Edition 351 | April 28, 2026 The Dyslexic AI Newsletter by LM Lab AI

Reading Time: 9 minutes Listening Time: 13 minutes

Happy Tuesday.

This week I sat with two pieces of research that I cannot get out of my head.

The first is a Rithm Project survey of 2,383 young people, ages 13 to 24. They wanted to understand who is at high risk for harmful AI use. The result surprised even the researchers.

The second is a Gallup, Walton, and GSV survey of Gen Z. They asked young people how they actually feel about AI. The numbers moved in a direction nobody expected.

And then there is something a National Public Radio story flagged earlier this year that is starting to come into sharper focus: the most accurate AI tools cost the most, which means richer schools and families get better AI than poorer ones.

Put it all together, and a hard question shows up.

Who is AI actually serving right now? And who is being left behind?

Let me tell you what is really happening.

When researchers wanted to know which young people are most at risk for unhealthy AI use, they expected the answer to be obvious. Lonely kids. Isolated kids. Kids without friend groups.

That is not what they found.

The strongest predictor of high-risk AI use was young people feeling like a burden or being unable to be authentic with other people. Students with friend groups could still be at risk. Kids surrounded by people who loved them could still slide into dependence on AI for emotional connection.

The trigger was not loneliness. It was the feeling of not being able to be yourself with the people around you.

I want you to sit with that for a second.

For dyslexic and neurodivergent kids, this is a punch in the chest. Because that feeling, the feeling of not being able to be authentic, of sensing you are too much or too different or too slow or too weird for the room, is something many of us carried for our entire childhoods.

It was the assumption behind every red pen mark on a spelling test. It was the silence after I read out loud in class. It was every time someone said "just try harder" when trying harder was already the only thing I had.

And the survey is telling us, with data, that kids who feel that way are now turning to AI in ways that hurt them.

Not because they are weak. Not because they lack discipline. Because they finally found something that listens without judgment, and they are spending too much of themselves on it because the alternative feels worse.

If the Rithm survey told us who is at risk, the Gallup survey tells us how the broader generation feels.

Excitement about AI dropped 14 points in a single year. Only 22 percent of Gen Z respondents now describe themselves as excited about AI. Only 18 percent feel hopeful, down 9 points. Anger rose 9 points.

This is striking because Gen Z is not a generation that is anti-technology. They grew up with smartphones. They are the most digitally fluent generation in history. And they are losing patience with AI faster than any other group.

Why?

I have a theory. It is not just about AI being scary or hyped or unreliable. It is about something more specific.

Young people are not seeing themselves in the version of AI that is being sold to them.

Most AI tools are still optimized for office productivity, professional writing, and tasks that look like adult work. The flashy demos are about coding, business analysis, and corporate workflows. The voices in the AI conversation are mostly venture capitalists, tech executives, and engineers.

Where is the AI that helps a 14-year-old dyslexic kid finally read a chapter book?

Where is the AI that gives a homeschool parent an evaluation framework for choosing tools that fit their kid?

Where is the AI built around the question "what does this person actually need" instead of "what can we sell to enterprises"?

That gap is part of what Gen Z is reacting to. And honestly, I do not blame them.

Earlier this year, a Brookings Institution report covered by NPR raised something that should bother all of us.

The report, by global education expert Rebecca Winthrop, pointed out that AI can absolutely make classrooms more accessible for students with learning disabilities, including dyslexia. That part is true.

But Winthrop also flagged something most coverage skipped over.

"AI can massively increase existing divides."

Why? Because the free AI tools that are most accessible to students and schools are also the least reliable and least factually accurate. The most accurate, most useful AI models cost more. Which means richer communities and richer schools can afford better AI.

For the first time in education technology history, schools have to pay more for more accurate information.

Read that again. The kids who already have the most resources will get the most accurate AI. The kids who already have the least will get the noisiest, least reliable AI.

The "AI revolution" for education risks becoming another way the gap gets wider.

This is not theoretical. This is happening now. Edition 343 ("Stanford Just Measured Everything") showed that AI capability is accelerating faster than any technology in history. Edition 339 ("Your AI Just Forgot Everything") showed that the most useful AI is the AI with the best memory and context, which is not the free version.

The kids who need AI accessibility the most, dyslexic kids, neurodivergent learners, kids in under-resourced schools, are the most likely to get the version of AI that fails them.

That is not progress. That is automated inequality.

I want to draw the threads together.

Finding 1: The strongest predictor of harmful AI use among young people is feeling like they cannot be authentic with the people around them.

Finding 2: Gen Z is increasingly frustrated and angry about AI, with positive sentiment cratering in a single year.

Finding 3: The most accurate AI is the most expensive AI, and the kids who most need accurate AI are the least likely to get it.

What is the connection?

The kids who would benefit most from genuinely good AI are the kids being given the worst version of it.

A dyslexic kid in a wealthy private school district might get access to Claude Pro or ChatGPT Plus, with proper memory features, design taste, and accuracy. They get a tool that reduces cognitive load.

A dyslexic kid in an underfunded public school gets a free chatbot with limited memory, fewer features, and lower accuracy. They get a tool that adds cognitive load while pretending to reduce it.

Both kids feel like burdens. Both kids are looking for something that lets them be authentic. One gets a real tool. The other gets a hollow version that may eventually fail them.

This is what the Rithm survey is picking up on. The kids who feel they cannot be authentic are turning to AI. And the AI they can afford might be exactly the wrong AI.

In Edition 342 ("The Weight in My Chest"), I said I refuse to wait for someone else to tell me how AI changes my life. In Edition 345 ("We Have Been Asking the Wrong Question About AI"), I made the case that evaluation is the most important skill of the AI era.

These two ideas land differently when you realize that most of the kids who need this work the most cannot do it for themselves.

That is on us.

This is exactly why the work I have been doing matters more than I sometimes realize.

The Cognitive Partner OS from Edition 344. The evaluation frameworks from Edition 345. The Homeschool Parent's Guide to AI from Edition 337. The family evaluation tool I started building in Edition 341. The cognitive fit principle. The Single Source of Truth. The Cognitive Balance Model.

Every single one of these tools and frameworks exists because the default version of AI does not fit dyslexic and neurodivergent users. It does not fit families. It does not fit kids. It does not fit anyone outside the wealthy professional knowledge worker who is the implicit default user that AI products are designed for.

If we do not build for the kids in the Rithm survey, nobody else will.

If we do not build for the families who cannot afford Claude Pro or ChatGPT Plus, nobody else will.

If we do not push for accessibility-first, neurodivergent-first, family-first design, the divide that NPR flagged is going to become permanent.

This is the work. And I want you to know that when I write about evaluation frameworks and prompt libraries and homeschool agents, I am thinking about that 14-year-old dyslexic kid who is using a cheap AI chatbot to do her homework because she cannot read the textbook and her school cannot afford the better tool.

She is the reason any of this matters.

Three things. This week. No matter what role you have.

1. If You Are a Parent or Caregiver

Have one honest conversation with the young person in your life about how they actually use AI. Not what they tell you they use it for. What they really do with it.

Ask: "What do you talk to AI about that you do not feel like you can talk to me about?" The answer might break your heart. It might also be the most important thing you hear this year.

The Rithm research says human connection protects. Connection does not mean control. It means being someone they can be authentic with.

2. If You Work in Education or Have Influence in a School

Look at what AI tools your students actually have access to. Is your school giving them the free, less accurate version of AI? Are you putting better tools in front of the kids who need accommodations the most, or are those kids getting the worst tools?

This is a budget question. It is also a values question. Push for the conversation.

3. If You Are a Builder, Founder, or Educator With Reach

Build for the kids who do not have access. Build for the families that cannot pay for premium tools. Make your evaluation frameworks free. Make your prompt libraries free. Make the version of AI that actually fits a dyslexic brain available to the kid who needs it most, not just the kid whose parents can afford it.

If you are a Cognitive Partner Member, this is your community too. Help me figure out how to get this work into the hands of the people who need it without paywalls in the way.

Here is the honest version.

AI is not going to revolutionize education on its own. It is not going to lift up neurodivergent kids by itself. It won't make the world more accessible by itself.

It will go where the money goes. That is what every previous educational technology has done. That is what current AI development is already showing us. The most resourced communities get the best tools. The least resourced get the leftovers.

Unless people like us push back. Unless we build deliberately for the kids being left behind. Unless we make the case, with our own work, that the future of AI has to include the people the present version is failing.

The Rithm survey told us what kids actually need: to feel seen, safe, and free to be authentic. The Gallup survey told us they are losing faith. The accessibility report told us the divide is getting wider, not narrower.

These are not three separate problems. They are one problem with three faces.

The solution is not more AI. The solution is better AI, applied with intention, by people who refuse to let it become another tool of inequity.

That work starts wherever you are. With whoever you can reach. With whatever tools you can afford or create.

If you have made it this far in this newsletter, you are already part of it.

Matt "Coach" Ivey Founder, LM Lab AI | Creator, The Dyslexic AI Newsletter

Dictated, not typed. Obviously.

📊 A new Rithm Project survey of 2,383 young people found the strongest predictor of harmful AI use is feeling like a burden or being unable to be authentic with others. Not social isolation. Not screen time. Authenticity.

📉 A Gallup, Walton, and GSV survey of Gen Z shows AI excitement dropped 14 points in a single year. Anger rose 9 points. Only 22% are excited. Only 18% are hopeful.

⚖️ A Brookings/NPR analysis flagged that the most accurate AI tools cost the most. For the first time in education technology history, schools must pay more for better information. The accessibility divide is widening, not closing.

🧠 Dyslexic and neurodivergent kids are exactly the kids who need accurate, well-designed AI the most. They are also the kids most likely to get the worst version of AI.

🏗️ Every framework I have built (Cognitive Balance Model, HGI, Single Source of Truth, evaluation tools, Cognitive Partner OS) exists because the default version of AI does not fit the people who need it most. This is the work.

🛠️ Three things to do this week: have an honest conversation with a young person about how they actually use AI, audit what tools your school or family actually has access to, and build deliberately for the people being left behind.

Edition 352: We hold AI to a standard we have never held ourselves to. Coffee orders get made wrong. Yearbooks have typos. Self-driving cars crash less than humans. Why is "AI makes mistakes" the argument that wins? A look at the double standard, why it hurts dyslexic creators most, and the personal worry behind the whole thing.