[HN Gopher] Sal Khan: The amazing AI super tutor for students an...
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       Sal Khan: The amazing AI super tutor for students and teachers
       [video]
        
       Author : bilsbie
       Score  : 30 points
       Date   : 2023-05-02 17:45 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.ted.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.ted.com)
        
       | mcast wrote:
       | I always wondered how an AI tutor could be "the great equalizer"
       | for teaching kids from all socioeconomic backgrounds (and
       | international students too). It's impossible for a classroom of
       | 20-30 students to get 1:1 attention from a teacher.
        
         | simmanian wrote:
         | I have been trying to see if ChatGPT can successfully lay out a
         | meticulous course plan and educational milestones. I am pretty
         | happy with what I see. I can easily imagine kids diving really
         | deep into topics that interest them with a tutor that can help
         | them learn complicated, college-level material.
        
           | mcast wrote:
           | The possibilities are endless! Seeing Sal demonstrate how
           | students could talk to old historical figures and ask them
           | questions in their context was pretty fascinating.
        
       | carapace wrote:
       | Broadly speaking, the computers should do the work to free up
       | humans to do the important things like parenting and teaching.
       | 
       | Letting the machine babysit our kids so we can... what? Do work
       | that a computer could do? Party all day? Why _are_ teachers so
       | poorly paid?
        
         | mlyle wrote:
         | You know, maybe we can do both.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem
         | 
         | Individual tutoring plus mastery (which Khan already has)
         | outperforms classrooms by 2 sigma. Coming up with ways that we
         | can individualize education which we can _afford_ (since we 're
         | not going to buy individual tutorial education for every child)
         | would be huge.
         | 
         | Next year, I'm helping a group of ELA teachers use GPT4 to
         | provide each student with individualized writing feedback. We
         | have a relatively low student to teacher ratio, but still we
         | can only provide this kind of depth 3-4 times per year, and now
         | we're going to get it a couple times more.
         | 
         | And in the microeconomics class I taught, I enjoyed the
         | efficiency and educational aspects of having about a quarter of
         | my assignments be on Khan. Exercises are self-grading; students
         | get immediate feedback; and if students need extra help, it's
         | there... with Sal Khan explaining things _radically_ different
         | from how I did.
         | 
         | (I like my explanations better, but anyone who didn't click
         | with things my way had a chance to try something different).
        
       | russellbeattie wrote:
       | We're just a few years away from Neil Stephenson's idea of a
       | _Young Lady 's Illustrated Primer: a Propaedeutic Enchiridion_.
        
       | rg111 wrote:
       | When many jobs go away, students will see a ceiling. They will
       | see no point in investing themselves to improve. Because they
       | won't find jobs anyway.
       | 
       | Whom will the AI teacher teach then?
        
         | simmanian wrote:
         | Maybe when all jobs get automated, people will actually look to
         | solve their happiness problem.
        
           | feoren wrote:
           | Funny, because it seems to me that the happiest people are
           | those who feel like they have found their purpose, their true
           | calling, their vocation in life. Many people who currently
           | feel like that, or are beginning to determine that, are going
           | to see the rug pulled out from underneath them when AI can
           | compose symphonies and voice-act and drive trucks and design
           | airport baggage handling systems and plan cities 100x better
           | than any human. We'll see a lot of happy people turn into
           | miserable little shits pretty quickly.
           | 
           | Meanwhile the rich will no longer have any need for the poor,
           | and since 100% of your worth as a human being derives from
           | what job you do in service of the rich, you'll become a
           | worthless little fucking bug for them to exterminate.
           | 
           | Don't get me wrong: I like your vision better.
        
             | DANmode wrote:
             | > Meanwhile the rich will no longer have any need for the
             | poor, and since 100% of your worth as a human being derives
             | from what job you do in service of the rich, you'll become
             | a worthless little fucking bug for them to exterminate.
             | 
             | This matches the data.
        
           | rg111 wrote:
           | Only a very small percentage of humans on earth will get this
           | opportunity. Others (most- by number) will be wiped out or
           | thrown out of their life so drastically, they will just want
           | to survive.
           | 
           | Life in the Upper West Side, NY, will not be the same as a
           | Bangladesh lower middle class neghborhood.
           | 
           | A lot of jobs providing people with middle class incomes will
           | be wiped out. The middle class will drastically shrink. That
           | is the scenario that is the most likely.
        
         | rumdz wrote:
         | There are people who enjoy learning for learning's sake.
        
           | rg111 wrote:
           | Yes.
           | 
           | Even if my own job gets replaced, and I can no longer find
           | employment, I will keep learning new Math, new programming
           | languages, and other things. (Seems unlikely now, but
           | definitely not impossible)
           | 
           | But I have seen that people like me are rare.
           | 
           | Most students learn with an earthly, material goal in mind.
           | And you can't blame them.
        
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       (page generated 2023-05-02 23:03 UTC)