Speaker 1: These sees Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Speaker 1: Stenebec on Bloomberg Radio. We did catch up with sal
Speaker 1: Cohn in late January. We got his thoughts on learning
Speaker 1: in our post pandemic world, what things are sticking, what
Speaker 1: things are not. We talked online education, something he and
Speaker 1: his team have been doing for about fifteen years or so,
Speaker 1: and now educators of all types, as you know, have
Speaker 1: a new tool maybe to use. So back to talk
Speaker 1: with us once again about the role of AI and
Speaker 1: education and their specific moves in that regard. So com
Speaker 1: back with us. Founder and CEO Khan Academy with us
Speaker 1: via zoom from Mountain View, California. Sow, good to have
Speaker 1: you back with us. How are you. I'm doing great,
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. Well, it's great to have you
Speaker 1: here once again. Late January. We talked about a lot
Speaker 1: of things, including AI, which it feels like all of
Speaker 1: a sudden everybody was talking about it once again. You're
Speaker 1: launching your own AI platform. Can you tell us about it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And when we talked in January, I was under n
Speaker 1: I was under NDA, so I couldn't tell you what. Okay.
Speaker 1: Back in back in August, open AI reached out to us.
Speaker 1: They were working on GPT four. As many folks know
Speaker 1: Chat GPT when it came out in November, it was
Speaker 1: based on GPT three or three point five. But when
Speaker 1: we saw what was possible with GPT four, we said, hey,
Speaker 1: this could actually allow us to address some of the
Speaker 1: holy grails in education, making it truly interactive, giving every
Speaker 1: student a socratic tutor, being able to do things that
Speaker 1: might have only looked like science fiction a few months ago.
Speaker 1: And Open AI wanted to work with us because they said, look,
Speaker 1: GPT four is going to be exciting but also scary
Speaker 1: in certain ways. We want to be able to launch
Speaker 1: with some social positive use cases, especially in education, especially
Speaker 1: from folks that with folks that people trust. So we've
Speaker 1: been working pretty feverishly on it for many months under NDA.
Speaker 1: So it was really hard in January when you were
Speaker 1: asking me questions about Chat GPT for me to not
Speaker 1: spill the beads. But a couple of weeks ago we
Speaker 1: launched and what we're calling con Migo, which is really
Speaker 1: our incarnation of AI on Kin Academy using GPT four.
Speaker 1: It does essentially two major strands of things. One is
Speaker 1: now when a student is doing something on kin Academy,
Speaker 1: it acts as their tutor, and it really does as
Speaker 1: opposed to just giving you the answer. If a student says,
Speaker 1: you know, telling me the interests, I'm your tutor. I
Speaker 1: can help you and if you know, what do you
Speaker 1: think is the next step. So it really tries to
Speaker 1: push them socratically. It's not just in math, it's in
Speaker 1: every subject. We have history, science, reading, comprehension. There's now
Speaker 1: a tutor and this is a beta now where we've
Speaker 1: only launched it to a few thousand people. There's a
Speaker 1: waiting lists that's forming for folks who want to join.
Speaker 1: It's about twenty thousand people right now, so we're trying
Speaker 1: to take people off as quickly as possible. But the
Speaker 1: other thing we realized is the things that would have
Speaker 1: been impossible without AI. We have activities now where students
Speaker 1: can have conversations with historical characters or literary characters. There
Speaker 1: was a student recently, a high school student. She was
Speaker 1: trying to understand some of the symbolism and the Great
Speaker 1: Gatsby and she says, wait, I have conmigo, I can
Speaker 1: I can now talk to Jay Gatsby himself? And she
Speaker 1: has why are you staring at the green light? And
Speaker 1: he's like, well, it symbolizes the things that I'm trying
Speaker 1: to attain but I just can't. And she actually apologized
Speaker 1: to him for taking up this time. The AI simulation.
Speaker 1: We're creating teacher tools for them to create lesson plans
Speaker 1: for them to refresh their own knowledge. We have a
Speaker 1: kind of a built in guidance counselor now as an
Speaker 1: AI I see a quick quick take piece. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: conversation between teachers and students. We're going to be talking
Speaker 1: and con migo. Yeah. Yeah, But it's just so it's
Speaker 1: it's fascinating because of the amount of use cases that
Speaker 1: you mentioned. Is it available? Talk to me about the availability,
Speaker 1: because I don't think I'm clear on how widespread access
Speaker 1: is at this moment and where you're at in that
Speaker 1: and where it's going. Yeah. So when we launched two
Speaker 1: weeks ago, and we're still kind of in the process
Speaker 1: of launch launching, there's a couple of things we wanted
Speaker 1: to figure out. If one, we just wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure it's working well for in the last weeks we've
Speaker 1: started to get some really positive feedback on that one.
Speaker 1: The other thing we're trying to figure out is how
Speaker 1: do we cost this out and how do we resource
Speaker 1: this the computation costs for leveraging these these next generation
Speaker 1: models like GPT four, it is not free even if
Speaker 1: you're a Chat GPT pro customer. And these are folks
Speaker 1: paying twenty dollars a month to open AI. They only
Speaker 1: get GPT four for I think at twenty five interactions
Speaker 1: per day and you have to wait three hours, so
Speaker 1: they've so in a lot of ways, Conmigo, what we're
Speaker 1: doing is in many ways the most unfettered access to
Speaker 1: GPT four. So we're trying to figure out ways that
Speaker 1: we can we can resource it. So right now there's
Speaker 1: a waiting list, when people to get off the waiting list.
Speaker 1: Right now we're prioritizing people who are donating. It's a
Speaker 1: twenty dollars donation. It helps us resource the computation costs
Speaker 1: and also do the R and D. We are not
Speaker 1: for profits, so that is a donation, a true donation.
Speaker 1: But we're trying to figure out how we can bring
Speaker 1: that that that price down over time so that we
Speaker 1: can make it more and more accessible. Because rather I
Speaker 1: think about you and kon Academy as this great leveler
Speaker 1: when it comes to education. Right, your videos are out there,
Speaker 1: anybody can access them. So how do we make sure
Speaker 1: that once again, we don't have a technology potentially that
Speaker 1: widens the gap rather than reduces it. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: front of mine for us, and I think there's two dimensions.
Speaker 1: So that one is just the cost issue that we've
Speaker 1: already talked about. Obviously, everything that we stand for is
Speaker 1: our mission is free world class education for anyone anywhere.
Speaker 1: We're going to try to make this as accessible as possible.
Speaker 1: Keeping in mind there is a higher cost, but if
Speaker 1: you think about if we can bring this down to
Speaker 1: let's say a few dollars per student per month, this
Speaker 1: is dramatically lower cost than conventional tutoring. And a lot
Speaker 1: of the school districts have been spending a lot of
Speaker 1: money on conventional tutoring lately with money that was released
Speaker 1: after the pandemic, and they haven't seen results because it
Speaker 1: hasn't been connected to what students are doing in class,
Speaker 1: and it isn't happening during class, So the kids who
Speaker 1: are engaging or are usually the kids who don't need it.
Speaker 1: The kids who need it aren't engaging after school, etc.
Speaker 1: So we think we're gonna be able to get this
Speaker 1: to a much broader set of students. We're starting to
Speaker 1: partner with some school districts, large urban school districts, so
Speaker 1: we can bring it to their students for free, and
Speaker 1: then hopefully we make it more and more accessible over time.
Speaker 1: The other dimension to your question, the way we've been
Speaker 1: thinking about it is a lot of school districts announce
Speaker 1: that they're banning chat GPT, and there's some good reason
Speaker 1: why they're doing that. Obviously, students can use it to cheat,
Speaker 1: They can do shady things with it because it's a
Speaker 1: very open tool on Conmigo, all of the conversations are
Speaker 1: viewable by the teachers and the parents. There's a strong moderation.
Speaker 1: All of the activities are designed to be very pedagogically positive.
Speaker 1: There's hopefully no cheating. More. It will write a paper
Speaker 1: with you, it won't write a paper for you. It
Speaker 1: will tutor you, but it will not tell you the answer.
Speaker 1: So some of those same school districts who banned it,
Speaker 1: and I was afraid when the band because I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is going to create another digital divide because the
Speaker 1: well resource kids are still going to use it. Those
Speaker 1: same school districts who banned it. Now we're saying, hey,
Speaker 1: this is what we wanted. We don't want to stick
Speaker 1: our head in the sand. We want to move forward
Speaker 1: with the times. We just want to do it in
Speaker 1: a safe way that's actually pedagogically positive. So we're pretty
Speaker 1: excited that hopefully we can bring get the cost down.
Speaker 1: Some of that is open AI and Azure and Microsoft
Speaker 1: and all of them getting the efficiencies, and then on
Speaker 1: our side, we're trying to bring the efficiencies in so
Speaker 1: that we can make it as accessible as possible and
Speaker 1: make sure that all kids have access to this. But
Speaker 1: access is such a multi layered thing, Sal, I wonder
Speaker 1: how you're thinking about partnerships when it comes to that,
Speaker 1: because we're still trying to wire up the country. Well, right,
Speaker 1: we've got the internet access thing. I'm on your website.
Speaker 1: It looks like it's like an iPhone is being used
Speaker 1: or samsuent or whatever it is. Like, what about people
Speaker 1: who don't have access to a smartphone? Right, we have
Speaker 1: about a minute and a half left, But I wonder
Speaker 1: how you're thinking about that. And then we'll come back
Speaker 1: and talk some more. Yeah, it's a tough question. Simple
Speaker 1: answer is digital access in the US at least has
Speaker 1: gotten dramatically better. Cell Phone access in the rest of
Speaker 1: the world also has gotten better. We are trying to
Speaker 1: skate to where the puck is going on that front.
Speaker 1: In the US, we think it's all about getting it
Speaker 1: to students in the school setting because at home, as
Speaker 1: you know, there is more inconsistent access. And so that's
Speaker 1: why we're working so closely with school districts, which for
Speaker 1: the most part now do have one to one laptops
Speaker 1: or at least close to that inside of their classrooms.
Speaker 1: And then in other countries, in places like India, we're
Speaker 1: partnering with state governments and that is multi multi layered.
Speaker 1: We need to translate the content, we need to align
Speaker 1: it to their standards, and we also have to figure
Speaker 1: out how we get the vice access right. This is
Speaker 1: why we always like talking to you because it's the
Speaker 1: global perspective. It's not just about teachers and kids and
Speaker 1: here in the US, but it's really about teachers and
Speaker 1: kids everywhere in the world. So so one of the
Speaker 1: things you're talking about, you know, your new AI platform
Speaker 1: that you guys have created, and I came across, are
Speaker 1: we and prepping for our conversation with you. Stanford put
Speaker 1: out a report earlier this month warning that decisions made
Speaker 1: by AI could lead to nuclear level catastrophe. Why is
Speaker 1: it not too early to start playing around with the
Speaker 1: next level AI when it comes to education? Well, I think,
Speaker 1: like any technology, there could be a lot of positives
Speaker 1: and there could also be a lot of possible negatives.
Speaker 1: And I think as a society, it's all about mitigating
Speaker 1: the negatives and then using it for the positives where possible.
Speaker 1: The genie is to some degree out of the bottle
Speaker 1: a little bit, and so I know, I tell this
Speaker 1: the team at Kon Academy, and tell this to our donors.
Speaker 1: I view it as our responsibility as a nonprofit in
Speaker 1: education to show how you can use these technologies and
Speaker 1: a very positive and a very safe and a very
Speaker 1: trusting way, Because if we do that, then we're going
Speaker 1: to be able to reach all these students that we've
Speaker 1: been talking about, and we'll hopefully be able to accelerate
Speaker 1: their learning pretty dramatically. Now, there are other concerns about
Speaker 1: what happens if you have super intelligent AIS. You know,
Speaker 1: who know who knows what GPT five or six or
Speaker 1: seven is going to be able to do planning military
Speaker 1: strategy or figuring out what targets are, etc. But even there,
Speaker 1: I personally think that I would rather have the actors
Speaker 1: in the US being on the cutting edge than US
Speaker 1: pausing and slowing things down and that and letting folks
Speaker 1: who are maybe not as altruistic continue to move forward.
Speaker 1: You know, no matter what we do, I guarantee you
Speaker 1: the Chinese or the Russians are not going to be
Speaker 1: stopping their generative large language model research. So I actually
Speaker 1: think it's a national security issue to keep moving, not
Speaker 1: to stop. Yeah, that's that's such an incredible point. And
Speaker 1: also that you were mentioning that this is just a
Speaker 1: story we've heard before, Like every single innovation has this
Speaker 1: big question, and you can't just like let the United
Speaker 1: States be the only one to not have social media,
Speaker 1: for example, because we're worried about the potential downfalls. Right,
Speaker 1: that's right, And you know social media is not I don't. Well,
Speaker 1: it can be a national security issues, as we've sometimes seen.
Speaker 1: It can lead to polarization, it can lead to you know,
Speaker 1: people believing things that aren't true, but it doesn't quite
Speaker 1: have the same strategic consequence as something like artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: So an artificial intelligtion is going to intersect with social media,
Speaker 1: It's going to be influencing how people think, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So I feel much better if relatively positive actors in
Speaker 1: the States and aligned or countries aren't thinking about how
Speaker 1: to use this responsibly and not falling behind folks who
Speaker 1: are who have less less issues with using it irresponsibly.
Speaker 1: Are you thinking about or concerned about any legislation on AI.
Speaker 1: I know we talked about rulings at the school district level,
Speaker 1: but are you concerned about any federal legislation that might
Speaker 1: impact usage. I'm always worried when people want to pass legislation,
Speaker 1: should a regulation without having a clear picture of what
Speaker 1: they're trying to protect against. I think right now there's
Speaker 1: a lot of knee jerk fears based on dystopian science
Speaker 1: fiction novels about AIS taking over, etc. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of the folks calling for regulation can't exactly pinpoint
Speaker 1: to what tangibly they think is going to happen, and
Speaker 1: they can't point to actual examples of that happening. You know,
Speaker 1: the Internet is actually much more of a wild West
Speaker 1: than large language models are right now, and I think
Speaker 1: for the most part, it's probably a good thing. It's
Speaker 1: been left unregulated. I'm not antiregulation. What I would say is,
Speaker 1: let's see where there are issues that pop up, and
Speaker 1: then determine is regulation the best mechanism to do that,
Speaker 1: and then and then that should be a you know,
Speaker 1: chev robust conversation about that. For teachers, what would something
Speaker 1: like this, this kind of functionality and using generative AI
Speaker 1: specifically like you guys are doing, What does it mean
Speaker 1: for teachers specifically who We recently had an author on
Speaker 1: an incredible book and just you know, she embedded herself
Speaker 1: for a year with three different teachers and the stresses,
Speaker 1: the strains not paid well. It's it's a really tough
Speaker 1: profession right now, and to be fair, not really well
Speaker 1: respected by many people out there. And that's unfortunate because
Speaker 1: this is talking about educating the next generation. So what
Speaker 1: might something like this do for teachers? Well, first and foremost,
Speaker 1: you know, your average teacher has thirty kids in the classroom.
Speaker 1: They wish they could replicate themselves, give more personalized attention
Speaker 1: to every student. This is something we've always worked on
Speaker 1: kind academy, but having this AI tutor in the room
Speaker 1: with you. It is like replicating you, we've already seen this.
Speaker 1: When we've been piloting it at some classrooms, the teacher's like, wow,
Speaker 1: it just answered a question that I would have had
Speaker 1: to try to answer, but I wouldn't been able to
Speaker 1: connect with this other student. So it's already doing that.
Speaker 1: But I think even more importantly, teachers spend about thirty
Speaker 1: forty fifty percent of their time planning less than refreshing knowledge.
Speaker 1: We have activities four teachers. We've made them a first
Speaker 1: year user here where it helps them develop lesson plans
Speaker 1: in seconds that would have otherwise have taken hours. It
Speaker 1: helps them prepare their knowledge, It helps them think about
Speaker 1: like almost like an instructional coach, what they how they
Speaker 1: can intervene with their students. So we're kind of calling
Speaker 1: Kanmigo the r AI a tutor for every student and
Speaker 1: a teaching assistant or an army of teaching assistance for
Speaker 1: every teacher. And so I think it'll hopefully lower their
Speaker 1: burden and be able to free up more time for
Speaker 1: the teachers to spend with the students. Can it help
Speaker 1: with grading at all the simpleasures? Yes, I think it is.
Speaker 1: We didn't launched two weeks ago. We have been piloting
Speaker 1: some of this, but we want to make sure that
Speaker 1: it's really robust before we launch it. But I think
Speaker 1: within the next year you're going to see things like
Speaker 1: a teacher saying, hey, Kanmigo, let's develop an activity for
Speaker 1: our students, and Kanmigo says, all right, let's have them
Speaker 1: all right, you know, whether the Civil War could have
Speaker 1: been avoided and how, and then the teachers like that
Speaker 1: sounds great, And then every student sees that assignment and
Speaker 1: then they work with Conmigo to kind of talk about
Speaker 1: whether the Civil War would have happened otherwise. And then
Speaker 1: Kanmigo assesses it and tells the teacher, Hey, these students
Speaker 1: had some really exemplary responses. These students struggled. You know,
Speaker 1: I would give these students an a. I would have
Speaker 1: these students continue to work on it. Right, that's not
Speaker 1: science fiction anymore. I think we're months away from that,
Speaker 1: not years, Especially when we talk about individualized learning, like
Speaker 1: you think about this, it sounds conceptually like it could
Speaker 1: really take us to that level. Hey, Saal just got
Speaker 1: about twenty five thirty seconds. Well we look back five
Speaker 1: years from now, ten years, and is there a superlative
Speaker 1: to describe what generative AI may mean to education. And
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to look for that crazy headline, but
Speaker 1: I'm just curious how you're looking at it. Just quickly.
Speaker 1: I think this is the biggest inflection point of our lifetimes,
Speaker 1: and I think this is going to give a tutor
Speaker 1: to every student on the planet and a teaching assistant
Speaker 1: to every teacher. So it's a big deal. Well, listen,
Speaker 1: thank you so much, and so appreciate you coming back
Speaker 1: when you couldn't talk about it, now you could. We
Speaker 1: really appreciate you sharing that with us in our Bloomberg
Speaker 1: listeners and viewers. So appreciate it. All right. SoCon, be well,
Speaker 1: Take care. SoCon, Founder, chief executive officer of Khan Academy.