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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

#191

Post by keybored »

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…

> , but I bet a lot of them would also like to learn a foreign language or quantum physics and haven't gotten that done.

Learn a foreign language from school? How much do I know of the German/French/Spanish (it was one of them, one of the options) that I studied for years in school? None.

For some subjects, something being taught in school seems like a magnet for making a topic or subject boring and uninteresting. Like if it wasn’t taught at all people would at least not be actively biased against it and might pick it up by happenstance.

Which makes me doubt all of those “no one knows X; therefore we should teach it in school”. I don’t think that follows.

> Personalisation fails for a simple reason - people don't really want to learn.

What does (do? Lack of school English) everyone have in common? Schooling.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#192

Post by dotinvoke »

neuralnetes-COO wrote: post #165
Kye wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "Three, what if the AI is just wrong and starts confusing the student? Even GPT-4 fabricates things all the time." It was bad enough when the text was wrong because of shoddy editing.

This is the purpose of LLMOps. To provide guardrails for precise output to prevent hallucination.

This is the first I'm hearing of LLMOps, please elaborate a bit on what it entails. How does it provide guardrails?

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#193

Post by balls187 »

from-nibly wrote: post #157

Disclaimer I'm talking about the US, but I believe it applies at least somewhat to most of the modern education system everywhere. The problem of education isn't the lack of resources it's the lack of purpose. The internet is all the resources you will ever need. Sure AI could augment this a little. Maybe it could re-explain something you can't quite wrap your head around. The problem is that kids know that the educa…

Is your comment based on recent experience? I have two young school age kids, and my experience with them does not align with your assessment.

Their schooling is vastly different from the "Sit still, do what you're told" model that was used to train the an upcoming generation of factory workers.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#194

Post by jerome-jh »

The article made me smile by how much disconnected to reality it is:

- kids give their assignments to AI so that it solves it for them, not for getting a hint.

- it has long been demonstrated human interaction is required to learn difficult things (such as reading/writing), otherwise kids would learn those skills on video.

- learning is about practicing difficult stuff. AI is about having the computer doing difficult stuff for you.

"Employees who can use AI effectively will be far more valuable than those who can’t."

The point of AI is that there is absolutely nothing to do for it to digest your problem. Show me someone who can't use AI? Must be illiterate?

"jobs of the future—which will become more enjoyable and fulfilling"

... finding and fixing the errors the AI made.

My parents are much better at counting with no calculator than my kids. Mental calculation is no more seen as a valuable skill now that everybody effectively has a calculator in his pocket (smartphone). AI will make some skills once valuable obsolete. The question is not how are we going to teach with AI but WHAT are we going to teach?

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#195

Post by 7thpower »

tomjen3 wrote: post #189
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?

I started to, but then never completed it. Typical dropout behavior ;)

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#196

Post by balls187 »

lolinder wrote: post #186
balls187 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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?

I'm aware of the criticism of Apples to Oranges. I assume given such a basic level of criticism on any comparison between the US and Europe that it's no longer remotely relevant because to any study ranking would clearly account for that.

Oxford Economics just released their 1000 cities index, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-21/new-york-...

The US dominated in the economic advantage, and europe dominated in the quality of life index.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#197

Post by djeastm »

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…

Yep. When I first saw how great AI was at answering my questions, I imagined myself talking to it every day to learn everything I'd ever wanted to know.

Turns out, what I actually want to know is just that small subset of things I need to know to get by, plus maybe a little extra for variety. And I consider myself intellectually curious. I have multiple college degrees, one of which I got purely for the fun of it.

So if I can't bring myself to get AI to teach me things, I can't believe that those less intrinsically motivated will be able to either.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#198

Post by djeastm »

cmcconomy wrote: post #144

Really depressing that Bill Gates is impressed by the idea of "chatting with lincoln". Is this what we were missing in school? Our teachers dressing up with a tophat and bullshitting that they're lincoln and making stuff up?

Right? In twenty years, people are going to be comparing their imaginary conversations with Lincoln as if they're historical fact.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#199

Post by balls187 »

megaman821 wrote: post #181
balls187 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It could just be cultural attitudes make European cities a more pleasant place to live.

Cultural attitudes certainly, particularly around work vs leisure. Also mass transit systems, and social supports for people working in the service industry.

The criticisms for europe are that it takes a lot of tax revenue to support those things, bureaucracy, strikes, etc.

Im not saying one system is better than the other--just that in the US, despite our massive economic might, our standard of living sucks.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#200

Post by jononor »

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…

It some areas superhuman performance is sadly not that high of a bar...
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