Generalist AI gives answers, removes friction, and does the thinking. That’s great for productivity—but when AI does the cognitive work, students don’t build the skill. AI Friction Labs offers a solution: Socratic dialogues, role-plays, and scenarios that resist easy resolution. Students do the thinking. The AI provides the resistance. The transcript becomes the assessment—a full record of how each student navigated difficulty.
AI Friction Labs started in a rhetoric and inquiry course at Fairleigh Dickinson University, where founder Mike Kentz was using his classroom as a product testing ground. The question was simple: What happens when you flip AI from helper to challenger?
The answer changed everything. Students who engaged with AI that pushed back—that asked harder questions, resisted jargon, and refused surface-level responses—produced thinking that was more rigorous, more visible, and more assessable than anything a traditional assignment had ever captured. AI Friction Labs was built to bring that experience to every educator.
The platform features everything a teacher needs to bring friction to their students:
Friction Bots: AI scenarios designed to challenge, not comply. Each bot has goals that conflict with easy resolution, pushing students to reason under pressure.
Transcript Review: Record of exactly how students navigate difficulty. Every exchange is captured—persistence, clarity, adaptability—creating an assessment of cognition.
Assignment Builder: Tool that allows users to build assignments from preexisting simulations and documents, with integrated rubrics and scaffolding. Materials can be aligned to learning objectives and graded coursework.
Bot Library: Prebuilt simulations across disciplines—from Socratic mirrors to stakeholder negotiations—that are ready to deploy in any course.
Cognitive Rubric: Tool for grading cognition, not content, aiding teachers in evaluating persistence, clarity, adaptability, composure, and strategic thinking from every transcript.
AI Friction Labs is conducting experiments in K–12 classrooms and sharing updates on the website. Educators can check the site for additional case studies across disciplines.