.

These students are learning about AI, not just with AI. They are discovering its limitations, testing its boundaries, and uncovering its biases.

As futurist Zack Kass notes, human institutions must navigate two distinct boundaries: the technological threshold and the societal threshold. The technological threshold asks a cold question of capability, ‘What can a machine do?’ Today, the answer is ‘almost anything.’ But the societal threshold raises a profound ethical question, ‘What do we want a machine to do, and what are we willing to let it do?’

The societal threshold cannot be drawn by an algorithm or a corporate spreadsheet. It is a moral boundary that must be drawn by educated, empathetic human beings. At Webb, we are preparing our students to lead and determine that line.

We are teaching them that while a machine can compile statistics or format a first draft, the steering of our civic life and the preservation of our human community require the whole ship—diverse human voices, critical thinking, and authentic empathy.

Our valedictorian Andrew Huang ’26 was right: the frog cannot stay at the bottom of the well forever. The ocean is here. But by leaning into computational thinking, civic literacy, and creative co-creation, we ensure that our students look at a rapidly changing world and feel that they can stand together, fully capable, ready to lead with distinction and shape a more just, equitable, and human-centered tomorrow.