PREVENTING KIDS FROM
BECOMING MEAT PUPPETS
FOR A CHAT BOT

Notes from the Saaspocalypse

Gregory Senyshyn // Founder, Asynchronous Academy
Presentation for waterloo.dev • University of Waterloo

26% of university entrants below OECD baseline

OHRC Right to Read Report (2024)

46% report moderate to serious psychological distress

CAMH OSDUHS Survey

60% miss 10% or more of classes

Ontario Ministry of Education

81.4 ➔ 88.2 median university entry grade 2006–2021

Council of Ontario Universities

How?

5 KIDS
IN ONTARIO

ONTARIOLITERACY.CA

Ontario High School Market Scale

~630,000 All High School Students in Ontario

Gr. 9

1/4 Grade 10 (~155k)

Gr. 11

Gr. 12

~48,000 All Ontario Private High Schools Combined (~7.5% of Province)

1,000 Students Thriving Solo Online Private School (~$500k+ ARR)

$0/MO

Free Tier

57 ARM64 Lambdas • 14 DynamoDB Tables • CloudFront • Cognito (2% of 50k)

~$22

Fixed Costs

AWS WAF Perimeter Defense + Route53 DNS + KMS PII Key + 23 CloudWatch Alarms Across 29 Microservices

~2¢

Open-Weight AI (DeepInfra)

Gemma 4 31B + FLUX.1 Schnell (~2¢ per Full 20-Chapter RPG + 20 Portraits vs. $2.00+ Frontier)

My Two Nightmares

01

Losing Student Work

02

Getting Hacked for $100k of LLM Distilling

4-Layer Zero-Loss Backups (~50¢/mo)

L1

localStorage Keystroke Autosave

L2

DynamoDB PITR + S3 Bucket Versioning

L3

Daily AWS Backup + 30-Day WORM Lock

L4

Monthly Export to Google Drive

Redundant Kill Switches

WAF

Edge Rate-Limiting & Burst Caps

SSM

Lambda Kill Switch

IAM

AWS BudgetsAction

But, Why?

MY PEDAGOGICAL
BEEFS

01

Video-Based Communication

02

Inquiry-Based Learning

03

AI Exists

BEEF #1

Bone JK, Bu F, Sonke JK, Fancourt D. The decline in reading for pleasure over 20 years of the American Time Use Survey. iScience. 2025 Aug 20;28(9):113288.

01

Close Reading

02

Written Essay

03

Video Argument

1500 BC

Vedic Scholars

370 BC

Socrates (Phaedrus)

2026

Elon Musk

2026

Sam Altman

2026

TBD

BEEF #2

Q1

"Why did Quebec oppose conscription in 1917, and how did French vs. English newspapers frame the crisis?"

Q2

"How did the shift to a wartime economy transform daily life for Canadian factory workers and women?"

Q3

"What caused the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, and whose interests did the government protect?"

BEEF #3

Pop Quiz

Interactive Dilemma

Which of these tasks should you NEVER give an LLM?

A

Drilling Through a Joist

Asking "How many 1/2" holes can I drill through a joist without my second floor collapsing?"

B

Generating a Password

Asking for a secure, 16-character randomized string for your production database.

C

Leftover Food Poisoning

Asking "Will I get food poisoning from these leftovers?" based on how long they sat out.

D

Natural Family Planning

Asking "Based on my cycle calendar, what are the odds I'll get pregnant tonight?"

scan to follow on IG for candy!

@asyncacademy

What?

01

Good Vibes Only

02

Short Attention Span

03

Never Cleans Their Room

PREVENTING
MUTINY

01

Design Your Course

02

Prepare Your Materials

03

Keep the Commons Clean

LLMS AREN'T
MAGIC

01

Good Exemplars

02

Descriptive Feedback

03

Self-Assessment Tools

SET UP YOUR
CLASSROOM

End-to-End Autonomy

ENV

Agent-Accessible Cloud Sandbox

MAIL

Real Corporate Email Inbox

IAC

100% Declarative IaC Templates

END-TO-END TESTS

SELF-HEALING LOOP

Protect the Context Window

MAP

Codebase Map & Schema Dictionary

PACK

<1,000-Line Files & JSON Manifests

AST

AST-Grep Over Regex Guessing

Adams GS, Converse BA, Hales AH, Klotz LE. People systematically overlook subtractive changes. Nature. 2021 Apr;592(7853):258-261.

Keep the Commons Clean

01

"What is the worst part of this repo?"

02

"Does this solution represent a 'gold standard' implementation?"

03

"Do you see any opportunities to make the codebase more DRY or reduce redundancy?"

WELCOME,
INVOLUNTARY TEACHERS

QUESTIONS & DISCUSSION

Asynchronous Academy • waterloo.dev

Gregory Senyshyn // Founder, Asynchronous Academy • Context Window Cleaner
asyncacademy.ca

Team Training
I don't just work with kids; I also do trainings for grown-ups.
gregorysenyshyn.com/training