Artificial intelligence is making inroads into the educational world – and the disruption is only beginning. Increasingly, AI is becoming capable of filling in the final missing piece that has vexed both online and onsite learning – the lack of extremely personalized tutoring.
The mass educational system formed in the industrial age provided for learning on an unprecedented level. In recent decades, online delivery has extended mass education to all reaches of the earth. However, when students fall behind, there have been few resources to get them up to speed, except for expensive in-person tutoring.
Sal Khan, founder of the nonprofit Khan Academy, recently outlined his organization’s plans to add AI to its vast library of online lessons, providing this missing element. Recently, his organization launched Khanmigo, an AI-powered teaching assistant that provides personalized support for students and fosters engagement with interactive activities.
Speaking at the recent Dayforce customer meeting in Las Vegas, Kahn outlined his organization’s evolving mission, starting with one-one-one tutoring he provided to his school-age niece and cousins via YouTube videos. From those beginnings, Khan Academy was grown to a free educational resource for both students and teachers across 190 countries and 55 languages.
The academy now hosts more than 10,000 video lessons, providing subjects ranging from mathematics to sciences, literature, history, and computer science. All these courses and associated resources are available free to users. The academy reported $128 million in revenues in the most recent fiscal year, mainly from donations from corporations, foundations, and individuals.
The academy serves as an adjunct to the larger educational system. The organization sponsored studies that showed 30 minutes a week spent on its videos results in 20% more proficiency, said Khan. These studies also found that when students learn two to three Khan Academy skills each week throughout the school year – 60 additional skills in total – overall learning grows by about 30%.
Now, the academy is leveraging AI to take this learning to a whole new level, through “personalized attention delivered the way a tutor would,” said Khan. “We don’t have the resources to give every student in the global school system their own one-to-one tutor. This is what we have been trying to do with Khan academy ever since. And we are getting there.” With AI, this electronic, interactive tutoring can be delivered in most students’ native languages as well.
This is an extremely positive use case for AI that has far-reaching benefits, Khan said. “You have to learn from it rather than just run away from it.” While there are many good reasons to be leery of AI, “let’s turn those fears into teachers,” Khan said. “If they are worried about kids cheating, on the platform, lets make our AI ethical. If you’re worried about kids having unproductive conversations that aren’t appropriate, let’s give teachers and parents oversight to it.”
The AI engine within Khanmigo doesn’t just spit out answers to students’ queries a la ChatGPT. Rather, it walks them through problems and solicits their observations. “If a student says, ‘tell me the answer,’ it does not tell them the answer,” said Khan. “If the student makes a mistake, the AI engine will respond something like, ‘I see you simplified the equation, but I’m curious how you got to the first step. Explain your thought process.”
The AI also guards against cheating on essay questions. Current technology has reached the point in which “you cannot detect AI cheating.,” he explained. The AI detection tools now available deliver a 40% false positive rate. Our solution is there’s going to be some writing that you have to do in class.” At the same time, “we want students and employees who know how to use AI tools, and are eager enough to learn about it.”
