Lately, there's been a lot of scary messaging surrounding AI, but I'm here to share some incredible stuff I discovered this weekend that showcases the positive side of generative AI. Let me take you through what grabbed my attention and got me pumped up especially around the potential to reimagine education. Let's dive in!
Sal Khan's TED Talk: A Game-Changer for Education
I watched a fantastic TED Talk by Sal Khan, the CEO of Khan Academy, a nonprofit organization that aims to provide free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. He talked about and demonstrated a chat technology his company has developed, which acts like a super tutor for students as well as a helpful teaching assistant for teachers.
One of the coolest things about their AI tutor named Khanmigo is that it doesn't just give kids the answers. It prompts them to try other avenues to solve the problem.
Pretty cool huh! Additionally, the conversations are recorded and viewable by the teacher. And according to Khan this is just the tip of the iceberg. He says think about math teachers trying to teach kids to code! This could be a game-changer.
Now, this one is maybe even more amazing because we have a lot of math teachers. We've all been trying to teach the world to code, but there aren't a lot of computing teachers out there. And what you just saw, even when I'm tutoring my kids, when they're learning to code, I can't help them this well, this fast, this is really going to be a super tutor.
The screenshot below also shows how the tool was trained to help kids understand why they are learning something. They can click a button,"Why should I care about learning this?" and there's an important reminder not to share any personal data.
The Ted Talk by Sal Khan is 15 minutes long. I think it's important for everyone to watch, not just educators and parents. Additionally, when you click the link you'll find several other resources shared by Sal Khan on the subject.
Coincidentally, I found a new podcast this weekend called "Possible" which is hosted by Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger. The episode was called "How might we develop and deploy beneficial, safe artificial general intelligence for humanity?" and the guests were Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and Greg Brockman, OpenAI co-founder and president. And Khan Academy came up in their discussion.
REID:
Talk a little bit about education, medicine. You know, like, what are some of the advances there that you could see across the entire world? Because I think we see line of sight to some of those right now.
GREG:
Yeah, I think education, for me, is one that I’m extremely interested in. Actually, if we weren’t going to successfully start an AI company, one of my backups was to do a programming education company, because I think the way that you teach people today – like, everyone has a story about that one teacher who really understood them, who took the time to get to know them, learn what motivated them, and just really inspired them to do more. And imagine if you could give that kind of teacher to every student 24/7 whenever they want for free. It’s still a little bit science fiction, but it’s much less science fiction than it used to be. And you can look at things like Khan Academy, who are really starting to take GPT-4 and deploy it in the classroom, and really figure out how to steer this technology so that it’s a helpful tutor that if a kid asks for, “oh, just do my homework for me,” it’ll say, “no, no, no, I don’t do that,” but tries to probe to figure out what they’re excited about and how to really motivate them. And so, I think that this kind of technology of just reaching global scale and figuring out how do you get the best out of people, like, that is the realm that we’re starting to enter now.
And finally, I want to highlight another awesome resource related to AI in education: ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). Within the past month they've produced and published some excellent videos. One that stood out for me is called: AI Explorations in Schools with ISTE and GM. This video is 6 minutes and I highly recommend watching as it includes teachers and students.
ISTE also has some wonderful resources to help teachers navigate this new world and they say educators are the key to preparing students to thrive in a world where artificial intelligence is an integral part of their lives and careers.
So, that's a wrap on amazing resources I came across this weekend that show the brighter side of AI. From Sal Khan's inspiring TED Talk to the insights from OpenAI and ISTE's partnership with General Motors to help prepare teachers for what lies ahead. I hope these resources get you as excited as I am about AI's potential in education. Let's guide people towards the positive aspects and work together to build a better future for learners everywhere!
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