Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

by Thomas L. Friedman

Maybe the most popular intelligent assistant in the world today is Khan Academy, which was started in 2006 by the educator Salman “Sal” Khan and offers free, short YouTube video lessons in English on subjects ranging from math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine to finance, history, and more. Anyone anywhere can go there to learn or brush up on any subject. Not only has it become the most important intelligent assistant for generalized learning in the world, but in 2014 it formed a partnership with the College Board, which administers the SAT college entry exams and the PSAT practice exams. Together, they created an intelligent assistant for anyone who wants to improve their SAT scores to get into college. They not only offer free SAT prep—so you don’t have to pay a small fortune to some private test prep service to get your kid into college—but they also created an amazing practice platform to help students fill their knowledge gaps. The system works like this, explained Stefanie Sanford of the College Board: In tenth or eleventh grade you take the practice SAT, known as the PSAT. And let’s say, for instance, you scored 1060 out of 1600 on English and math. Your results are fed into a computer, which, using AI and big data, then spits out a message: “Tom, you did really well, but you need some work on fractions. You have a real opportunity to grow here. Click here for customized lessons just for you on fractions.” Suddenly, I n...

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