Last month, the LabXchange team attended AIxEd 2026 at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. A two-day gathering of educators, researchers, administrators, and edtech professionals, AIxEd brought us all together to address a pressing question: what does AI actually mean for the future of learning? We attended sessions, gave a talk, led a workshop, and came away with a lot to think about.

AIxEd 2026 built on the success of the inaugural conference held last year. This year’s event featured voices from K–12 classrooms, higher education, edtech, and NGOs, so anyone from a teacher just beginning to explore AI tools to an edtech professional pushing the limits of AI was in attendance.

The event spanned two days:

• The AIxEd Leadership Summit (May 8) brought together leaders from government, industry, and academia to consider the future of learning, workforce transformation, and what AI means for education at a systems level.‍
• AIxEd [Connect] (May 8 & 9) was free and open to educators at every level, offering professional development credits for teachers. Sessions throughout the day put an emphasis on hands-on, practitioner-led learning.

At the Leadership Summit, LabXchange Associate Director Ruth Steyn and Professor Xiao-Li Meng, LabXchange co-faculty director and founding editor-in-chief of Harvard Data Science Review, presented a talk entitled “Triple Personalization in the Age of AI: When Scale Becomes the Engine of Learning.” In an AI-in-education twist, Professor Meng's ideas were presented by his own AI avatar!

At [Connect], Ruth led a 60-minute hands-on workshop called “The Full Stack Learning Designer” with the helpful support of LabXchange colleagues Audra Renyi, Sven Heinrich, and Paul Schwein. The session walked participants through a practical framework and workflow for AI-assisted instructional design. Using tools like Google Antigravity, attendees learned how to utilize AI to ideate and iterate on a custom learning module prototype. The session resonated across a range of technical backgrounds, with earlier-career attendees finding it particularly engaging.

Our Central Takeaways

A few important and recurring ideas surfaced across both days:

1. ‍The growing learning gap requires a response. Massachusetts Secretary of Education Dr. Stephen Zrike Jr. highlighted an emerging challenge: AI will widen the opportunity gap for students in under-resourced communities unless we act to intervene. As a provider of free learning resources working to make science education accessible to everyone, everywhere, this was a message that resonated deeply with the LabXchange team.‍
2. AI, when used and trained at scale, can actually enable deeper, more rigorous personalization for every learner. Although the future of education should be AI-enabled, it must still be fundamentally human- and learner-centered.‍
3. Preparing students for an AI-driven world means more than simple tool literacy. The throughline of many conversations was that proficiency in analytical skills, adaptability, and proper judgment matters more than knowing which application to open. As always, empowering learners with critical thinking skills is as important as training them in tool-based skills.

What’s Next

AIxEd was a reminder that the AI-in-education field is still in an early enough stage that the people you meet matter as much as the sessions you attend. We’re grateful to everyone who came to our talk and workshop, asked intriguing questions, or simply said hello. Your engagement and excitement encourages us to keep moving forward!

• Check out our upcoming events.
• Sign up for our newsletter!‍
• Host us for a free professional development session.
• Reach out with questions at collaborate@labxchange.org.

For more about AI in education, read our recent blog: Artificial Intelligence & Data Literacy: An Educator's Perspective.