Brave New Words
Salman Khan (2024). Brave new words: How AI will revolutionize education (and why that’s a good thing). Viking Penguin Random House: New York
xiv personalized learning
xiv kids could learn much more if the pacing adapted to the student and allowed each one to truly ace a subject (that is, mastery learning). This contrasts with the status quo
xiv-xv Neal Stephenson … novel The Diamond Age … The Orson Scott Card novel Ender’s Game … Isaac Asimov’s short story “The Fun They Had”
xvi Large language models such as GPT-4, short for Generative Pre-trained Transformer
xvii Greg Brockman and Sam Altman … OpenAI … ChatGPT and … GPT-4
xviii-xix YouTube … Today, it’s commonplace for students to learn almost anything they want using on-demand videos
xx-xxi In the early 1940s, Claude Shannon … mapped out a theory of electronic communication that would become the basis of digital technology. In 1948 … he started dabbling in the field we now know as artificial intelligence
xxi-xxii Alan Turing. Above and beyond his work breaking German codes and helping us beat the Nazis, Turing explored the concept of AI … In 1950 … he introduced the concept of the imitation game, which we now know as the Turing test … if the machine can pass the Turing test, it would imply that it possesses humanlike intelligence
xxviii It’s never a good idea to let fear stop you from exploring
xxxii thanks to AI, we were about to write a new story about education, one that was to challenge people to be careful about, but not fearful of, change … Not blind bravery, but … educated bravery
5 when it comes to technology and education, it is not that technology is good or bad, it is how you use it that matters … employing this technology is far more productive than avoiding it. 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
10 Khan Academy’s … Khanmigo – a play on the Spanish phrase conmigo, meaning “with me”
11 Khanmigo. Every hour we brainstormed, we realized the technology could enhance and enrich every learning domain – including writing, comprehension, math, science, coding, and art – in ways no other tool can or does
12 Educators have known for millennia that one-on-one instruction – tutoring that works with students at their own time and pace – is the best way for people to learn … it’s hard to imagine an individual teacher getting anywhere near this level of growth with a single coach and thirty students all at the same time
12-13 In the eighteenth century, we began to have the utopian idea of offering mass public education to everyone … While not perfect, that system dramatically improved the overall level of education in the societies that invested in it, increasing literacy rates globally and education rates overall. Still, the approach isn’t optimal for the majority of students … In the United States … Three-quarters of graduating high school seniors lack basic proficiency
13-14 1984 … Benjamin Bloom … 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
15 The best tutors make learning truly student-centered, both through direct interactions with the learner and by helping educators drive more personalization themselves
16 GPT-4 … Greg Brockman believes the latest generation of large language models has the potential to be the biggest benefit to education we’ve had in history … an AI system capable of providing every learner on earth with a personal tutor
29 By revisiting what we think we are trying to accomplish through a writing assignment, we can also think about how to solve the cheating issue in a post-ChatGPT world
30 ChatGPT can’t do the most important part – conducting an experiment or interviewing people or observing an event. Even more, in the workplace these tasks will increasingly use tools like ChatGPT, so wouldn’t it be good for students to learn how to employ them while in school?
32-33 To cheat or not to cheat is no longer the question … educators are finding that these generative AI tools make our students far more skilled and efficient writers
34 the AI tutor does not do the work for the students. Rather, it works alongside them … an education-based AI platform can be the world’s finest assistant and co-collaborator … designed to do one thing and one thing only: to sharpen a student’s skills
37 AI can allow learners to immerse themselves in the worlds of the characters in ways that would have seemed like science fiction only a few years ago
37-38 2020 … 54 percent of Americans between the ages of sixteen and seventy-four read below a sixth-grade level
38 traditional passage-based multiple-choice questions are how most students are assessed on high-stakes tests … Passage-based multiple-choice questions aren’t inherently bad … But they are limited in what they can do
39 Imagine if the assignment allows students to give free responses when discussing a text. Well, that is exactly the type of thing that large language models can be good at
41 In the late 1970s … Francis Ford Coppola purchased a device called the Kurzweil Reading Machine, an early invention of Ray Kurzweil … known for his work in artificial intelligence
42 Is generative AI a creativity killer? … The degree to which AI influences, and can limit, student creativity has brought the technology under a new shadow of scrutiny, and for understandable reasons
43 Coppola saw how advancements in technology not only did little to hinder creativity but also improved the creative process
43 large language models like OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s LaMDA
44 when you “sleep on a problem,” some part of your brain continues to work even though “you” aren’t aware of it … Meditation gives us direct experience with this
45 Humans … problematic biases and false narratives about how the world works
46 Our creativity gains value when we are exposed to the creativity of others … A generative AI world will only accelerate this process.
The best ideas will come not from the AI creating for us but when the AI is creating and riffing with us
49 every generation has better and better creative tools. At no point have these suppressed human creativity. Rather, they have magnified it
50-51 Mozart, Einstein, and da Vinci weren’t just innately gifted. They had access to opportunities and resources that the bulk of humanity didn’t have access to … AI becomes one extra friend who can be creative … in all dimensions
61-62 Harriet Tubman … simulation … Social media … had … negative things to say; social media almost always does … We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good
63 large language models bring things to life and give learning a richness that beforehand would have been very hard to do
65 What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what’s going on. – Jacques-Yves Cousteau
65 If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong. – Arthur C. Clarke
67-70 artificial intelligence… I was curious how large language models dealt with science, and in particular pseudoscience … it quickly became clear that is wasn’t accurate all of the time … While they can provide helpful information and generate impressive responses, they are not infallible … Still … The technology is sound, and there are loads of ways educators can utilize it in their science pedagogy
73 People are generally more creative when they can bounce ideas off other thoughtful, creative people, or in this case AI entities. Khanmigo
77 Khanmigo … This isn’t just decent tutoring. It’s world-class pedagogy that makes asking questions and learning a lot more engaging, deep, and memorable
78 the concept of p-value … one of the most important things for students to grasp in statistics
80-81 ChatGPT … GPT-3.5 … Khanmigo is far more nuanced and powerful than ChatGPT
84 Even a great human tutor benefits from having a textbook or curriculum to go through
86-87 2015 … roughly 50 percent of Americans high schools don’t offer a course in calculus. Forty percent do not offer physics. More than a quarter do not offer chemistry. These numbers get worse for high schools with high Black and Latino enrollment … The situation with humanities and writing is not much better
87 Khan Academy … a student can work through coursework on their own or with support from others … This … raises the question of getting credit for those courses that counts toward college admissions … In 2023, Caltech … announced that completing courses on our platform meets its admission requirements
88 most students neither understand the capabilities of AI nor naturally ask for help, and almost no one wants to be held accountable, even if it is good for them
91 After they employed the AI for six months, the biggest gains they saw in their students were in the sphere of self-confidence
92 [Tim Krieg] “Learning is nonlinear; it’s continuous. AI shows us this integrated world.”
93 To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. – Bruce Lee
95-96 When it comes to our children, technology has proven to be a double-edged sword … At first blush, it is reasonable to fear that large language models infiltrating the education system will only make this problem of tech-induced isolation and mental stress worse … It turns out that … thoughtful use of technology can actually increase human-to-human interaction
96 students are … encouraged to seek help from each other (with some guidelines to prevent too much help)
97 AI … frees up time in the classroom for deeper human-to-human interaction
99 At the end of the day, academic learning isn’t really the only purpose of schooling. Schooling is also about building human connection through friendship, shared adventures, and mutual support
102 In the 1960s … Joseph Weizenbaum developed ELIZA, one of the world’s first natural-language-processing computer programs that was able to simulate a conversation … Sometimes we all just crave a good listener
103 since 2010 the United States has seen a 40 percent rise in mental health crises among school-age children. That includes one in three university students. A similar percentage leaves higher education without obtaining the degree for which they enrolled due to anxiety and depression and feelings of isolation … In 2023 … Vivek Murthy, called this phenomenon an epidemic of loneliness
104 anxiety and depression have both skyrocketed among students since 2020 due to the pandemic
104 In 2022 … South China University of Technology tested the efficacy of AI-based therapeutic interventions … The therapy chatbot was able to reduce depression in people within four months and anxiety in people in as quickly as one month
106 AI ACADEMIC COACH: There’s actually a great amount of research that shows that the farther away you place your cell phone, the higher your GPA is
116 life satisfaction comes from establishing goals, working hard, and feeling as though you are moving the world toward a better place
117 Large language models can focus the learning time and create more space for other points of productive contact that a child has with parents and other people
121 The world is full of bias and misinformation, and nowhere is it more crucial to monitor this than with our learners … UNICEF’s Office of Global Insight and Policy has flagged online and social-media-based misinformation as one of the most pressing problems with real-world, harmful consequences
122 For at least a decade prior to ChatGPT coming on the scene, social media companies used specialized AIs to optimize traffic to their sites, keeping people there and getting them to see as many ads as possible … State actors have taken advantage of these social media trends to attempt to undermine civil society and democracy here in the United States
123 It’s no secret that politicians lie …. This dynamic is of course even worse in dictatorial regimes where the government controls the media and stifles dissent.
But even without state control, legacy media corporations reached the same conclusion as today’s social media companies: you get the best ratings, and thus profits, when you scare people and work them up
124 But it is important to keep the problems of the status quo in mind when deciding how to best implement new technology
125 developers are already creating methods for the AI to fact-check itself … AI systems are getting better every day at shutting down lies and directing students to accurate information
126-127 Generative AI models from mainstream providers like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic already have strong guardrails that try to take out misinformation as well as problematic content such as racist, sexist, or hate speech … The latest AI systems are pretty balanced too. It is actually fairly difficult for individual actors to dramatically influence a large language model like GPT-4 or the Pathways Language Model 2 upon which Google has built Bard … this technology can direct students toward better sources of information, which is crucial in today’s world, where fake news and conspiracy theories are ubiquitous
128-130 Given the power and newness of generative AI, it is natural for a parent to worry that it may introduce a whole new series of concerns … My advice to parents and educators is to ensure that any application, especially those that kids use, has the highest standards for what that data can be used for, and that it takes all reasonable precautions to protect that information
133-134 The AI tutor effectively shares students’ progress with parents so that they can act on that information and provide even better support … parents can collaborate with teachers … But this sort of information sharing also begs a fundamental question around information transparency … The key is for parents and application developers to find a balance between monitoring and respecting children’s privacy and independence
136-139 imagine if an AI tutor could “sit” next to students as they navigate the internet in general … As a parent, I want to maximize my children’s constructive screen time … and minimize their not-so-constructive time … arguably useful for adults as well … AI has the potential to be our guardian angel online
143-144 In 2017 … Anthony Seldon … stated that by 2027 teachers will be AI rather than humans … I agree with Seldon that personalization in learning is an aspiration that we should strive for and the AI is going to play a big role in getting us there. However, I completely disagree with his prediction that this technology will somehow minimize the importance of the human teacher. If anything, it’s going to do the opposite
144 This dichotomy between useful and harmful technology goes back to the early 1960s and the work of Doug Engelbart
145 Let me say it again: there’s no job that is safer in the large-language-model world than teaching … the AI is the teaching assistant.
Still, I feel it’s only natural to remain a bit cautious about new technology
145-147 “There are basically three things that teachers are going to have to do now as a result of generative AI,” says … Ethan Mollick … first teachers are just going to have to expect more from students … The second adjustment for teachers … Students have to do a pre-mortem with their work before they turn it in for their grade … the third teaching adjustment – the biggest … involves flipping all classrooms … Essentially, lectures … at home, and “homework” … in a … classroom environment
147 Mollick … “… generative AI also makes a teacher’s life easier.”
148 Alongside emergency response workers, police officers, and air traffic controllers, teachers have one of the highest rates of professional exhaustion … One of the primary reasons behind this shortage is the lack of support and resources for educators … our demands on teachers are huge. Overworked and overstretched
149 large language models can actually make teaching a more sustainable profession … create lesson plans and rubrics, grade papers, write progress reports … They would make the work more joyous … they’d help accelerate learning outcomes
150 one of the best practices in education is differentiation and active learning
153 The future of AI in education is about teaming up with technology to make education even better
154 There are many other issues that need to be considered, including teacher pay …
At the end of the day, we find that what really matters to students is not technology so much as having human-to-human connection in the classroom
155 Today, roughly three million parents are homeschooling their kids in the United States, and the number is rising
156 The most efficacious platforms are … transparent and free … many … universities already consider Schoolhouse.world transcripts for admissions. These transcripts show a mastery of topics based on peer-reviewed recordings of the student getting over 90 percent correct on Khan Academy assessments
157 Even though platforms such as these were not purpose-built for homeschoolers, they have increasingly become go-to resources for that community …
Rather than facilitate cheating, the AI can give real-time feedback and support on how to write better … This technology can also help parents
160 Students are more comfortable cheating in college than you might expect … Add to this mix the sudden ubiquity of AI tools and a bad situation becomes even worse
160-161 Debra Satz … “… students who don’t want to cheat are in an environment where they feel like everybody else is cheating.”
161-164 generative AI is putting a spotlight on an issue that has existed for years … We know that today’s low-integrity college students are tomorrow’s low-integrity leaders in business and government.
The good news is that there are solutions … transparency addresses many issues at once … students receive immediate feedback on every dimension of their writing from the AI
165 The world has enough for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed. – Mahatma Gandhi
167-168 In much of the world, limited resources, inadequate infrastructure, and a shortage of skilled teachers create formidable barriers to learning … girls are twice as likely to never set foot in a classroom
169 The United States … has a decentralized education system … For the technology to be truly transformative, it has to be equitable
170-171 We know that if a well-trained tutor pulls kids out of class for thirty minutes a day, four days a week, a technique that [Susanna] Loeb refers to as high-dosage tutoring – there’s really good evidence it produces a significant motivating effect for students … “… All the evidence that we have to date says that students need personalized contact to remain motivated …”
172-174 A decent education is expensive anywhere in the world … the fundamental model is the same. Students are moved lockstep through curricula, often-times feeling lost or bored … The COVID-19 pandemic made things worse …
efficacy studies have shown that classrooms using Khan Academy as little as thirty to sixty minutes a week during the pandemic not only avoided the COVID slide but outperformed pre-COVID standards by 20 to 40 percent. And … It was free.
Now, large language model platforms build off of those results to provide even richer support
174 Even before considering generative AI, our annual budget as a non-profit is more than $70 million
177 Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. – William Bruce Cameron
179 It has become fashionable to bash standardized tests in the United States
180 I ask them how we can get better at anything without measuring it … I’d rather think about how we can improve standardized tests rather than remove them entirely
181 continuous assessment offers higher-quality data points on a much more regular basis
188 In India, entry to the hyperselective Indian Institutes of Technologies (IITs) is based solely on the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) …
In India, this is a deliberate attempt to steer clear of the corruption that has often infected other institutions in the country
190-192 embody traits like humility, collaboration, or leadership … strong leadership, communication, and empathy skills, not to mention their commitment to helping others …
eighteen universities … all value the Schoolhouse.world transcript for the same reason that Jim Nondorf does: it is a dynamic and standardized way of measuring both subject-matter competency and communication, empathy, community service, and leadership … students submitting these transcripts generally have a higher acceptance rate than the broader pool … it also provides a strong incentive for ambitious high schoolers to become tutors and help others
193-194 In a 2018 Supreme Court case, it was clearly established that Harvard admissions officers consistently rated Asian American applicants lower on personality traits
195 The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life. – Rabindranath Tagore
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist. – Pablo Picasso
197 Since ChatGPT came on the scene, many in the know have been saying that you won’t get replaced by AI, but you might get replaced by someone using AI
198 From my vantage point, because of generative AI, there is endless work for engineers who can creatively apply these technologies to solve new problems in nearly every industry … generative AI will require new kinds of work
200 artificial intelligence … The successful strategy will not be to resist but to adapt
202-203 [Chris] Piech … it will be important to learn to work in concert with generative AI … You need to be good at a craft in order to know what high quality looks like
203-204 Generative AI is what’s called a general-purpose technology, one that comes along very rarely … “Exactly what the job market of tomorrow looks like is very hard to predict, but the deeper the skill set … the more value it’s going to have, even in a world where productivity will be enhanced by AI,” Bill Gates tells me
205-206 We are entering a world where we are going back to a pre-Industrial Revolution, craftsmanlike experience … entrepreneurship is really the creativity of knowing how to put resources together in order to create value. So how do we prepare every student …?
Step one is to get out of the way …
Step two … 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 …
Finally … strong communication, collaboration, and empathy skills
208 Among many other things, AI, as our personal agent, will soon post, find, apply for, and even acquire jobs for us
215-216 there are a few sectors – namely, education and health care – where the outcomes of market forces don’t always align with our values
216 the strength of a civilization … culture, know-how, and mindset
219-220 All of classical economics is based on the notion of scarcity … Generative AI has the potential to allow many dimensions of our … society to be … low scarcity or highly abundant. Do we have the will to take us to … utopia …?
If we don’t, societies will increasingly fall prey to populism
221 This moment can be an existential risk or an existential opportunity for us … generative AI is here to stay … Each of us has an obligation to make sure that we use this technology responsibly
222 Let’s use AI to create a new golden age for humanity, a time that will make today look like a dark age