AI for Education

Josh Tyrangiel figuratively divides most of us based on our reactions to the advent of AI Technology: Accelerationists or Doomers. Accelerationists push for unbridled AI usage. Doomers foretell of AI’s destruction of all that we humans value. The truth, of course, lies firmly in the middle.
The subtitle of his book, AI for Good, is How Real People are using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things that Matter.
The book begins with a fine quote from the renowned Science Fiction writer, William Gibson: “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”
But, back to the book. It is divided into four sections: Education, Health, Government, and Connection. This is a report of the first six chapters on AI for education.
As you may know, the altruistic Khan Academy of educators formed an uneasy collaboration with and the AI power-house, Open AI, that led to the development of Khanmigo, a scalable AI teaching assistant and tutoring environment. Mr. Tyrangiel interviewed the key participants in the developmental stages of Khanmigo and reveals the kinds of problems that had to be overcome. First of all, Khanmigo could not operate like a gumball machine, where you put in a nickle and Khanmigo gives you the answer. That’s not how teaching is done. The best teachers play dumb. It’s called the Socratic method because it goes all the way back to Socrates. Teaching is like the old saying about giving someone a fish versus teaching the sacred art of fishing?!?! One is transitory. The other is foundational and transformative.
During preliminary field tests of both high-flying students and disadvantaged students, some of the key trends for the new technology immediately became obvious. The kids were adept at trying to trick the bot into simply revealing the answer. Either that, or they just shut down to the bot’s questioning techniques by responding with IDK (I don’t know!). Our kids have never learned to be questioners. The current system doesn’t do that!
For many years, the catch-phrase in teaching has revolved around a dichotomy, “The Sage on the Stage, or The Guide of the Side”. Do we want our teachers to be brilliant lecturers or gifted tutors? It turns out we need them to be both. The best results in field testing of Khanmigo were obtained by teachers who began by laying down the basic groundwork and only then assigned problem-solving with Khanmigo.
Khanmigo is a first baby step in the right direction. It asks guiding questions, breaks problems into digestible steps, keeps track of individual progress along those steps, and encourages meta-cognition. It is absolutely the Fountain Head of future of education and points the way towards improved student engagement and reduced teacher workload as it democratizes the opportunities for tutoring.
Stay tuned for a report on Part 2: AI and Our Health