A Special Episode: Inside BoodleBox’s “Sensible Car” Approach to AI in Education
Mon Feb 02 2026
This special episode of The Smarter Campus Podcast features a conversation from inside the BoodleBox team. Zach sits down with Reilly Stanton, Lead Data Scientist at Boodle AI, to unpack how the platform’s philosophy around safety, clarity, and human-centered design shows up at the technical level.
Reilly offers a rare, engineer-first look at how large language models actually work—moving past hype and fear to explain embeddings, tokens, and probability in plain terms. By demystifying the technology, the episode helps educators and administrators better understand both the capabilities and the limits of AI, and why misunderstanding those fundamentals can lead to risky classroom use and misguided policy.
Using the metaphor of a “sensible car” versus a Ferrari, the conversation explores why educational AI needs guardrails by design. It also makes a strong case for teaching communication, critical thinking, and ethical reasoning as core AI skills—keeping humans firmly in the loop as AI becomes a normal part of teaching and learning.
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This special episode of The Smarter Campus Podcast features a conversation from inside the BoodleBox team. Zach sits down with Reilly Stanton, Lead Data Scientist at Boodle AI, to unpack how the platform’s philosophy around safety, clarity, and human-centered design shows up at the technical level. Reilly offers a rare, engineer-first look at how large language models actually work—moving past hype and fear to explain embeddings, tokens, and probability in plain terms. By demystifying the technology, the episode helps educators and administrators better understand both the capabilities and the limits of AI, and why misunderstanding those fundamentals can lead to risky classroom use and misguided policy. Using the metaphor of a “sensible car” versus a Ferrari, the conversation explores why educational AI needs guardrails by design. It also makes a strong case for teaching communication, critical thinking, and ethical reasoning as core AI skills—keeping humans firmly in the loop as AI becomes a normal part of teaching and learning.