Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again • Hacker News Board

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#311

Post by glompers » Thu, May 23, 2024, 4:11 AM UTC

7thpower wrote: post #301

EarthAmbassador wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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??

GP may be referring to Khan Academy affiliated but offline Khan Lab School.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Lab_School

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#312

Post by siamese_puff » Thu, May 23, 2024, 4:29 AM UTC

7thpower wrote: post #264

siamese_puff wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s pretty impressive. Any chance you can shed light on the feasibility of this for a standard high school dropout? Did you have certain luxuries from family or otherwise that made this possible? I’m mostly asking to learn how the US system (assuming you’re in the US) supports folks taking this path.

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 the detailed reply, great story.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#313

Post by dr_dshiv » Thu, May 23, 2024, 4:50 AM UTC

Pulcinella wrote: post #88

babl-yc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may be "no money in EdTech" but that doesn't mean there can't be impactful products for it. Students don't want to pay for Google but every student still uses it. Some students will want to waste time if given access to more tools like AI agents, but the motivated ones will use it to their advantage. Even if it's wrong sometimes, it's right a lot, perfect for rubber ducking, and almost always gives answers that…

As for "GPT-4" fabricating things, I remember in school how I wrote essays and was given A's despite citing NYT and Wikipedia. Fabrications exist all over the place. If anything, hallucinations might give more examples as to how to be skeptical of any source and look for direct sources as much as possible. "Actually it's good that AI sucks because it will teach people to be more skeptical" is not a very compelling ar…

Unfortunately, I think it will be true. Unfortunate, because we lack trust already in society and people can now revert to believing what they want to believe. But, they will be skeptical of everything else they read.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#314

Post by namlem » Thu, May 23, 2024, 4:53 AM UTC

Kye wrote: post #159

aeyes wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kids of people who can afford all you mentioned usually don't have problems with education. It's those who don't have $20. My parents spent almost nothing on my education, just a couple of $ per year to buy a notebook or two. I used the same pens for almost ten years. I participated in zero sports, had zero tutors... I did ok but I had peers with even less resources and not all of them did good.

Fond memories of being mocked for wearing the same clothes I wore the previous year or two. Wait no, not fond. The clothes were fine: good condition, clean, etc. Just old from the perspective of kids who didn't understand they came from money or that their parents were bad with money and headed toward disaster. /u/raisedbyninjas was hopefully kinder than those kids even though it sounds like they were in the same coh…

Idk I wore old clothes in school even though my parents were well off and no one made fun of me. Different local cultures I guess.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#315

Post by wraptile » Thu, May 23, 2024, 5:19 AM UTC

dimal wrote: post #283

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…

> people don't really want to learn. This is the most nonsensical statement I’ve ever heard. I don’t know how someone could actually believe this. As someone who loves to learn, I’ve already been using AI to learn things I never had the patience for in school. I HATED classes. Learning at my own pace, in my own way with AI has been an incredible experience. It’s far from a “small optimization”.

I agree, HN appears trully dystopian sometimes.

We used to go to our IT teacher after school to help us find programming exercises because access was so hard. It's not some sort of exception either, kids would actively reach out for more learning but providing this opportunity is super hard.

Now with AI it's right there! I'm increadibly jealous to the point where OP's statements are making me actively angry.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#316

Post by friend_and_foe » Thu, May 23, 2024, 5:26 AM UTC

vaidhy wrote: post #298

friend_and_foe wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ask a very interesting question, that to me speaks to the future of education gets to the bottom of education entirely. Right now, education focuses on getting people through the system so they can attain a credential. It teaches us, primarily, how to get one over on the system, how to look for loopholes and shortcuts. It creates a culture of corruption, of looking for approval from institutions in order to move…

>Right now, education focuses on getting people through the system so they can attain a credential. It teaches us, primarily, how to get one over on the system, how to look for loopholes and shortcuts. It creates a culture of corruption, of looking for approval from institutions in order to move up in life. That feels like a very uni-dimensional view

Institutional education is very one dimensional, there's only one direction, up.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#317

Post by _cenw » Thu, May 23, 2024, 5:28 AM UTC

pictureofabear wrote: post #258

neuralnetes-COO wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is it too early for full-stack LLMDevSecOps?

It's never too early to shift more responsibilities to a single role.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#318

Post by labster » Thu, May 23, 2024, 5:28 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #170

piker wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. So this is universal!

I'm almost 30 years from anything resembling precarity and I still subtly cross myself almost every time I swipe a card at the grocery store.

I doubt God carries much sway with the credit card companies. Maybe try the other guy.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#319

Post by Guthur » Thu, May 23, 2024, 5:34 AM UTC

If the AI is at the stage of understanding these topics, debatable as that is, then why would you learn them as you can't compete against the computer, it can work 24/7 with no sleep.

If the AI doesn't understand then you are just learning a script you are being fed.

Some automation is obviously useful for transmitting information about various topics but the way this is being framed would seem to undermine the very need to learn in the first place.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#320

Post by squigz » Thu, May 23, 2024, 5:55 AM UTC

rramadass wrote: post #306

bertil wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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?