Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Speaker 2: Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3: Tech.
Speaker 4: Good children, Well if others have.
Speaker 2: Well, our next guest over the last fifteen years or
Speaker 2: so has helped countless students who needed a bit of
Speaker 2: assistance outside of the classroom with math, economics, physics, history
Speaker 2: and more. Maybe it was for a bit of help
Speaker 2: with ap calculus in high school, as it was for
Speaker 2: our producer Elizabeth Cedrin, or for me help with understanding
Speaker 2: accounting principles in business school.
Speaker 3: I love it. Everybody has tapped into it.
Speaker 1: We just had a colleague talk to us about what
Speaker 1: he is doing and tapping into it. And it's not
Speaker 1: someone who's like ten or twelve or fifteen.
Speaker 2: No, he's like downloading the algebra one.
Speaker 1: Right to resprect me cool thinking about it all right.
Speaker 1: Selcon a familiar name and voice to so many people
Speaker 1: out there.
Speaker 3: Who've seen his YouTube videos.
Speaker 1: He is the founder and see of the nonprofit con
Speaker 1: Academy as well as the con Lab School. He's got
Speaker 1: a new book out, Brave New Words. How AI will
Speaker 1: revolutionize education? Why that's a good thing? So it is
Speaker 1: so good to have you here with us, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny you just we've been talking a lot about
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence as you as you can imagine. First of all,
Speaker 1: how are you tell us about your world and how
Speaker 1: things have been?
Speaker 4: Well, thanks for having me. I'm great. Things are busy,
Speaker 4: but busy in a good way. It's exciting, you know.
Speaker 4: Obviously the book just got released, But more of what
Speaker 4: the book's about is we're living in a science fiction
Speaker 4: book these days. Con Academy, a lot of folks know.
Speaker 4: I s always great to hear that even people in
Speaker 4: your own team are benefiting from it or have benefited
Speaker 4: from it. But it all started with me tutoring my cousin,
Speaker 4: and everything that we've been doing over the last twenty
Speaker 4: years since then has been trying to try to scale
Speaker 4: up that type of personalization and what we're now seeing
Speaker 4: with generative AI. Even though there's a lot of issues,
Speaker 4: a lot of risks, a lot of things to work through,
Speaker 4: and I try to address that in the book, there's
Speaker 4: a lot of optimism, or at least I have a
Speaker 4: lot of hope that it can can do some really
Speaker 4: positive things, getting us that much closer to giving world
Speaker 4: class education to everyone.
Speaker 2: Well, it's so interesting, Saul, because when we talk about
Speaker 2: AI in the classroom, I think a year ago we
Speaker 2: were talking more about this, this idea that people were
Speaker 2: so professors, teachers were so concerned about chet GPT, for example,
Speaker 2: being used to write term papers or write essays, and
Speaker 2: you know, having the software to detect whether or not
Speaker 2: a GPT wrote an essay the question about having phones
Speaker 2: in classrooms. Like, the idea that technology has helped the
Speaker 2: classroom is there, but it's also been that technology has
Speaker 2: hurt the education experience. That's a big part of the
Speaker 2: conversation right now. How do those two things conflict with
Speaker 2: one another? How do you see them?
Speaker 4: The reality is technology is always a it's neutral. It
Speaker 4: can be positive or negative. You can think of a
Speaker 4: very simple technology like a knife. It can be used
Speaker 4: to hurt people, It could be used to cook, it
Speaker 4: could be used to build things. And we're seeing the
Speaker 4: same thing with cell phones and with AI. Yes, and
Speaker 4: the cheating is a real issue and people are still
Speaker 4: scrambling and you know, I have a whole chapter in
Speaker 4: the book about cheating and the state of cheating. Even
Speaker 4: before AI was actually pretty bad, AI just really put
Speaker 4: a spotlight on it. Cell Phones, social media obviously addict students,
Speaker 4: especially young people in a certain way, and most of
Speaker 4: the literature it's not good for them. But even before AI,
Speaker 4: there's really positive things you can do with technology. You
Speaker 4: could learn on con academy. You can write a paper,
Speaker 4: you can code, you could edit video, and most of us,
Speaker 4: I think, as long as done in moderation, would be
Speaker 4: happy if our students spend some time a few hours
Speaker 4: a week doing that type of thing. And so the
Speaker 4: key is how do you get how do you use
Speaker 4: technology to amplify positive intent and then how do you
Speaker 4: also use it to mitigate the negative intent? We're building
Speaker 4: and I write about in the book where we're building
Speaker 4: tools that not only support students better in their writing.
Speaker 4: Won't do it for them, It'll tutor them, it'll coach them,
Speaker 4: but it can make that process transparent for teachers. And
Speaker 4: by doing that, it actually undermines cheating, whether it's AI
Speaker 4: cheating or other.
Speaker 1: How does it though, Like I think one of the
Speaker 1: things the conversations we've been having TOIL is about kind
Speaker 1: of this idea of does it take some of our
Speaker 1: thinking away from us?
Speaker 3: Like you know, sometimes you got to struggle.
Speaker 1: Through a concept or a thought or a mathematical problem.
Speaker 1: Getting an assist can be helpful, but sometimes you got
Speaker 1: to sit with it for a little bit. And I
Speaker 1: do wonder about technology taking away some of that work that.
Speaker 3: We use our brain for. And I'm just a little
Speaker 3: nervous about that.
Speaker 4: It's a valid fear. And you know what I believe
Speaker 4: is one in some cases you do want the shortcut
Speaker 4: when you're working, et cetera. But in most cases, especially
Speaker 4: for since we want them to develop those skills. And
Speaker 4: that's why everything we've been working on con Migo, which
Speaker 4: is our AI assistant on con Academy, it doesn't answer
Speaker 4: the question. It will push you socratically. So the other
Speaker 4: day I was trying to get it to explain supernova's
Speaker 4: at a deeper level. I know what they are, but
Speaker 4: exactly why does it explode? Why doesn't it just collapse?
Speaker 4: And its response wasn't it just give me a Wikipedia
Speaker 4: answer or like the type that you get on chat GPD.
Speaker 4: It's response was, well, can you explain to me what
Speaker 4: you already know? And then it kept pushing my thinking, Well, okay,
Speaker 4: if that leads to this, well, what do you think
Speaker 4: what happened there, and so it was a much more
Speaker 4: socratic conversation that drives critical thinking. And so there's an
Speaker 4: opportunity to actually scale that type of learning that's been
Speaker 4: very hard in the past.
Speaker 1: What what is your AI tool like? Where what data
Speaker 1: are you pulling on for it?
Speaker 4: So we are using the underlying frontier models, whether it's
Speaker 4: you know now GBT four, Turbau and on me, et cetera.
Speaker 4: But then on top of that, there's a lot of
Speaker 4: work to make it really special purpose for education. We're
Speaker 4: doing a lot of what's called in the trade now
Speaker 4: prompt well, prompt engineering, prompt chaining, multiple calls. It's anchored
Speaker 4: on con academy content that's been vetted by professionals for
Speaker 4: many years. It can slurp that stuff in as well.
Speaker 4: So we're putting a lot of the pieces together. We're
Speaker 4: not just you know, relying on the raw model, which
Speaker 4: I don't think is a responsible way to do it
Speaker 4: for an education use case.
Speaker 2: It's still it is a brave new world that we're
Speaker 2: living in. Your book's called Brave New Words. Yesterday saw
Speaker 2: I don't know if you saw this, but a lot
Speaker 2: of people were posting on x about errors that Google's
Speaker 2: own AI search tool was making. My brother sent me
Speaker 2: one about eating rocks, and it actually had cited an
Speaker 2: Onion article that was joking about eating rocks. But you know,
Speaker 2: if you looked at eating rocks on the internet, it
Speaker 2: said like it's recommended to eat rocks every day, and
Speaker 2: then you look at the source and it's the oniony,
Speaker 2: So like, this is not you know, this is by
Speaker 2: no means like an easy thing to figure out at
Speaker 2: this point.
Speaker 4: So no, not not at all. And obviously I can't
Speaker 4: I can't defend everything out there, but regardless, obviously the
Speaker 4: providers are going to work harder to make sure that
Speaker 4: things like that don't happen. But it's part of digital
Speaker 4: literacy now for users to recognize that every answer you're
Speaker 4: going to get from an AI, you're gonna have to
Speaker 4: validate that, You're gonna have to put that in context,
Speaker 4: and not all AIS are considered equal. And this isn't
Speaker 4: a new phenomenon. Well before generative AI, you could do
Speaker 4: a web search on Google and very click on something
Speaker 4: that's complete misinformation, or see a video on YouTube that's
Speaker 4: complete misinformation. So we've always had to try to give
Speaker 4: people that scale of how do they judge, how can
Speaker 4: they validate? I think that's true in an AI world,
Speaker 4: and I read a lot about it in the book.
Speaker 4: There are ways, and we are building these ways that
Speaker 4: the AI can not only not do those things or
Speaker 4: can help you validate what's real.
Speaker 1: Listen, you are someone who was so at the frontier
Speaker 1: in terms of figuring out a really smart way to
Speaker 1: use technology to teach kids, and they still do it.
Speaker 1: I mean you just think about what you did way
Speaker 1: back when, right when it was kind of I hate
Speaker 1: to say, like almost simpler times.
Speaker 2: She doesn't hate YouTube, right, it's very early.
Speaker 1: It's a while, but it has helped so many and
Speaker 1: continues to do so.
Speaker 3: So, so you like.
Speaker 1: Not glass half full with AI and this, Like you
Speaker 1: think it's going to be okay, You think it's going
Speaker 1: to be leaps and bounds in terms of teaching folks
Speaker 1: like I think about tutors. But anyway, like you are
Speaker 1: all in and you feel comfortable about this.
Speaker 4: Well, what I've told everyone. You know a lot of
Speaker 4: people are reading the book. I'm getting interviewed together like, hey,
Speaker 4: you tend to be more optimistic than most people. I
Speaker 4: was like, no, look, I'm afraid of all the same
Speaker 4: stuff that a lot of people are saying. Bad people
Speaker 4: are going to use it to amplify bad intent. We're
Speaker 4: going to see deep fakes, we're going to see fraud,
Speaker 4: We're going to see state actors try to manipulate people
Speaker 4: in bad ways. That's going to happen. But that doesn't
Speaker 4: mean that the good people should just freeze and do nothing.
Speaker 4: We should use these tools to amplify positive intent. And
Speaker 4: so what I'm telling everyone, whether AI is a net
Speaker 4: positive or net negative, isn't like a flip of the coin.
Speaker 4: We're not just going to like sit and watch. Good
Speaker 4: people should go out there and make the positive use
Speaker 4: cases happen. We shouldn't just talk about it. And they exist,
Speaker 4: and we are already seeing that in education, you know,
Speaker 4: just earlier this week, we made a big announcement with Microsoft.
Speaker 4: We're making these teacher tools that are going to save
Speaker 4: teachers time doing things like lesson planning and grading papers
Speaker 4: and writing progress supports, saving teachers hours a week. We're
Speaker 4: making that free, even though it costs a lot of
Speaker 4: money for the computation, making that free to all us teachers.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of good that's already happening, and
Speaker 4: so I'm optimistic if good people put their energy and
Speaker 4: the resources behind it, we're going to get a net
Speaker 4: benefit from the technology.
Speaker 2: As Carol mentioned, you harnessed tech early in your career
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight for YouTube. Is AI, in your opinion,
Speaker 2: more powerful than that?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I think you know, even if we just
Speaker 4: even if they froze AI today, there's ten years of
Speaker 4: amazing things we could create with it. But the reality
Speaker 4: is the pace of innovations only accelerating. So yes, what
Speaker 4: we're going to be able to do in two, three,
Speaker 4: four or five years is going to be mind blowing, unbelievable.
Speaker 2: I want to get right back to Salcon, a familiar
Speaker 2: name to so many people. He's the founder and CEO
Speaker 2: of the nonprofit con Academy as well as the con
Speaker 2: Lap School. He's got a new book out. It's called
Speaker 2: Brave New Words, How AI will revolutionize education and why
Speaker 2: that's a good thing. Sal We're going to get back
Speaker 2: to the book in just a second. But as we
Speaker 2: were on our planning call this morning, we were talking
Speaker 2: about con Academy and we're all sharing our experiences with it,
Speaker 2: and it feels like with you because those early videos
Speaker 2: were really you and you you only teaching us so much,
Speaker 2: and we're asking ourselves, is it a nonprofit still? And
Speaker 2: you know, went up and looked, and it still is
Speaker 2: a nonprofit. And I'm wondering talk to us a little
Speaker 2: about the structure of the organization and why a nonprofit
Speaker 2: is the right model for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's always good to hear those stories. And
Speaker 4: I still make a lot of videos. I made a
Speaker 4: couple this morning.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 4: But you know, there was there's three Harvard Business Schools
Speaker 4: case studies on con Academy, and the question that it
Speaker 4: normally boils down to is should kind Academy be a
Speaker 4: for profit or nonprofit? We clearly have a social mission,
Speaker 4: but we have some of the behaviors or the properties
Speaker 4: of a high growth for profit. We're very tech focused.
Speaker 4: We're out here in Silicon Valley, we scale, et cetera,
Speaker 4: et cetera. You know, for me, it was honestly an
Speaker 4: emotional decision. When I incorporated con Academy back in two
Speaker 4: thousand and eight. There were some vcs who were interested,
Speaker 4: and I'm not against for profit. My previous life, I
Speaker 4: was a hedge fund analyst, which was very for profit,
Speaker 4: but it felt like education and it still feels that
Speaker 4: way is a space where maybe the markets don't always
Speaker 4: lead to outcomes that are optimal or are outcomes that
Speaker 4: are aligned with our values. And there were folks even
Speaker 4: back in two thousand and eight who were using the content,
Speaker 4: who were telling me how it was changing their life,
Speaker 4: and I was like, well, I'm not sure if they
Speaker 4: would be able to access it if they didn't have it.
Speaker 4: And as a hedge fun analyst, I also saw how
Speaker 4: you could have a founder who really is mission driven
Speaker 4: of a for profit, but you fast forward fifty years,
Speaker 4: one hundred years, the capital structure changes, the incentives change,
Speaker 4: and I didn't want that to happen. So I did
Speaker 4: a kind of delusional thing. I was in this walk
Speaker 4: in closet when I filled out the paperwork with the RS,
Speaker 4: I said, what if Kin Academy could be like the
Speaker 4: next Oxford or the next Smithsonian. Even at that time,
Speaker 4: we had actually served more students than Harvard had in
Speaker 4: its history, even when I was just one guy in
Speaker 4: a walk in closet, And I said, what if we
Speaker 4: could reach billions? And so it was a little bit
Speaker 4: of a delusional optimism, but you know, it feels less
Speaker 4: delusional now really interesting.
Speaker 1: I do want to go back to the book, if
Speaker 1: we may, your book Brave New Words, how AI will
Speaker 1: revolutionize education and why that's a good thing. So where
Speaker 1: do you think AI will have the biggest.
Speaker 3: Impact on education? Is it the approach? Is it a
Speaker 3: certain area? I'm just curious.
Speaker 4: You know, the technology is so powerful. I think every
Speaker 4: hour that you spend brainstorming, you realize it'll have more
Speaker 4: and more implications. I mean in any industry, especially education.
Speaker 4: You know when open Ai first reached out to us
Speaker 4: in summer of twenty twenty two, and this was six
Speaker 4: months before Chat GPT came out and we were able
Speaker 4: to get early access to GPT four. Many folks know
Speaker 4: that even the first chat GPT wasn't built on GPT four,
Speaker 4: was built on a previous model. We immediately gravitated to, hey,
Speaker 4: how can this be a tutor for any student? Really
Speaker 4: do the types of things that I was doing with
Speaker 4: my cousins twenty years ago and these frontier models now
Speaker 4: like GPT four, Gemini, et cetera, they really can emulate
Speaker 4: what a tutor could do via chat. And many folks
Speaker 4: have probably seen the demo that for Omni GPT four
Speaker 4: Omni that came out last week. It's me and my son.
Speaker 4: They brought us in to see if we can do
Speaker 4: some fun stuff with it, and you can talk to
Speaker 4: it in a natural way, and it could see your
Speaker 4: writing and it can see your face, and it really
Speaker 4: felt like a live tutoring session. That's all coming. But
Speaker 4: then there's the other side of the equation. There's what
Speaker 4: you could do with teachers, helping them write lesson plans,
Speaker 4: helping be a co teacher for that teacher, be a
Speaker 4: teaching assistant, helping them grade papers. That's already happening. We
Speaker 4: already getting feedback from school districts using Conmego that their
Speaker 4: teachers are saving five to ten hours a week. That's
Speaker 4: a huge benefit for teachers who are spread thin or
Speaker 4: in many cases overworked. So it's a benefit for them.
Speaker 4: But I see us going five years into the future
Speaker 4: where it's even able to facilitate interactions between people. A
Speaker 4: teacher can say, hey, let's do a breakout. Hey, I says, okay,
Speaker 4: I'll set up the breakout rooms, and actually I will
Speaker 4: moderate the conversation in each breakout and I will bring
Speaker 4: it back to you. An AI and this we have
Speaker 4: to just be careful that the data privacy and it
Speaker 4: doesn't get creepy. But I can say, hey, we haven't
Speaker 4: called Mary in a little while, why don't we call
Speaker 4: on her. She looks disengaged or he looks disengaged. Let's
Speaker 4: use that to personalize the lessons more so it really
Speaker 4: will feel like a teaching assistant.
Speaker 2: Heysel, you mentioned con migo and conmego is featured prominently
Speaker 2: in your book. Can you explain what it is and
Speaker 2: how you guys built it on GPT for.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, this is back in almost almost two years ago,
Speaker 4: eighteen months ago. We saw there's a lot of potential
Speaker 4: for the raw technology, but we also said, hey, this
Speaker 4: could be used for cheating. If you're talking about kids,
Speaker 4: how do you know that they're not trying to do
Speaker 4: shady things with the AI? How do you protect their
Speaker 4: data privacy? How do you make sure that it doesn't
Speaker 4: make errors in math and hallucinate? And so we said
Speaker 4: there's a lot of work here to take this raw
Speaker 4: AI model and make it appropriate for school. So our
Speaker 4: AI tool set for teachers and students we call con Migo,
Speaker 4: and it does all of That's what it's doing. It
Speaker 4: won't cheat, it will work with you socratically. It'll actually
Speaker 4: help undermine other forms of cheating, even AI based cheating.
Speaker 4: It makes everything to the teacher. It'll actively notify parents
Speaker 4: and teachers if students try to do something shady with
Speaker 4: the AI. We're introducing interfaces. Not everything should be a
Speaker 4: chat interface. We're doing. The interface is where a student
Speaker 4: can write an essay, co create a document. Once again,
Speaker 4: all of that is transparent to the teacher. The AI
Speaker 4: can highlight parts of the document and give students feedback
Speaker 4: on it. We're created activities where it can act as
Speaker 4: a bit of a career and guidance counselor for a teacher,
Speaker 4: for a student. Once again, not to replace the human
Speaker 4: beings in their life, but really to amplify that impact.
Speaker 4: Whenever student needs it, it's there, and then when they
Speaker 4: get with the teacher or their guidance counselor, they can
Speaker 4: go deeper.
Speaker 1: Hey, listen, one thing we talk about a lot salads,
Speaker 1: you would imagine is college admissions. And you have a
Speaker 1: chapter towards the end of the book devoted to that.
Speaker 1: The first line in it says, the classic components considered
Speaker 1: in college admissions are grades, standardized tests, extracurriculars, essays, and
Speaker 1: letters of recommendation. AI will change how most, if not all,
Speaker 1: of these factors are value developed and evaluated. Those are
Speaker 1: your words, What impact will that have on that process?
Speaker 4: It is really across the board. As we know, these
Speaker 4: things are all about writing. And what we do also
Speaker 4: know is, you know, there was a Varsity Blue scandal
Speaker 4: several years ago where we saw these corrupt coaches, admissions
Speaker 4: coaches that you could hire to almost fabricate a college admissions.
Speaker 4: But what we know, you know, and especially places like
Speaker 4: Silicon Valley where I live, New York, a lot of
Speaker 4: affluent people, upper middle class people. Well before AI they
Speaker 4: were paying four hundred dollars they are it's still happening,
Speaker 4: paying four or five hundred dollars an hour to have
Speaker 4: these professionals advise their kids on how to maximize their essays,
Speaker 4: et cetera. Now, the ethical ones are just act as coaches,
Speaker 4: but it's still a huge advantage, and the less ethical
Speaker 4: ones are essentially writing these essays. And you know, I
Speaker 4: think admissions officers, and I write about this in the book,
Speaker 4: have they've kind of known about this, but they've kind
Speaker 4: of intentionally not wanted to address this, the elephant in
Speaker 4: the room about the inequity and to the fact that
Speaker 4: the AIS can now do some of this work for
Speaker 4: all students. It really just puts a spotlight on something
Speaker 4: that's always there and it makes you wonder whether you
Speaker 4: can get richer points of data for a student than
Speaker 4: a recommendation than an essay. But that's where the AI
Speaker 4: could be interesting too. Future admissions SAT type things could
Speaker 4: have free response. You could have to talk things through,
Speaker 4: you could write it out and then the AI could
Speaker 4: make sense of that.
Speaker 3: So cool.
Speaker 1: There's also a book about a chapter about employment in
Speaker 1: an AI world.
Speaker 3: There's so much in this book.
Speaker 1: Sal thank you for finding time for us to talk
Speaker 1: about sol Con. Of course, his new book, Brave New Words,