Latest news with #KiraLearning
Business Insider
01-08-2025
- Business Insider
OpenAI's education head says students should use ChatGPT as a tool, not 'an answer machine'
Luddites have no place in an AI-powered world, according to OpenAI 's vice president of education. "Workers who use AI in the workforce are incredibly more productive," Leah Belsky, who's been leading OpenAI's education team since 2024, said on an episode of the company's podcast on Friday. So learning to use the technology, she said, should start early. "Any graduate who leaves institution today needs to know how to use AI in their daily life," she said. "And that will come in both where they're applying for jobs as well as when they start their new job." Most schools have so far sought ways to prevent students from using AI rather than encouraging it or teaching it. This is partly because AI use in school is considered cheating. There is also concern that using AI can cause so-called "brain rot." Belsky thinks about it differently. "AI is ultimately a tool," she said, at one point comparing it to a calculator. "What matters most in an education space is how that tool is used. If students use AI as an answer machine, they are not going to learn. And so part of our journey here is to help students and educators use AI in ways that will expand critical thinking and expand creativity." The "core literacy" students should develop, she said, is coding. "Now, with vibe coding and now that there are all sorts of tools that make coding easier, I think we're going to get to a place where every student should not only learn how to use AI generally, but they should learn to use AI to create images, to create applications, to write code," she said. Vibe coding is the process of prompting AI in natural language to write code for whatever you want. It's been widely embraced, but most avoid using it for core technology since AI code is prone to errors. Anyone vibe coding would need some level of coding knowledge, or know someone who does, to check the AI's work. Perhaps the biggest concern about using AI in education is that it removes the element of "productive struggle" — a crucial part of how people learn and master new material. Belsky says OpenAI is developing technology to counter that. This week, OpenAI introduced "Study Mode" in ChatGPT, which provides students with "guiding questions that calibrate responses to their objective and skill level to help them build deeper understanding," according to OpenAI's website. OpenAI is not the only technology company thinking about this topic. Kira Learning is a startup chaired by Google Brain founder Andrew Ng. It first launched in 2021 to help teachers without a background in computer science teach the subject effectively. The company launched a slate of AI agents earlier this year. The aim is to introduce "friction" into students' conversations with AI at the right stages so that they actually have a productive struggle and learn through the experience, Andre Pasinetti, cofounder and CEO of Kira, told Business Insider. For the near future, at least, the onus will likely be on tech companies to spearhead new ways to keep the learning in learning, as universities and educational institutions scramble to keep up. Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University, also talked about the state of the university in a conversation with podcaster Azeem Azhar this week. "There's a lot of hand-wringing about 'How do we stop people from cheating' and not looking at 'What should we be teaching and testing?'" he said."The whole system is set up to incentivize getting good grades. And that's exactly the skill that will be obsolete."
Business Insider
23-04-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Google Brain founder Andrew Ng's startup wants to use AI agents to redefine teaching. Here's how.
The classroom is getting a tech upgrade with AI-powered teaching assistants. Kira Learning, an edtech startup chaired by Google Brain founder, Stanford professor, and AI researcher Andrew Ng has unveiled a new platform that brings AI agents to the classroom. Kira's AI agents will carry out the repetitive tasks that often consume hours of teachers' time. They can help with grading, lesson planning, and analyzing classroom discussions to provide insights on which students are succeeding and which students are struggling. The platform also offers one-on-one tutoring for students. The company says its goal is to free teachers up to focus on shaping the learning process — as opposed to just conveying information. As AI becomes more integrated into classrooms, Ng sees this as part of broader transformation of teachers' roles. "AI is helping redefine what it means to be a great teacher," he told Business Insider by email. "Traditionally, we've expected teachers to be subject matter experts. But with the workforce changing so rapidly and schools introducing new subjects to prepare students for a rapidly evolving world, what happens when a teacher is asked to teach something entirely new, say, computer science, without years of experience in that field?" Kira has done this dance before. It launched in 2021 with the aim of helping teachers without a background in computer science teach the subject effectively. At the time, several states were ramping up legislation around making computer science a requirement to graduate from high school. "Computer science started being introduced into high schools in a way that existed at parity with subjects like English and biology and history," Andrea Pasinetti, cofounder and CEO of Kira told BI. "Between legislation being passed and it becoming a requirement for students, there was often a window of one, at most two years, and that required training." To help teachers quickly get up to speed, Kira developed AI tutors to help teachers master the subjects. It also developed AI teaching assistants to help them in the classroom. In 2023, it partnered with the state of Tennessee — an early adopter of this legislation — to roll out the platform to all public middle schools and high schools in the state. Its since been adopted in hundreds of school districts in states across the country. Now, the company is expanding its platform to include all subjects. Its new suite of AI agents will help fulfill the company's ultimate goal of personalizing the learning process — one that Pasinetti said is "almost impossible" today, given how understaffed schools are. Subverting AI to make learning better Ng has been at the forefront of AI and education. He's launched ed-tech companies like Coursera, and — where his latest course " Vibe Coding 101" is available. In an interview with Forbes in 2014, he said that AI has the "potential to free up humanity from a lot of the mental drudgery." More than a decade later that notion has taken hold of the corporate world where workers are using AI to eliminate rote tasks like writing emails, analyzing data, and synthesizing research. However, what constitutes "mental drudgery" in the realm of education is less clear, especially as educators — and students — worry that the technology will make skills stagnate. Kira, in some sense, is subverting the building blocks of generative AI to cut out the busywork and enhance the learning process. The technology underlying AI is a "fundamentally discursive technology," Pasinetti said. While the methodical nature can help students work through material through the Socratic method — enabling a back-and-forth dialogue — the issue is that it's also designed to deliver answers as quickly as possible, Pasinetti said. Several of the most popular generative AI chatbots are also in a race against Google to become the world's default search engine. Kira's aim is to introduce "friction" into students' conversations with AI at the right stages so that they actually have a productive struggle and learn through the experience, Pasinetti explained. In practice, that means Kira's platform can incrementally guide a student through a tough problem by calibrating itself to students' understanding of the subject. Kira's agents use these insights to inform teachers about student capabilities by building knowledge maps to determine what students know and don't know across a subject. Schools are getting tech-savvy Kira's business model banks on classrooms' growing embrace of not only AI and data, but tech-enabled learning. In recent years, schools have begun implementing "adaptive learning technology" which can collect and leverage data on students' performance, progress, and learning style to tailor the learning experience. This technology aims to increase equity across the classroom and help teachers and students use time more effectively. That coincides with the widespread adoption of learning management systems during the pandemic. These are software programs that help educators design and manage online learning like Blackboard, Moodle, or TalentLMS. They surged in popularity in 2020 and 2021, according to EducationWeek. According to EdWeek's survey of 1,000 school district leaders, principals, and teachers conducted in 2022, only 6% of educators said their school district didn't use an LMS. Schools can either integrate Kira into their existing LMS or use the platform as a standalone LMS. Pasinetti said that by adopting Kira, schools can cut down on at least four to five pieces of software — often the most expensive ones. Kira's leaders see AI overhauling relationship between students, teachers, and technology — which could lead to more meaningful changes down the road. "This is a big shift that's happening, and especially if you don't have a subject matter expertise, you're kind of learning alongside your student," said Jagriti Agrawal, Kira's cofounder and vice president of artificial intelligence. "I think that that mindset could be a helpful one."
