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Sal Khan: How AI could save (not destroy) education [video]

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Re: Sal Khan: How AI could save (not destroy) education [video]

#31

Post by jacquesm »

durub wrote: post #12
jacquesm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd listen to him before I would listen to you.

Indeed, and I see plenty of reasons to listen to him. Khan Academy helped me immensely in college for free and Sal Khan has been at it for what, 17 years now? I'm pretty sure he has a better than average grasp on what it means to learn and how to improve the process. And even more importantly, he's trying to! If not him, then who should we listen to? I don't have a clue why GP reduces Sal to "good at explaining thing…

Likewise. Sal Khan has been instrumental in de democratization of education.

Re: Sal Khan: How AI could save (not destroy) education [video]

#32

Post by stuckinhell »

routerl wrote: post #14

So, Khan Academy is experimenting with providing every student with (what they call) a "personal tutor". Examples given are: in coding and math, identifying potential mistakes in partial solutions, and suggesting how the student might get unstuck; in literature, an AI impersonates characters in a novel so the student can ask them questions (e.g. "Mr. Gatsby, why do you keep staring at that green light?"); in writing,…

Do teachers as we know them even exist in a world where that idea of tutoring goes to scale ?

I don't think they do. It sounds more like a world, where in person testing and certification is extremely important when a human skill needs to be evaluated.

Re: Sal Khan: How AI could save (not destroy) education [video]

#33

Post by cultofmetatron »

seanhunter wrote: post #21
routerl wrote: post #14

So, Khan Academy is experimenting with providing every student with (what they call) a "personal tutor". Examples given are: in coding and math, identifying potential mistakes in partial solutions, and suggesting how the student might get unstuck; in literature, an AI impersonates characters in a novel so the student can ask them questions (e.g. "Mr. Gatsby, why do you keep staring at that green light?"); in writing,…

I don’t think it’s ever safe to procnosticate on the basis that something is “Just an efficiency increase”. Plenty of tech that is just an efficiency increase has ended up having profound impact on society.

>just an efficiency increase has ended up having profound impact on society.

truer words haven't been spoken. one big one off the top of my mind was the us governments decision to allow civillians to access gps at the same resolution as the arms. with that, all sorts of applications that require realtime location tracking. uber, lyft, rappi, gojeck off the top of my head.

Re: Sal Khan: How AI could save (not destroy) education [video]

#34

Post by preommr »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #19
aio2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one factor. But the way I've learned best, is through stories. My teachers told all sorts of stories, and it made me very engaged in my classes. How can the same be said with AI? How can it make an engaging learning experience? Even if you want it to, how could it make a very engaging environment when deep down inside you know it's fake?

Why would it be fake? If you can have the LLM reproduce the stories roughly as is: Student: "Hey LLM, I'm having trouble learning this concept." LLM: "Here's a real story that a teacher shared with us that will help explain this topic..." (Later) LLM: "Remember that story from before? Here's another story from that same teacher to further explain..."

What stories are you guys talking about?

You guys are making it seem like this is a common occurence and I've never heard of anything like this. I've never heard of teachers frequently sharing personalized stories that are also true to help people learn a subject.

In fact, the opposite, most subjects like math or physics have made-up problems to isolate and make simple the concept they're trying to teach. Adding a constraint for realism would just be needlessly complicated.

Also not scalable - if these stories are so effective, why not put them in a book to share with everyone?

The only stories any of my teachers ever shared with me were historical events that were grounded in reality.

Are there just a whole bunch of educational institutions that are teaching things around a campfire and a long-form stories like in ancient times?

Re: Sal Khan: How AI could save (not destroy) education [video]

#35

Post by lewhoo »

stuckinhell wrote: post #32
routerl wrote: post #14

So, Khan Academy is experimenting with providing every student with (what they call) a "personal tutor". Examples given are: in coding and math, identifying potential mistakes in partial solutions, and suggesting how the student might get unstuck; in literature, an AI impersonates characters in a novel so the student can ask them questions (e.g. "Mr. Gatsby, why do you keep staring at that green light?"); in writing,…

Do teachers as we know them even exist in a world where that idea of tutoring goes to scale ? I don't think they do. It sounds more like a world, where in person testing and certification is extremely important when a human skill needs to be evaluated.

Do teachers as we know them even exist in a world where that idea of tutoring goes to scale ?

Do students as we know them even exist in such a world ? I'm thinking if AI can effectively teach (AI asks questions to the student, gives feedback and leads the lesson, reacts to situational events, maintains discipline etc.) then AI can also do. Aside from the romantic take of learning for the pleasure of learning why would we assume that such AI teachers aren't also going to be AI employees. Why would humans even have the drive to learn stuff on a mass scale if the main or one of the main motivators for education is the market (or is it ?).

Re: Sal Khan: How AI could save (not destroy) education [video]

#36

Post by corimaith »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #9
akasakahakada wrote: post #3

Current education system is broken. You can't learn anything. Learning need feedback loop, but this do not exist. In school, you hand in your homework, get the feedback only after Christmas. Because human cannot evaluate 100 students' homework efficiently. Majority of academic textbook are trash. Some author even say "we have 300 new exercises in this edition" proudly, while the solution is often either nonexistent,…

I'm sorry, but I've taught a lot of students at the university level. Some of them have exactly this attitude. You're simply wrong. And on the long term path to failure. The exercises are invaluable. You don't get the answers because then you look at them. The whole point of the exercises is for you to do them, and then for you to figure out if you are right or wrong! The content of the exercises isn't in the book be…

The problem with linking success to attitude is the counterfactual; Would students with the right "attitude" been successful regardless?

That's why more formal academic studies are needed for topics such as these rather than anecdotes, because we'll find a whole range of contradictory opinions.

Re: Sal Khan: How AI could save (not destroy) education [video]

#37

Post by c7DJTLrn »

akasakahakada wrote: post #3

Current education system is broken. You can't learn anything. Learning need feedback loop, but this do not exist. In school, you hand in your homework, get the feedback only after Christmas. Because human cannot evaluate 100 students' homework efficiently. Majority of academic textbook are trash. Some author even say "we have 300 new exercises in this edition" proudly, while the solution is often either nonexistent,…

I think it's broken, but for other reasons. In the UK at least, secondary school exams are overwhelmingly about memorisation and prediction of what questions there will be rather than applying logical or investigative thinking. There's very little practical work, you sit in a chair and listen to the teacher or things on the whiteboard most of the time. Also, there's a majority feminine influence in education. All of these factors lead to me believe that education simply does not cater to males, and soaring grades of girls confirms this. In the UK, white males have been the poorest performing demographic on exams for the past decade. But nobody wants to talk about it interestingly.

I was fortunate to get an apprenticeship at the age of 16, which enabled me to get into the real world of work and build experience years ahead of everyone else. It's a completed overlooked path - most students still think they need a degree to get a good job.

Re: Sal Khan: How AI could save (not destroy) education [video]

#38

Post by lisper »

lewhoo wrote: post #35
stuckinhell wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do teachers as we know them even exist in a world where that idea of tutoring goes to scale ? I don't think they do. It sounds more like a world, where in person testing and certification is extremely important when a human skill needs to be evaluated.

Do teachers as we know them even exist in a world where that idea of tutoring goes to scale ? Do students as we know them even exist in such a world ? I'm thinking if AI can effectively teach (AI asks questions to the student, gives feedback and leads the lesson, reacts to situational events, maintains discipline etc.) then AI can also do. Aside from the romantic take of learning for the pleasure of learning why woul…

> Why would humans even have the drive to learn stuff

Because someone still has to make decisions. Much as the educational-industrial complex would have you believe otherwise, living the good life does not equate with getting the right answers on standardized tests.

One of the unfortunate aspects of the education system we've built over the last several hundred years is that it conceals this from most people. This is because the purpose of the system is to feed a societal system where a very small number of people make decisions and the rest are expected simply to obey orders. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it's really important not to lose sight of the fact that replacing the current education system with AI is not the same as replacing educated people with AI, or even the same as replacing all of education with AI.

Re: Sal Khan: How AI could save (not destroy) education [video]

#39

Post by TimPC »

The AI I want in education generates a test and then based on my responses to questions figures out the exact content I need from a huge library. Imagine asking a student 15 math questions with adaptive difficulty in a dynamic test to figure out the next content they need to learn from complete videos of JK-Uni mathematics? Instead of teaching to an age, we give students exactly the content they need right now.

Re: Sal Khan: How AI could save (not destroy) education [video]

#40

Post by fragmede »

stuckinhell wrote: post #32
routerl wrote: post #14

So, Khan Academy is experimenting with providing every student with (what they call) a "personal tutor". Examples given are: in coding and math, identifying potential mistakes in partial solutions, and suggesting how the student might get unstuck; in literature, an AI impersonates characters in a novel so the student can ask them questions (e.g. "Mr. Gatsby, why do you keep staring at that green light?"); in writing,…

Do teachers as we know them even exist in a world where that idea of tutoring goes to scale ? I don't think they do. It sounds more like a world, where in person testing and certification is extremely important when a human skill needs to be evaluated.

As we know it? I don't think so.

The tutors scale up, but so can the testing. Instead of standardized testing, every student can get interviewed as if the teacher had only them as a student and be given an in-depth assessment of their skills and knowledge, rather than being simplified to a letter grade.

Pedagogy is an area of study outside of my expertise, but I do know there are institutions that didn't give grades.

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