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Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

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Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#51

Post by atonse »

koolba wrote: post #17
chii wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But now you have an AI that solves it for you. and then the AI explains how it was solved, step by step. You can repeatedly ask it to clarify, and it has endless patience and won't get bored or sick of you. Eventually, you understand how the equation is solved. No human teacher would be able to achieve this.

> No human teacher would be able to achieve this. This immediately reminds me of the scene in Terminator 2 where Sarah Connor is reflecting on how the terminator, reprogrammed to aid John Connor, is the best father figure he’s ever had. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tksN5Jaan9E “ It would never leave him, and it would never hurt him. Never shout at him or get drunk and hit him or say he was too busy to spend time w…

Wow this video is making me want to go and re-watch Terminator 2.

Amazing. what a beautiful scene, words, everything. And it's objectively true.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#52

Post by xscott »

GolfPopper wrote: post #14
chii wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But now you have an AI that solves it for you. and then the AI explains how it was solved, step by step. You can repeatedly ask it to clarify, and it has endless patience and won't get bored or sick of you. Eventually, you understand how the equation is solved. No human teacher would be able to achieve this.

But sometimes it makes up answers that are wrong but sound plausible to you. You have no way to tell when it does this, and neither does it.

That's absolutely a bug that needs to be fixed, but I think it's possible. Maybe have the network which generates the answer be moderated by another network that assesses the truthiness of it.

It's just a matter of priorities for the company designing the models.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#54

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

nbzso wrote: post #6

If you have some form of financial independence in your life, some form of the grid backup, you know what is all this about. Did you think the richest of the elite will give their kids this form of education? Seriously? My kids learn in a classical way. No aid, no electronic devices, no "modern" bullshit. Critical thinking is a must in a world of corporations greed and digital dystopia. The school mandatory program i…

I agree the endgame is turning all education (and other areas of society) into McDonald's type crap because it's cheapest to offer.

But it's weird to make this about Microsoft when AI is being shoved down our throats from all directions. Like you said, it's a "world of" greed.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#55

Post by tombert »

falcor84 wrote: post #26
croes wrote: post #5

>Picture this: You're a seventh-grade student who struggles to keep up in math. But now, you have an AI tutor like the one Sal describes by your side. Picture this: You're a seventh-grade student who struggles to solve the equations in math. But now you have an AI that solves it for you. I bet that there will be more students of the later type than the former.

But does a typical teenager actually need to "keep up in math"? I would hazard a guess that only maybe 5% of people would need to ever utilize any math beyond basic algebra. Wouldn't it make more sense to leave these kids to do something else with their time, while offering personalized (possibly AI supported) math programs to those who actually intend to do something with it?

I think that number might be a bit higher if students had access to near-constant tutoring to answer any kind of questions that come up; I think a lot of kids get frustrated because they don't immediately get something and there isn't someone around to answer questions.

Sample size of one, and obviously there's a million confounding variables here, but I think that my love of math stems from the fact that both my parents, and especially my dad, really loved math (and physics), and so whenever I had any questions about any aspect of math (at least up to calculus and differential equations), I could ask one of them for help pretty much whenever I wanted, and they would enthusiastically help me immediately, and eventually I grew to love it myself.

Eventually I did well enough in math to where they gave me a test in school and I was able to skip two grades in it (going from 7th grade to 9th grade level). I ended up getting much more into discrete math and surpassed my parents in the more "pure" math. Even if my genetics were completely unaltered, I am quite convinced that if my parents weren't there to provide constant help then that wouldn't have happened.

I think AI has the possibility of providing a comparable experience to what I had. It can patiently explain every aspect of math that any middle or high school student is likely to come across, and I think it has power to "de-frustrate" them as a result.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#56

Post by red_admiral »

wisty wrote: post #37

> But drawing on his experience creating Khanmigo, an AI-powered tutor, Sal makes a compelling case that AI-powered technologies will be different. That’s because we finally have a way to give every student the kind of personalized learning, support, and guidance that’s historically been out of reach for most kids in most classrooms. As Sal puts it, “Getting every student a dedicated on-call human tutor is cost prohi…

This.

The people for whom personalized learning works well, can do it with any technology, even books. I recently learnt a new programming language from an O'Reilly book just fine, then did some exercises in a (non-AI) online REPL/tutorial tool, then went off to code a project of my own.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#57

Post by empyrrhicist »

falcor84 wrote: post #26
croes wrote: post #5

>Picture this: You're a seventh-grade student who struggles to keep up in math. But now, you have an AI tutor like the one Sal describes by your side. Picture this: You're a seventh-grade student who struggles to solve the equations in math. But now you have an AI that solves it for you. I bet that there will be more students of the later type than the former.

But does a typical teenager actually need to "keep up in math"? I would hazard a guess that only maybe 5% of people would need to ever utilize any math beyond basic algebra. Wouldn't it make more sense to leave these kids to do something else with their time, while offering personalized (possibly AI supported) math programs to those who actually intend to do something with it?

I teach people who thought this way, and later decided to enter a career that requires basic data analysis literacy. They struggle with things like order of operations, which is incredibly frustrating. Teaching math up to the high school/introductory college level is about building foundational skills that can be applied in different directions. Will they need to apply trig identities? Probably not, but the process of getting there in high school is good for their minds and foundational abilities.

So yes, I'd personally say we should expect people to "keep up in math".

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#58

Post by moomoo11 »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #25
moomoo11 wrote: post #12

AI is like the promise of back when consumer internet was just popping off. You can have all the knowledge at your fingertips! What actually happened: ads shoved down our throats and way more distractions (porn, games, etc.) Meanwhile math and reading levels continue to plummet. So I don’t have high hopes. Those of us who use tools to succeed will continue to do so. Others who can’t control themselves will keep compl…

The consumer internet is a blessing and a curse. Without consumers the internet doesn't have much economic benefit. To use the internet to sell things you need the normies- so you pull all the non-technical people onto the internet where they are scammed, hacked, and manipulated at scale.

That's my point. Same with AI.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#59

Post by ben_w »

tombert wrote: post #22
croes wrote: post #5

>Picture this: You're a seventh-grade student who struggles to keep up in math. But now, you have an AI tutor like the one Sal describes by your side. Picture this: You're a seventh-grade student who struggles to solve the equations in math. But now you have an AI that solves it for you. I bet that there will be more students of the later type than the former.

I dunno, I've found ChatGPT (and its clones) have been immensely useful as a learning tool for me. Having it summarize stuff in different ways and being able to immediately ask clarifying questions has been sort of a game-changing learning tool, at least for me. I don't think they should allow use of AI during tests because yeah, it'd just do all the work for them and they wouldn't learn anything, but I absolutely th…

> I don't think they should allow use of AI during tests because yeah, it'd just do all the work for them and they wouldn't learn anything, but I absolutely think there's value in being able to use it as a 24/7 instant tutor, particularly since ChatGPT can be coerced into explaining things in basically any style that you'd like.

For any test where there's an AI good enough to cheat with and cheap enough students can afford it, the test itself is no longer important — it is as pointless as testing how well students can use fountain pens when everyone uses a keyboard for actual work. Or how well they can play chess.

I'm not sure the exact shape of what each model can and can't do, but I am confident that this means they're never be an important "cheating" risk, not even when they're technically capable of it.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#60

Post by red_admiral »

cinntaile wrote: post #11
wumbo wrote: post #2

[flagged]

What else would you call Khanacademy if not a pioneer of innovation in education? You can learn all kinds of subjects using their platform in an incremental way on a massive scale. The platform includes little tests to test your understanding after you watched the videos that explain the concept.

A pioneer of a form of education that works for some, but not others.
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