Episode 026 - Makiri Pugh & Kunal Dalal

explAInED Episode 026 – Makiri Pugh + Kunal Dalal from Vermont Fest 2025

Episode Summary:

In this special episode, Michael, Shaun, and Renee bring together two deeply impactful national voices in AI + Education: Makiri Pugh and Kunal Dalal.

Makiri Pugh shares his work building an AI-powered network based belief systems, culture, governance, and protecting people. His charter network scaffolds AI through mandatory FERPA/ COPPA cybersecurity-informed AI training, integrates AI into MTSS and instructional strategy, and is normalizing usage into sustainable practice across campuses. The upcoming release of an “AI Coaching Framework” is intentionally structured to help leaders verify whether teachers are actually internalizing AI-supported improvements vs just copy/paste compliance. 

In the second half of the conversation, the team shifts into a powerful and very different kind of AI conversation with Kunal Dalal. Dalal talks about sovereignty, his newest edition of his book,  Our Incredible Fragile Moment, and the urgency for families, schools, and communities to own the AI narrative. Dalal discusses his work developing a local LLM in partnership with an indigenous community, introduces the idea of AI swarms and agentics, and makes the case for distributed AI models as an antidote to centralized, corporate-controlled systems. He also unpacks “The Great Unplug” and emphasizes the role adults, especially those who remember life before social media, play in guiding younger generations to think critically and reclaim their own mental autonomy. 

Both guests land on the same point: AI is only worth doing if it strengthens humanity, sovereignty, curiosity, and connection.