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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

#331

Post by Myrmornis »

MajimasEyepatch wrote: post #118
Myrmornis wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure it can generally put words in grammatically correct order and is passible for writing no one is going to read anyway (like marketing emails). But the moment it requires actual domain knowledge all these AI models completely fall down because, again, they don't actually understand anything, they just are really good at guessing what word comes next. Many of us are frequently using it to obtain answers requiring…

I can ask ChatGPT to write code and assess myself whether it's correct or not. (It's frequently not, but it can still be useful for certain tasks.) I can ask it to explain something about the industry I work in or adjacent fields and have a pretty good sense of whether it's leading me in the right direction. But if I asked it to teach me about, say, Chinese history, I would have very little ability to assess whether…

Yes, that's fair, but I think we can do better in our education revolution than just plonking kids down in a classroom with ChatGPT! If we take a fairly constrained subject like high school algebra, we should be able to, for example, study its BS rate by having knowledgeable testers converse with it at length, and thus perhaps produce AIs suitably calibrated and QA'd for classroom usage. But I should go read Sal's book, it sounds promising.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#332

Post by oulipo »

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…

Well, that's great.

Now in Europe, we fund the government through taxes so that the public education system can do for EVERYONE what Sal Khan did for YOU

So then you no longer have to worry about what your children can do in their lives

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#333

Post by lazyasciiart »

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…

Did it really? When I was a kid in the 90s we went to McDonalds once a year for my birthday.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#334

Post by robertlagrant »

oulipo wrote: post #332
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…

Well, that's great. Now in Europe, we fund the government through taxes so that the public education system can do for EVERYONE what Sal Khan did for YOU So then you no longer have to worry about what your children can do in their lives

What does this mean? OP went to high school, but dropped out. How does how education is paid affect this?

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#335

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

sfn42 wrote: post #330
neuralnetes-COO wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly software engineering.

Sounds like it's mostly air unless you can point to an LLM that doesn't confabulate.

No need to set impossible standards here, the correct thing to ask is whether the guardrailed LLM confabulates less than its competitors. That sounds like a useful job to have.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#336

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

Jtsummers wrote: post #115
tripdout wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet Khan Academy is free.

But Khanmigo isn't, it's $4/month.

That's a lot cheaper than I was expecting it to be. With the comments around here I was guessing it was closer to $80 a month.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#337

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

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…

Python, foreign language, physics? I've got all three self taught!

I agree with you. Investing hundreds or thousands of hours of your own time into the slog of theoretical learning is statistically pretty rare. Most of the counterexamples come from people who found a way to finesse their own neural latticework into ardor for the subject, even though to the rest of mankind it's about as interesting as watching paint dry. It's very rare to meet someone who became a self made master of something they only did for the money, etc.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#338

Post by devoutsalsa »

no_wizard wrote: post #263
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…

> Every time I go to the grocery store to buy something and don’t have to worry about my card being declined, it feels like magic. Even years later. 100% with you here! Grew up in poverty, fought for myself and clawed my way out into a wonderful career as a software engineer. This one still hits every time, even for me, over a decade later. The other one for me is petty cash. I looked in my wallet the other day and I…

It wasn't that ago when I has figured out how to mix/max overdraft checking because I was so damn broke. I'd over draw my account by $980, the overdraft fee was $20, and my account would be -$1000. Then 29 days later, I'd get a cash advance on my credit card, pay bring the checking account up to $0, and then make a payment to the credit card company for $980. I was slowly digging myself deeper into a hole just so I could hang onto having a bank account.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#339

Post by ttrmw »

oulipo wrote: post #332
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…

Well, that's great. Now in Europe, we fund the government through taxes so that the public education system can do for EVERYONE what Sal Khan did for YOU So then you no longer have to worry about what your children can do in their lives

meanwhile also in Europe, we fund public education systems that do not do for everyone what Sal Khan does for everyone

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#340

Post by rramadass »

squigz wrote: post #320
rramadass wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 di…

I genuinely don't know why you have a hard time believing that chain of events. It's really not that uncommon. What "movie tropes" are you talking about that aren't just... extremely common real life things? Sleeping on an air mattress? Working at Home Depot? Teaching yourself a skill and working your way up to a respectable position?

Each event by itself may not be uncommon (but some like learning mathematics from absolute basics to AI/ML requirements via just Khan Academy is well-nigh impossible) but all together happening to one person which led to the claimed outcome is very very highly improbable. Real life doesn't work that way; time, energy(i.e. effort), money are all finite and wax/wane with context/environment and defines success/failure.

Also speaking from my own experience, early in my career for about 3-4 years i lived alone, working a software engineer job by day and attending a computer science course/labs in evening/weekends. The lack of proper sleep/rest/nutrition, constant stress due to work and studies almost broke me. Thankfully i managed to get through that (mainly due to my robust health) but it made me realize that if you don't have a supporting family, proper nutrition/sleep and some sort of support system (i.e. family/friends) to encourage/emphathize/push/pull you as needed there is no way for an average person to overcome all hurdles particularly when they come at you all at once. There is a reason it is impossible to get out of poverty just based on your own efforts without somebody external actively lending you a helping hand via money/opportunity etc.

As the saying goes; "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_claims_require_e...

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