About Orbrya
Orbrya started as a question I kept asking and could not find a good answer to: why is no one teaching kids to evaluate what AI produces?
Oliver
Founder, Orbrya
I spent a couple of years trying to figure out how to build something better for kids in digital spaces. The specific product changed as I learned more, but the problem underneath it stayed the same every time: kids were using powerful technology without any framework for thinking critically about what it was giving them.
The AI piece hit me hardest. By the time I started paying close attention, most of the conversation in education had already settled into a familiar groove. Teach kids to prompt AI. Teach them to use it more efficiently. Give them better tools for getting answers faster. The products being marketed to students, many of them aggressively, were built to do the work for them. Not one of them was built to help a student ask whether the work was any good.
I watched kids submit AI-generated essays they had not read. I watched them take AI answers at face value on assignments that required actual reasoning. And I watched the adults around them either ban AI outright or hand them a list of approved tools, neither of which addressed the thing that actually mattered: nobody was teaching these kids to evaluate what AI produces.
The research I found made it worse, not better. Studies were showing a meaningful negative correlation between AI dependence and critical thinking ability. The workforce data was pointing in a clear direction: the wage premium was not going to the students who used AI the most. It was going to the ones who could assess and direct it. Those two things together, the cognitive cost of uncritical AI use and the professional cost of not developing evaluation skills, made the gap feel urgent in a way that was hard to sit with.
That is the gap Orbrya is built to close. Not AI use, which kids are already doing on their own. Evaluation. Critical thinking about AI output. The skill that actually transfers to the workforce, to college, to independent adult life. I built Orbrya because I kept looking for this curriculum and it did not exist, so I decided to build it.
The research foundation
On critical thinking and AI dependence
Research published by Gerlich in 2025 identified a significant negative correlation between AI dependence and critical thinking ability. Orbrya reads this as direct evidence that how students use AI matters as much as whether they use it. The curriculum is built around the premise that the habit of accepting AI output without evaluation is not neutral; it actively works against the thinking skills students need.
On the workforce gap
PwC's 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer found a 56% wage premium for positions requiring AI skills. Researcher Chahna Gonsalves at King's College London published related work in 2024 examining the distinction between AI use and AI evaluation in professional contexts. Orbrya's interpretation of this body of research: the premium is not a reward for using AI frequently. It reflects the value of knowing how to work with AI critically. That is a learnable skill, and it is the one this curriculum teaches.
On where schools stand
RAND's September 2025 research found that 81% of students say their teachers have never taught them to evaluate AI outputs, and 45% of principals report having no AI policy at all. The College Board found in October 2025 that 69% of high school students have already used ChatGPT for school assignments. Orbrya reads this not as a failure of schools but as a realistic picture of how fast AI moved relative to how fast institutions can adapt. The gap is real, and it is one families can close at home without waiting.
The statistics above are cited accurately from their published sources. The interpretive conclusions connecting these findings to AI critical thinking instruction represent Orbrya's own analysis of the research.
Our mission
Orbrya exists to close the gap between how AI is being used in education and the skills the workforce will actually reward. The goal is not to make students skeptical of AI or to discourage them from using it. The goal is to give them enough genuine understanding of how AI works, and enough practical experience evaluating what it produces, that they can stay in command of their own thinking no matter what tools they use.
Success, for us, looks like a student who finishes the curriculum and does not need to be reminded to verify an AI output. They do it because it has become the natural next step. They know how to spot a confident error, how to cross-reference a claim, and how to articulate what they actually contributed to a piece of work versus what AI produced. Those habits are what this curriculum is designed to form.
We are starting with a pilot year because we want to build this right. Founding families are not buying a finished product. They are joining a process that will make the curriculum sharper for every student who follows them. That is the version of Orbrya we are building, and we are grateful for the families willing to be part of building it.
Launching August 1, 2026
$5.99/month or $59/year, locked in permanently for as long as you stay subscribed. You will receive our newsletter with blog posts, videos, and updates as we build toward the August 1 launch.
You'll receive our newsletter with blog posts, videos, and updates as we build toward August 1. Waitlist subscribers receive founding-family pricing at launch.