Earth LinC · YUCROWN · an open learning station
Human LinC
Nine words. One question that keeps coming back.
A hamburger is easy. A child in a mountain town can have one, more or less like a child in New York. But in a world where AI is moving this fast — is the frontier as reachable as the hamburger? It should be. Not as a product to consume, but as a place to think from, with your own experience at the center.
What we mean when we say human
The person, not the machine, sits in the middle of the work.
Technology bends down to where the learner is already standing.
A question is a valid starting point. It is the only one you need.
One story shared becomes a link. Many links become a world.
Worth measured by what a person can now do — not by what a model can do.
The unfinished parts of the map belong to whoever walks them.
Not delivered. Made, together, in a room.
The same doorway, whether the classroom is in a city or on a mountain.
Potential is not distributed evenly. Opportunity can be.
Lately, these conversations
If you are at a technical and vocational school — do you have the same chance to explore the technology that interests you, and to share what you find with the world?
If you are at a middle school in the mountains, where the air and the seasons are already teaching the children something a city cannot, and where the teachers are growing something quiet and particular — do you get to tell that story, and let it link outward?
And when you open a laptop: could the question you are actually thinking about — your subject, your doubt, your idea — become a conversation with a frontier AI, recorded, kept, and shared with your classmates and with everyone else?
Every time you share, you are linking. Every time you link, you are exploring.
One thing about the original impulse behind technology is certain: to decentralize it, to make it equal, to make it reachable, to strengthen the link between one person and another and between a person and the world — wherever you happen to be. To make that easier, more centered on you, more open to your own potential. Human-Centered AI has to bend down to meet that.
We are glad there are still builders at the frontier who hold that impulse. They do not only ask questions about technology — they use technology to explore its many sides. They do not make it more complicated; they make it plain enough that a teacher and a group of children in a far classroom can simply reach out and touch it.
This link did not start today. It is years of deep thinking and practice by partners at the frontier, finally arriving beside you. And when it reaches you it looks as simple as a primary-school classroom: say the subject you are curious about, say what you think, ask your question, choose the language you want to speak in — and an exploration has begun.
What you could make this week
- A campus notebook. Add the photos and notes from the practice already happening around you — that is your own class exploration log.
- A year with one tree. A study group records the same tree, path, plant or animal through spring, summer, autumn, winter. Link the issues together and it becomes your school's own collection — a collective intelligence that keeps being shared.
- A painting show. Not only the painting, but the thinking you wanted to express beside it. Gather the class's links and you have an exhibition that is entirely yours.
- A maths problem, opened. Find one, draw the model, demonstrate it.
- A place you have never been. Search Google Earth or the Microsoft Planetary Computer, choose somewhere that interests you, and research its people and its nature.
- A walk that became research. A school hike in the hills, or a holiday trip, written down and linked.
- An application, in your own words. When you apply somewhere, write your own explanation and put your work inside it.
- And what else? A great deal more. It is waiting for you to practise it.
Four numbers we keep next to us
people were still offline at the end of 2024 — access is not a solved problem.
ITU Facts & Figures 2024of schools and universities had formal guidance on generative AI when UNESCO surveyed them in 2023.
UNESCO, 2023cheaper to run a GPT-3.5-level model between November 2022 and October 2024 — the doorway is widening fast.
Stanford AI Index 2025Universities, institutions, core ideas
A short map for anyone who wants to go further — each of these has been thinking about people and machines for longer than the current wave.
Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI)
Founded 2019 by Fei-Fei Li and John Etchemendy. Core idea: AI should augment human capability, not replace it. Publishes the annual AI Index. hai.stanford.edu
Center for Human-Compatible AI
Stuart Russell's argument: machines should stay uncertain about human preferences — "provably beneficial" AI. humancompatible.ai
Lifelong Kindergarten
Mitchel Resnick's projects, passion, peers, play — and the home of Scratch, which put creative computing in millions of classrooms. media.mit.edu
RAISE & Day of AI
Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education: free AI-literacy curricula built for K–12 teachers, in many languages. raise.mit.edu
HCIL — Ben Shneiderman
Human-Centered AI as a two-dimensional goal: high automation and high human control, at the same time. hcil.umd.edu
Project Zero
Visible Thinking and documentation of learning — making a learner's thinking, not just their answer, the thing we look at. pz.harvard.edu
AI4K12
The Five Big Ideas in AI, with grade-band guidelines — the clearest shared vocabulary for teaching AI in school. ai4k12.org
Elements of AI
A free introductory course translated into dozens of languages, taken by learners in more than 170 countries. Proof that access changes who participates. elementsofai.com
AI and the future of learning
The first global standard on AI ethics (2021), plus guidance for generative AI in education and research. unesco.org
AI for children
Policy guidance built around children's rights: protect, provide for, and include every child in AI. unicef.org
The OECD AI Principles
The first intergovernmental standard on AI (2019, updated 2024): inclusive growth, human-centred values, transparency. oecd.ai
AI for Good
The UN platform that ties AI work to the Sustainable Development Goals — and to the people furthest from the frontier. aiforgood.itu.int
YUCROWN & Earth LinC
There is a group of older brothers and sisters here. They work at the frontier of AI, and they believe — firmly — that the human is the subject. Your particular thinking, your particular practice. Technology is here to support a person in reaching their potential, in following what they love more freely, in exploring, in breaking through.
YUCROWN began from that conviction: mentors and builders who are good at it, and good for it. The C//Mentors bring years of practice to a classroom and then get out of the way.
Earth LinC is where a practice becomes a station, and a station becomes a link. You bring the subject, the notes, the photographs, the question. It becomes a page that belongs to you and can be shared with anyone, anywhere.
This is an open invitation to learn, to practise, and to link. Your story belongs to you. Your campus story belongs to all of you. That is what makes it worth sharing.
References
- Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI)hai.stanford.edu
- Stanford HAI — AI Index Report 2025hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2025-ai-index-report
- UC Berkeley — Center for Human-Compatible AIhumancompatible.ai
- MIT Media Lab — Lifelong Kindergartenmedia.mit.edu
- Scratchscratch.mit.edu
- MIT RAISE — Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Educationraise.mit.edu
- Day of AIdayofai.org
- University of Maryland — Human-Computer Interaction Labhcil.umd.edu
- Harvard Graduate School of Education — Project Zeropz.harvard.edu
- AI4K12 Initiative (AAAI & CSTA)ai4k12.org
- Elements of AI — University of Helsinki & MinnaLearnelementsofai.com
- UNESCO — Artificial Intelligence in Educationunesco.org
- UNESCO — Guidance for Generative AI in Education and Research (2023)unesco.org
- UNESCO — Recommendation on the Ethics of AI (2021)unesco.org
- UNICEF — Policy Guidance on AI for Childrenunicef.org
- OECD — AI Principlesoecd.ai
- ITU — AI for Goodaiforgood.itu.int
- ITU — Facts and Figures 2024itu.int
- Partnership on AIpartnershiponai.org
- The Alan Turing Instituteturing.ac.uk
- Google Earthearth.google.com
- Microsoft Planetary Computerplanetarycomputer.microsoft.com
- YUCROWNyucrown.earth
- Earth LinC — Realmearthlinc.earth/realm/index.html
Thanks to the YUCROWN C//Mentors who contributed to this thoughts LinC — and who keep opening more LinC. Every practice, every link, through Earth LinC and YUCROWN, begins your link with the world.