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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

#181

Post by megaman821 »

balls187 wrote: post #175
megaman821 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average person has a higher standard of living and more wealth than ever before. Suicide rates are not at all-time highs, they were much higher during the World Wars and Great Depression. Drug abuse is down too, but newer drugs are more potent. Mental illness is a hard stat to compare over time since it is very sensitive to the collection mechanisms. The growth of carbon-free technologies has been exponential ove…

That might be true outside the US; I believe that the standard of living has gone down in the US, due in large part to the pandemic, followed by rampant inflation. The shift away from manufacturing jobs to service jobs also played a role, along with the population boom in major cities. The cities/countries with the highest standards of living all seemingly exist in Europe. EDIT To Add: look at the revolting against M…

Europe also experienced a pandemic, has even worse inflation and worse unemployment. It could just be cultural attitudes make European cities a more pleasant place to live.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#182

Post by szundi »

diddypiddy wrote: post #105
doctoboggan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impressive! You should give yourself more credit as it takes more than just internet and patience to teach yourself enough to get into college. I am also excited for society. However I am worried as well. While an AI tutor who is able to understand the child's current knowledge and gear the lessons toward what will make the most sense will be very powerful, it could also be used for brainwashing, propaganda, misinfor…

We live in a world where wealth is increasingly being concentrated at the top, social mobility for the average person is trending downwards, suicide rates in the US are at all-time highs, drug abuse rising, general deaths of despair rising, mental illness rising, climate and ecological catastrophes mounting by unchecked greed and all of this AI crap is mostly in the hands of the powerful who will use it to solidify t…

What’s this? DC comics?

Open source models will give a lot of people lots of chances. Period.

Other things we’ll see, doomers were never quite right - so far

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#183

Post by keybored »

7thpower wrote: post #19

I am a high school dropout and who learned math using Khan Academy after never having completed more than pre-algebra in middle school. Sal Khan’s work changed my life and allowed me to build a foundation in not only math, but also finance and economics, that allowed me to feel confident enough to go to college. I did not have a support system or people in my life who could teach me these things, but I had the intern…

> Now I work in AI

So it goes.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#184

Post by szundi »

megaman821 wrote: post #149
skrtskrt wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when you visit or live among people or parts of society that that essentially never "modernized" in any meaningful way, the only thing they really need is better healthcare. the rest is a load of crap that is just solving problems created by industrialization and modernization

Are you talking about lost Amazon tribes? Most places I have visited people have seen real quality of life improvements by having clean water, refrigeration, sewage systems and access to the internet.

Yeah yeah, but it’s so romantic that they use bamboo sticks for hunting and killing each other with poisoned arrows while dying of worm infections and shit

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#185

Post by jonas21 »

Pulcinella wrote: post #70

Background: I taught high school science for half a decade and now I am in tech. This will never take off. One, there is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money in Ed.Tech. What little money there is goes to the obvious stuff like student records databases. Anything that requires an ongoing subscription fee is dead in the water. The only reason those stupid smartboards took off is because…

> Anything that requires an ongoing subscription fee is dead in the water. The only reason those stupid smartboards took off is because they make school boards look cool, they are a one time cost, and can be paid for with bonds (because they are a one time cost).

Bonds take a one-time cost and turn it into a recurring cost (like a subscription) that is paid in installments over time. It's baffling that that it's easier to do that than just having a subscription in the first place.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#186

Post by lolinder »

balls187 wrote: post #175
megaman821 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average person has a higher standard of living and more wealth than ever before. Suicide rates are not at all-time highs, they were much higher during the World Wars and Great Depression. Drug abuse is down too, but newer drugs are more potent. Mental illness is a hard stat to compare over time since it is very sensitive to the collection mechanisms. The growth of carbon-free technologies has been exponential ove…

That might be true outside the US; I believe that the standard of living has gone down in the US, due in large part to the pandemic, followed by rampant inflation. The shift away from manufacturing jobs to service jobs also played a role, along with the population boom in major cities. The cities/countries with the highest standards of living all seemingly exist in Europe. EDIT To Add: look at the revolting against M…

This kind of comparison always neglects to consider the fact that any given European country is much smaller and much more homogeneous than the US. Which US state are you comparing to?

Using the Human Development Index (HDI) as a passable proxy for standard of living:

Mississippi has an HDI of 0.866, about the same as Portugal and somewhat higher than Bulgaria (the lowest HDI in the EU) at 0.799.

Massachusetts has an HDI of 0.949, which is about the same as Germany and only a tiny bit lower than #1 Switzerland's 0.967.

In other words: both Europe and the US span a wide range of HDI scores, but the European Union has a wider range in both directions. Europe is both better and worse than the US, depending on where in Europe and where in the US you're talking about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#187

Post by jimmar »

I work in academia and look forward to embracing AI tools. Students motivated to learn will do great with it. Others will need AI to really push them to learn, and it's not clear to me how that will work. Many students just want to know what they have to submit to get a grade. Spending 20 minutes chatting with AI about a topic might be a good learning activity, but incentivizing that with grading will be tricky.

I've sometimes wondered when I'll get called to the Dean's office because a student died in class because breathing wasn't specifically listed as a grading requirement on the syllabus.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#188

Post by balls187 »

My son is a second grader who is behind on his english reading and writing. He's smart, able to understand and convey complex ideas, and can solve math problems beyond his grade level.

He is classified as learning disabled, and has IEP through the school district which gives him accommodations including access to assistive technologies--such as an OCR reader that will read the words on a page to him to allow him to answer questions.

At the very least, AI for ed-tech is the next evolution of those technologies, which may even be allowed without the need of a 504 or IEP (e.g. each student in his class has a school issued laptop).

I'm also curious what subjects would be made obsolete because of the power of AI assistants. I certainly was not taught Latin, and my kids will never need to learn cursive writing.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#189

Post by tomjen3 »

7thpower wrote: post #19

I am a high school dropout and who learned math using Khan Academy after never having completed more than pre-algebra in middle school. Sal Khan’s work changed my life and allowed me to build a foundation in not only math, but also finance and economics, that allowed me to feel confident enough to go to college. I did not have a support system or people in my life who could teach me these things, but I had the intern…

Have you written that story to Khan academy?

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#190

Post by aio2 »

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…

I'm going to be straight forward with you: You're wrong. Not everybody can sit their butts down and go through every word in a textbook. Watching videos on Youtube helps a lot, along with other methods.

Don't believe me? Look at those school tutorials on Youtube. Look at all the math videos, science videos and other topics. And I'm not talking about people who build cool DIY stuff and explain it at the surface level. I'm talking about people going through a school curriculum. There are kids who actually watch this, believe it or not, and it's wonderful.

This counters your statement which is "people don't want to learn". That's simply untrue. Everyday we are learning something new. You may not want to learn whatever they're teaching in school, but you will want to learn other things. And I think a personal tutor, especially a cheaper one, like Khan's AI tutor, will help a lot.

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