Optimism about the artificial intelligence of Sal Khan, a pioneer of education technologies

Therefore, in the midst of my concerns about the use of AI in the classroom, I called Sal Khan, author of Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education and Why That’s a Good Thing (A happy world: as the AI ​​will revolutionize education and why that is something good).

Many can know him as the founder of the Khan Academy, a non -profit educational organization that has become an online tool and tools that many students – including my own children – use when they have difficulty understanding a topic in class.

I wanted to talk to him because it is one of the most prominent voices that defend, with optimism, the potential of artificial intelligence to improve education in classrooms significantly. Khan does not ignore the fears that many parents have, but listening to defending this technology was revealing.

There is fear among parents that the minds of children stop thinking for themselves and that artificial intelligence does everything. How do you see AI as a facilitator in education and how do you think the classrooms will be in 10 years?

First, those fears are real and legitimate. What I always like to do before entering to think what will happen to technology is to think, first, what were some of the objectives of writing and reading before AI.

If you talk to a literature teacher, it will tell you that it is important to communicate and structure your thoughts. When you see it that way, you can start thinking not only about addressing some of the fears about AI, but even in doing things better than we were doing.

I will give you an example that does not really speak of technology.

Imagine that your child's school district has just found US $ 1 billion and then decided to hire some of the brightest graduates to hang out in the classroom.

These graduates would be on duty to help the teacher qualify the jobs, to think about new ideas and to elaborate better plans for their classes so that they are really creative.

At the beginning of the class, those graduates together with the teacher could be in the classroom and help the children when they need it, without having to wait for that help, and then they would pass reports to the teacher.

“Hey, I realized that Katty is not as compromised as yesterday” or “Sal is really committed today. Did you know that he likes baseball a lot? So, let's make the following example about that only for salt.” Then, those graduates would be able to analyze all that and communicate with the students of the student almost in real time.

I think that would be everyone's dream. Both students and teachers and parents would love to receive that assistance. And that is essentially what will happen to AI.

Obviously, they will not be human educational assistants, but will be artificial intelligences that will attend teachers, being able to observe the classroom, intervene and always keep the teacher informed.

If we think of a world where AI could do the work of a doctor, why would we seek to maintain the work of a teacher in a classroom in a world where AI can do it almost everything better?

We can create a large -scale automated safety network, much and much better for the world.

For example, if you are in a rural town in India, hopefully you will get an AI doctor, who may even prescribe medications and things like that. Possibly it will not be as good as the doctors that you or I are going, but it will be much better than what these people had before.

The reason why many parents – including me – feel the need to send their children to a physical school with other children and with a social environment, is not only that they understand a polynomial or know how to grammatically correct a prayer.

Those skills matter. But to some extent, the most important skills are those that involve learning to deal with the conflict, to be responsible, to communicate with others, to navigate social pressures.

I believe that teachers, as human beings in classrooms, will be very important actors to hold students responsible, but above all to unlock that human to person's human connection.

Could it be that thanks to the tools of the AI ​​we achieve a kind of fun to learn that, to be honest, most of us barely feel in high school?

It seems to me that we will get it is much more than we have achieved in the past and I understand that the reason why most students get out of school is because things overlook or do not really relate to their life experiences.

The AI ​​gives us the opportunity to customize the content that is aimed at students and interact with it. When you interact with the content, you are much more likely to learn and remember the content.

We have activities in our AI tool, called Khanemigo, in which you can talk with simulations of historical figures or literary characters. That gives life to the history of ways that we could not have imagined before.

To your question about what we will see in the classroom in the next 10 years, although it sounds very Star Trek, Virtual reality glasses will probably be seen much more in the coming years.

It will be literally as a trip in the “magical bus” in which the teacher can take the class to the circulatory system or can travel together to ancient Rome. I think it will be a way to learn much richer, in which educational contents will come alive.

So, could IA enhance our ability not only to learn but to make us more creative? Is this how you see it?

AI can enhance any purpose you have.

There are people who only try to do things as quickly as possible and take shortcuts. Then, these people will find a way to do the same with AI. Now, these people are not usually the ones who have the best performance and when you amplify that with Ia, they will continue without being the best performance.

But for those who are looking to do something new and creative, I think that will enhance that.

Imagine you are someone who gives great speeches like Barack Obama.

He had an army of speeches editors. But I also think it was he who contributed his own point of view to guide those editors so that the text had his voice. Thus, he edited him himself to be really authentic with respect to him and his ideas.

Well, I think these technologies now give us all that power that President Obama had. But if you don't write well, if you don't communicate well, the result will not be good.

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