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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

#301

Post by 7thpower »

EarthAmbassador wrote: post #287
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…

Not so fast: my daughter could not afford Khan’s tutoring service at a crucial time in her development. I was out of work, had depleted our savings supporting the family, and couldn’t afford it. I pleaded for a waiver. The answer was no and basically “go eff myself.” My daughter lost all confidence in her math aptitude. Her teachers never alerted us as parents about her progress. We’ve been repairing the damage ever…

They have actual tutors that you pay??

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#302

Post by 7thpower »

free_energy_min wrote: post #289
7thpower wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely had advantages in that I knew tools like Khan Academy existed, was not battling depression, and also had talked to people who I admired and saw they were not so different than me. I also had a mother who loved me and a step-father who came into my life a bit later who cared, but they were dealing with some pretty big challenges of their own, including mental health, bad relationships, debt, children who…

Thanks for all the detail, it’s inspiring! How did the learning lead to your first job in tech/AI?

I got into a job in corporate IT at a good company and then moved through a bunch of roles, including putting together one of our first data science/ML teams. A couple years later when I was doing product work, gpt 2 came out, so I had started working with it for fun and writing Points of View for our company about how we could leverage these technologies and what the market dynamics would looks like and implications, etc. (I am basically a dollar store version of Ben Thompson.)

It was mostly dismissed at the time, because Alexa and Siri were what people thought of, but when ChatGPT got released I was in a great position and was able to quickly ship. Now I lead that capability for one of our relatively large subsidiaries.

For me, what lead me here was mostly a fascination with the decreasing marginal cost of knowledge work. There is something about building these types of products that is just very fun and feels like cheating, I love it.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#303

Post by gcanyon »

svnt wrote: post #279
gcanyon wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Wealth” is becoming a tricky term. Bill Gates is approximately a million times richer than I am, but for many things he can’t get anything like a million times the value I can. He can spend 1000x what I do on clothes, but I won’t be appreciably colder or less comfortable than he is. His house might cost 100x what my apartment would go for, but again, it isn’t 100x nicer. He can eat steak and lobster for every meal,…

> He can spend 1000x what I do on clothes, but I won’t be appreciably colder or less comfortable than he is. This misses the point of expensive clothing entirely. Many people would disagree that his house is not 100 times nicer than yours. He doesn’t use computers and phones like you do. He uses people who use technology that is 100kx your computer and phone. You’re talking about the essential function of an object.…

I think the point about clothes is exactly the point I was trying to make: everything you are alluding to that gives "value" to expensive clothes is an artificial construct. A fashionable jacket is fashionable because people agree that it is stylish. That doesn't make it "better" at being a jacket. More to the point, I can only feel a disparity between Mr. Gates and myself by convincing myself that style matters.

His house is bigger. He can only occupy one room at a time. I know where his house is: I lived across Lake Washington from him. I've seen the houses across the lake from his, with the exact same view, and they are worth 1/30th of his house because they are 1/30th as big. But again: he can only be in one room at a time. I'm not saying there's no difference; I'm saying there's nothing like 30x difference.

I'm not sure I comprehend your point about hiring people to do work. 100,000 people using 100,000 iPhones are not 100,000 times as capable of doing most things.

In short, no: expensive things don't take on (many) additional functions. That was exactly my point, and I don't think you've disproven it.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#304

Post by threecheese »

relativ575 wrote: post #300
pictureofabear wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the crux of the problem in my opinion. Children look to adults as role models for what to learn and why. We already know that children respond better to role models who have similar ethnicities and backgrounds to them, let alone being the same species. AI cannot and will never be able to provide this motivation to learn, which is what kids actually need, because it is not human.

> AI cannot and will never be able to provide this motivation to learn, which is what kids actually need, because it is not human. We hear all the time about digital addiction, gamification, FB, Tiktok, etc. Addiction is arguably more difficult to achieve than motivation. AI will be able to motivate people just fine

Using modern digital gamification to reinforce learning outcomes, a-la TikTok , will probably produce a generation of absolutely brilliant, weird psychopaths.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#305

Post by svnt »

gcanyon wrote: post #303
svnt wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He can spend 1000x what I do on clothes, but I won’t be appreciably colder or less comfortable than he is. This misses the point of expensive clothing entirely. Many people would disagree that his house is not 100 times nicer than yours. He doesn’t use computers and phones like you do. He uses people who use technology that is 100kx your computer and phone. You’re talking about the essential function of an object.…

I think the point about clothes is exactly the point I was trying to make: everything you are alluding to that gives "value" to expensive clothes is an artificial construct. A fashionable jacket is fashionable because people agree that it is stylish. That doesn't make it "better" at being a jacket. More to the point, I can only feel a disparity between Mr. Gates and myself by convincing myself that style matters. His…

Don’t look too closely or you might realize that your value system is not universal, and that it is an artificial construct and depends on all sorts of other artificial constructs such as a market system.

You can’t seriously believe that you can outperform 100,000 people, but that wasn’t my point. He has teams of people using among other things HPC to perform calculations that are both conceptually and computationally beyond an individual’s reach.

Just because you haven’t witnessed it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, and doesn’t easily 100x your own value.

Bill Gates can have other billionaires over to his house. That is not true for your house. That in itself is worth many multiples of your functional viewpoint.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#306

Post by rramadass »

bertil wrote: post #299
sonabinu wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very powerful story! thanks for sharing

I have significant concern about this—that it is a story. I don’t doubt that it’s true in OC’s case. But I don’t think it’s representative of the impact of technology. It’s the example that will get Bill Gates’ attention and end up on the stage at TED, but it might not be representative of 90% of how people are affected by technology. It might, and the story of how videos will change how people relate to each other (…

> I have significant concern about this—that it is a story.

Your concerns are very correct but while you are willing to give him/her the benefit of the doubt, I am very very skeptical of their story; it sounds "too pat" and made up. If you look at their other replies there are too many incongruities and "movie plot tropes".

I have a better chance of winning the lottery than "learning mathematics starting from long division and progressing to a good job in the current hot market of AI/ML while working at Home Depot, sleeping on a air mattress, with almost no money and a dysfunctional family, studying at coffee shops and rising through a bunch of roles starting from lowly corporate IT into high-paying data science/ML and leading teams". It is all just a bit too much and beggars belief.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#307

Post by qaq »

bsder wrote: post #166
qaq wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> AI does a better job than prob 90% of the teachers. AI is better funded than probably 99.9% of teachers, so ... Ahem. Go sit in a class sometime before spouting that kind of unsubstantiated claptrap. Like anything with a distribution, some teachers are subpar. However, 90+% of teachers are trying very hard . They have too many students. They have too few resources. Many of them are fight against bad home lives of t…

My daughter was in highly rated school in NoVa some teachers would pretty much just put on youtube and be done with it. Now in CA again highly rated school just really sad especially compared to the school she was in Ireland. I am not even focusing on teachers that actually don't know the subject they are teaching. I mean teachers that will go into conspiracy theories or just blatantly say I am not in the mood so just basically do whatever.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#310

Post by neuralnetes-COO »

Kye wrote: post #240
neuralnetes-COO wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, do you want a pipeline/process that utilizes LLMs and provides exactly the output you want? How do you formalize a human expert workflow using LLMs? With LLMOps. It is new, there is no standard or predefined resource that I'm aware of. At neuralnetes we are creating all of our methods ad hoc and use tight feedback loops to ensure ideal, precise output.

That sounds like technical editing but for LLM output instead of technical writers.

It's mostly software engineering.
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