What Stays Human When AI Enters the Classroom? Chord Hero Shares Its View at the Learning & Teaching Expo 2026
On 26 June, Chord Hero CEO and co-founder Anthony Chau took the floor at the company's Cyberport booth with a question for the teachers in the room — one that gets harder to ignore every term: as AI takes on more and more, which of a child's abilities still matter, and which can no machine replace? Rather than start with a product, he started there.
Not whether to use AI, but how
The debate over whether to let AI into schools is, frankly, behind us. It's already here. The question worth our attention is a different one: will children who grow up alongside AI still learn to think, create and judge for themselves — and still know how to be with other people — or will they only learn to do as they're told? The worry was never that AI would replace teachers. It's that we might raise a generation fluent in machines who have never once made something with their own hands.
Hands and heart first. The screen comes last.
That belief sits at the centre of everything Chord Hero builds. Used well, technology should make a child more whole — more imaginative, more understanding, surer in their own judgement — not hollow out the parts that make them who they are. The things a child learns through their hands and their heart haven't been made redundant by AI. If anything, they've become harder to teach, and more worth teaching.
AI Learning, Visible to All
To show what that looks like, Chau walked the room through the path a child takes in a Chord Hero workshop. First they build a real ukulele by hand. Then they paint it and learn to play, turning colour and sound into something of their own. Only then does AI come in: through ChordSpheres, the child writes their own prompt — their own description of what they want their creation to become — and watches the design they painted by hand come to life in front of them. What they've learned isn't a mark on a worksheet. It's something they can see, hold, and point to as theirs. From the first idea to the finished piece, the child leads; AI is only there to help carry it.
A one-minute check for any AI tool
Teachers went home with something they could use straight away — a quick way to weigh up any AI activity before it reaches their classroom. Is the child really creating? Does what comes out actually belong to them? Are they building a real skill, or has the AI quietly done it for them? It takes about a minute, and no technical background at all.
Chord Hero thanks Cyberport and the organisers of the Learning & Teaching Expo 2026 for the platform, and every teacher who spent part of the day with us.
Event Photos
