In this episode of Below the Fold, Max Dinser, CEO of Digital Bricks, shares why the true promise of AI in education isn’t just better tools—it’s better access. From AI-powered tutors to voice-first interfaces, Max explores how AI can unlock high-quality learning for all, especially those historically excluded from elite classrooms and digital ecosystems. This is a conversation about equity, purpose, and the kind of future we want to build for every learner—not just the digitally privileged.
Key Topics Covered:
About the Guest
Max Dinser is the Founder and CEO of Digital Bricks, a company creating AI-powered tools to make education scalable, personalized, and human. With a background at Microsoft and a passion for accessible learning, Max is redefining how tech can serve teachers and students around the world.
In Collaboration With:
@BelowTheFoldPodcast, @DATEwithTECH, @launchfoundryai, @DubaiAIFestival, @DubaiAICampus, and Trescon
📍 Recorded at the Dubai AI Festival at DIFC Innovation Hub
[00:00:00]
Hi, this is Date With Tech, an association with Trescon, Launch Foundry. And Below The fold. I have the pleasure of being joined by Max Dinser. Thank you very much for having us.
It's a pleasure to be on the podcast. We enjoyed the Dubai AI Festival so far a lot. Thanks for having us. Fantastic. Just a reminder, we are at the Dubai AI Festival right now, uh, in a booth that we've set up to interview AI experts, thought leaders. Um, pretty amazing booth, by the way. Thank you. Thank you very much.
And I'm looking forward for this, uh, discussion that we're gonna have. Let's start with a quick intro. Uh, about yourself? Sure. Um, my name is Max Dinser. I'm the founder and CEO of Digital Bricks. Digital Bricks was founded, um, roughly three years ago, started as a startup. In the [00:01:00] moment, we are a little bit scaling up and, uh, becoming a larger organization.
Uh, we founded in Amsterdam. Quite funny story. My business partner is an Englishman. I'm a, I'm a German, and, uh, basically an Englishman and, uh. German founding in, uh, the Netherlands. Now we are expanding into the UAE. This is our first year here. Present first, uh, project's done, which we're gonna talk about in a bit.
Yeah. And, uh, yeah. Used to work for Microsoft for many, many years as an enterprise solution architect, helping companies like the likes of Siemens rituals and so on and so forth. Amazing. Tell us about digital Bricks. Digital Bricks is, uh, basically a company that focuses on two aspects. Um, one aspect is education and adoption.
Mm-hmm. Which we're gonna talk about today. And the second aspect is really innovation and implementation. So we are a Microsoft partner. We use Microsoft technologies to educate people on that stack, but also to educate students or anyone that wants to learn around artificial intelligence. Is there a particular, uh, problem today that you're solving in education?
Yeah, so first of all, we make AI education accessible quite [00:02:00] easily because, uh, our courses are rather low priced and, uh, can be sold to anyone from large organizations that wanna upskill their people, but also to individual students that wanna learn it. And yeah, the biggest problem I think in AI education is, is the pace that it goes.
Right. Once you record a course, it's outdated. So how do you educate people around that? And I think there we have a quite impressive solution, which is Daisy, our AI tutor that helps simplify that problem and keeps learning up to date. And, and speaking of, uh, uh, tutoring in schools, there's a lot of hype around AI in schools, but from your perspective, what's actually changing for teachers and students right now?
I think time, uh, as I said, a curriculum and a preparation that costs a teacher a lot of time. So we can save a lot of that and take that away as well as, I don't know how it was for you in school, but uh, teaching is always very standardized and. Never really personal if I just look at my [00:03:00] class back then, although it's now also a while ago, but I think we all became different things.
Of course, a couple of them also worked in the it, I became a CEO luckily. Um, but other people went to do sports, very different things. We are humans, we are individuals, and we want learn more in a, in a personalized way. And I think that's what's gonna change. And speaking of, uh, humans. How do we ensure AI supports learning without diluting essential human skills, like critical thinking, creativity, and curiosity?
Very good question. I mean, we are all sometimes very lazy people and uh, it gives us quick results, which why it's so hooking and why everyone talks about it, but it's a dangerous thing. And I think there is still the role of a teacher quite important to guide people to not just quickly go to the answer, but also think about.
What are the right questions to ask to challenge ourself a little bit? Yes, we have a quick way to answer, but are we using it in the right way? And do we second think about it? Because AI can hallucinate, can also give out wrong things, right? So we, we [00:04:00] need to stay active. We need to stay on top of it. Um, and so you work closely with schools.
Yes, we do. Uh, in, on implementation, uh, what does good AI integration actually look like in a live classroom setting? Could you give us a little bit of a, an example, something concrete that we can relate to? I actually think a good AI implementation is nearly invisible. Because it helps the teacher to prepare that stuff, and it might be visible in using some of the AI tools to get there, but I do still believe in the traditional way of teaching, but having it AI enhanced.
So what we usually do in a curriculum is we teach teachers on how to use artificial intelligence to do the work better, but also help them in define a curriculum that stays up to date. So I think it just gets more personalized and it's not like that AI is fully replacing the teacher. Right. And, and so is there any use case that, uh, whereby AI can be, uh, is utilized in a, in a [00:05:00] live, uh, classroom?
Yeah. Let's say you need to write an essay on, uh, you need to do that in a language subject. Yeah. Usually an essay is always something that is individual. Mm-hmm. Uh, use AI to write it in an aspect like you have preferences like you tell your story to. Express your, your, your personal aspect a little bit more.
And I think there it can be quite great and gives you a lot of nice ideas on, on how you can influence your own writing or speaking style. Yeah. So it, it basically, it can accelerate what you wanna express Exactly. Basically. And, and give you a, it's a tool Yeah. To, to, to, to help you express yourself. It's, it's at all that's not in the school, but a pretty cool use case is we've been, uh, working with the German space Agency.
Yeah. And, uh, when we. I had to write the quote for them, so I had to write a quote. We dumped that quote and the idea into ai, and instead of our basic product names like basic standards and gold, it turned it into base space and orbit. So just adjusting the quote and the [00:06:00] product names made it so much more personalized.
And yeah, the management person of that unset your quote, felt like it. It was tailor made and right that some of that aspect that you can learn, and especially from a teaching aspect. That's the power of, of ai. Yeah. And, and so you, you mentioned tailor made and, and we, we spoke about personalization as well.
Are we at risk of, uh, of over automating, uh, how do we avoid the trap of replacement? Replacing judgment with algorithms, uh, especially in youth, uh, development. Yeah, very good question and also very risky area. As I already said before, don't see it as a solution for everything. Keep thinking, and that is something that we really need to be thinking about.
So yes, we can atomize things, but we shouldn't atomize things for the purpose of fully getting rid of them. I always like when a human is still in the loop and is responsible for it. So that is also what we do both in organizations but also within the universities. I. Never [00:07:00] believe that the teacher is gonna lose his job.
A mentoring role is quite important. Use it more as a tool to enhance and don't try to replace your teacher. Right. Um, and speaking of, uh, equity, if we wanna talk about equity, how do we make sure AI is accessible and beneficial for all students? And not just, uh, digitally privileged. And I feel, and I feel like this is a responsibility on many more stakeholders and not just perhaps digital bricks.
Right. Definitely. No, uh, I think that's a responsibility for all of us. Yeah. Uh, that's a mission we all should be on. And in essence, what we can do with ai. Of course we can bring it down. I was just saying, don't. Replicate the teacher or try to reduce it, but maybe an AI tutor that is accessible through a simple chat interface that you can speak to, can already bring that down to non-tech people and to have access to education, which they maybe couldn't access before because they are not in Harvard or a super university.
And now we can give that access to, to anyone. Right. Um, and that is, [00:08:00] that is quite powerful in any language of course, as well, in any language as well. Yeah. Um, um, and you, and you said that, uh, you mentioned that this, this wouldn't necessarily impact, uh, teachers or, or their, or their jobs. Um, and so how do you see then the teachers, uh, role evolving in an AI enabled school environment?
Um, and also the, also for a coach, right? 'cause education isn't just, isn't just for teacher, even for coaches and curators and analysts. Yeah. So I think the teacher remains in his role, but it's gonna be evolving. Mm-hmm. So, AI is gonna assist it. I quite often call it Badman and Robin Principle. Uh, the teacher is Badman and Robin is your AI that assists you with it.
So you have more a co-create, a co-teacher, co-mentor kind of role in both of it. Mm-hmm. You can give the students also more room to explore what they want to do instead of. [00:09:00] Okay. I'm the one that needs to guide them on that fixed learning path, but we can open up to more doors. Right. And I think that's, that's how that's gonna change.
Right. And, um, have you come across any, uh, red flags, any ethical red flags, let's say, as you, uh, encountered or as you've worked with different schools and implementation around, uh, uh, red flags around the use of AI in, in education that, um, educators and technologists should be aware of today? I think three things.
What I, I'm German, Germans like to have their rules and their structure, and I saw that some universities reacted, especially in the early days when JGBT started, teachers were like, oh, we need to forbid this. We need to stop this and don't do that because it's gonna come anyway. And it's the skill of the future, so you should be teaching exactly that.
Yeah, so that's the first red flag, trying to stop ai, try to embrace it. The second aspect is really I think the aspect of. Over automating that we previously [00:10:00] touched on. Don't expect it also now to be the super solution and, uh, that, that it solves everything. Still be responsible in your teacher role and, and do your job.
That's the second aspect. And I think the third one is really more on a student kind of level. Mm-hmm. If I, as a teacher in my course notice that people use ai but they can't reason about it or can't explain to me. Why that text is standing there. If I just see a perfect jet GBT text. Yeah. But I asked the student something about it and he cannot tell me what's actually in that text.
So I noticed that he hasn't thought about it. Then we have a problem. Right. And that is, I think, a new responsibility for teachers to re-question repurpose and. Find out and yeah. How do you do that? This maybe finding out what kind of prompts they used, asking them why they did it this way. Yeah. How did they reiterate on that question?
On, on that problem. Yeah. And now on, we spoke about some red flags. Yeah. Green flags or [00:11:00] barrette. Uh, what's one example that you thought was super cool right, that gives you hope about how AI can truly elevate the learning experience? Now I need to be of course a little bit biased, but I think our innovation, Daisy is for me the true example on how that should be going.
Yeah. Because I've been doing trainings, e-learnings, and and and other stuff for Microsoft and large organizations. And the problem is that content gets outdated. I think we all in school learn about history and history is important as well, but I dunno how you felt it, but sometimes school felt like I'm not being prepared for what's currently happening.
Yeah. I'm being prepared for what happened in the past. And I think with Daisy we can now. Change content in a pace and create content in a pace that we didn't have before. And that gives us access to information from nowadays, not from the past. Yeah. Is Daisy available now? Daisy is available now, yeah.
Yeah. Um, mainly for organizations and uh, institutions. So not yet for individuals. Yeah. We are working on that launch. So an individual can ask [00:12:00] basically his own tutor. Okay. Okay. Um, and then finally, if you could redesign the school system. Yeah. From scratch. Yeah. Uh, and I have a feeling that you would, I hope we do in this, in this AI era.
Yeah. Right. Uh, what's the first thing that you throw out? Content, outdated content. It needs to be digitalized. It needs to be able to update in a certain kind of way and keep with face. That's, that's for me, the stuff that we need to replace. Fair enough. And what's the first thing you'd protect? So you'd keep.
I think the role of a teacher, because we all need our, and as I say, Batman and Robin, principal, we all need our superheroes. Yeah. And uh, although not everyone would describe the teacher as a superhero, but I'm sure there's someone that teach you something. Yeah. Like a mentor. And I think that's, that's what we need to keep, we need to keep also that human aspect of guiding someone and showing someone the path.
Yeah. I think we'll always need [00:13:00] someone who's, uh, older or has more experience. To help guide us. And, and one example is as simple as if you see someone, if you, uh, are behind someone that already jumped on the water, you, you can, you feel more, it's, it's not easy to jump, more confident to jump in. Yeah.
Right. And I think that that will always help. Exactly Max. Thank you so much. It's been, uh, it's been really good. It's been amazing. It's been a pleasure. Very, thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. I hope you liked it and, uh, yeah. Happy to be on another episode of this podcast maybe soon. Would love to. We'd love to.
Let's do that. Let's do that. Sounds good. Have a good day. You too.