Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing)

by Salman Khan

The Orson Scott Card novel Ender’s Game imagines a battle school that employs advanced AI technology to test and train students’ strategic thinking and decision-making skills through a personal AI tutor called Jane.

The meme circulating on the internet that reads “You won’t be replaced by an AI, but you might be replaced by someone using AI” has some real truth to it.

The most successful students will be those who use AI to help make conceptual connections for developing ideas. Students who learn to use AI ethically and productively may learn not only at an exponentially higher rate than others but also in a way that allows them to remain competitive throughout their careers. They will have a deeper understanding of the given subject matter, because they will know how to get their questions answered. Rather than atrophying, their curiosity muscle will be strengthened.

For example, we tried to prompt GPT-3.5 to act like a tutor. But no matter how much we told it to not give answers, it often did, and not always correct ones. GPT-4, on the other hand, was able to take on roles or personas fairly well, even through simple prompting like “You will be a Socratic tutor. I will be your student. Don’t give me answers.”

It is what Alexander the Great had with his teacher, Aristotle. If Alexander was having trouble with a concept, I can imagine Aristotle slowing down for him. If Alexander had a knack for understanding military tactics, I am sure Aristotle would have sped up his instruction or gone deeper.

The resulting paper on what Bloom described as the two-sigma problem framed the benefits of one-on-one tutoring in a mastery learning context. In this paper, Bloom wrote that if a student works with a tutor to master a topic or skill, the student would gain a two-standard-deviation improvement—a massive upgrade that takes someone from the 50th percentile to roughly the 96th percentile.

Middle-class or affluent families have traditionally addressed this problem by providing their kids with some form of personalized tutoring.

Some students might even feel more comfortable asking certain questions to an AI, because they would have less fear of being judged or wasting the human tutor’s precious (or expensive) time.

When Khanmigo shares the final output of the student/AI collaboration with the teacher, it will also report on the process and the degree to which the AI assisted. The teacher will get a much clearer sense of a student’s strengths and areas for improvement. Khanmigo can report back, “We worked on the paper for about four hours. Sal initially had trouble coming up with a thesis, but I was able to help him by asking some leading questions. The outlining went pretty smoothly. I just had to help him ensure that the conclusion really brought everything together. Sal did most of the writing. I just helped him tidy up the grammar and strengthen his argument in the third paragraph. Based on the rubric for the assignment, I’d recommend Sal get a B+ on the assignment. Here is a detailed breakdown of how I rated this paper in the dimensions on the rubric.”

Good history and civics teachers make the past interesting. Great history and civics teachers make the past come alive. When history and civics meet artificial intelligence, the past gets a voice, a perspective. Rather than a static time and place to study, it becomes a rich context to interact with.

We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If this tool can be used to engage students and classrooms about history in a way that traditional textbooks and movies can’t, I think it is healthy as long as there are reasonable guardrails in place (including helping the user know about the limitations).

If the kids were late for online tutoring, I’d call their mom (my aunt) and ask where they were. When we finally got on the phone or instant messaging, my first questions would be along the lines of, “Were you able to do the practice problems I assigned you?” or “How’d the practice go last night?” If they did the work, I’d compliment them for putting in the effort, and we’d jump into their questions or we’d move forward on new subject matter. If they didn’t do what they said they’d do, I’d hold them to account. These conversations provided me with context as we worked together to create new ways to motivate them and keep them accountable to themselves.

Based on that feedback, we have given Khanmigo these capabilities. Imagine AI—with users’ permission—being able to email and text teachers, parents, and students to make sure the students are engaged in their learning, stay motivated, and are lightly held to account.

For instance, a student can get an email saying, “Hey there, you said you wanted to finish unit 3 of Algebra 2 by the end of this month, but you haven’t done any work this week. Why don’t you click here and we can ensure that you achieve your goals?”

After they employed the AI for six months, the biggest gains they saw in their students were in the sphere of self-confidence, which is traditionally very difficult to address in a classroom setting. “Student achievement has to start with building confidence within themselves, confidence that comes from the knowledge that they know they can do it,” Hobart’s superintendent, Peggy Buffington, tells me. “Our job is to make sure that we’re equipping our students with a confidence level in their abilities. The AI is a game changer here.”

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true. —CHARLES DICKENS

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. —BRUCE LEE

At the end of the day, academic learning isn’t really the only purpose of schooling. Schooling is also about building human connection through friendships, shared adventures, and mutual support.

So much of parenting happens at the dinner table and on the way to school. Together, my wife and I view our role as one specifically designed to help our children create as many options for themselves as possible, all while they build resilience, mindfulness, and a healthy sense of self and purpose. Work and life should challenge them, but not too much, and certainly not in a way that makes them feel their self-worth is somehow conditional on their accomplishments. A little bit of competitiveness can be healthy, but they also need perspective and balance.

Fully aware that there is no perfect way to do this, we as parents try to model this ourselves by being present and taking the time with our children to have discussions with them about what it means to have a meaningful, happy life. Even a handful of interactions like this a week—during the drive to school, waiting in the dentist’s office, or sitting at the dinner table—makes a difference to them.

Never travel faster than your guardian angel can fly. —MOTHER TERESA

Engelbart believed that people were going to use technology to augment their abilities the same way that a tractor augments the work of a farmer to produce food. We’d use these machines, he predicted, to help us work faster, smarter, and better. With large language models catching up to both Engelbart’s and Seldon’s predictions, will we use artificial intelligence to augment our abilities or will it replace people and make them feel irrelevant?

Let me just say it outright again: there’s no job that is safer in the large-language-model world than teaching. Not only are teachers irreplaceable, but AI is going to support teachers so that they can do more of what they enjoy, from deepening personal connections with their students to developing enriching and creative lessons.

Consider that before 2020, 6 percent of Detroit eighth graders were performing at grade level; afterward, it dropped to 3 percent. The average American classroom in 2019 contained a spread of three grade levels of ability. After the pandemic, this spread expanded to six grade levels of ability. Put another way, in the same classroom of thirty students, teachers had to somehow support learners who were four-to-five grade levels behind while not boring the students who might have been ready to move ahead.

Right now, our best estimate of the computation costs of average usage of Khanmigo is between five and fifteen dollars a month per user.

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.

Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.

As Bill Gates mentioned, the successful workers of the future will be those with deep and broad skills. The “three Rs” of reading, writing, and arithmetic are more important than ever. On top of that, a solid appreciation and understanding of history, art, science, law, and finance would round out someone well.

it’s more important than ever that students have strong communication, collaboration, and empathy skills. Traditional entrepreneurship tends to invoke ideas of starting a business, but what I am describing goes much further and includes a more personal vision. It is an ability to look at the various parts of your job, and to see any problem that needs solving,

Let’s use AI to create a new golden age for humanity, a time that will make today look like a dark age. From my vantage point, nothing could be more inspiring and important than that.