Personal clout, AI, and Education

In this AI age, I think 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘂𝘁 is going to mean a lot. When I read that Sal Khan has something to say about AI in education, I sit up and immediately look for the source. I want to know what the founder of Khan Academy has to say about this topic. This is the link to his TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/sal_khan_how_ai_could_save_not_destroy_education/

And here is the AI summary of his transcribed speech by ChatGPT (no apologies for the attempted inception! 😀):

🚀 𝗔𝗜 𝗶𝗻 𝗘𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻

Sal Khan (founder of Khan Academy) flipped the narrative on AI in education. While the media warns of AI "cheating" and undermining learning, Sal argues we're on the cusp of the greatest educational transformation in history.

🔍 The vision?

Every student gets an intelligent personal tutor

Every teacher gains an AI-powered teaching assistant

Inspired by Bloom’s 2 Sigma study (1984), which showed that 1:1 tutoring can drastically improve student performance, Sal believes tools like Khanmigo—built on GPT-4—can finally scale this impact.

✨ What AI can now do:

✅ Offer Socratic, step-by-step math tutoring

✅ Guide students in coding, writing, and debating

✅ Simulate conversations with historical or fictional figures (yes, even Jay Gatsby!)

✅ Help teachers create lesson plans, grade work, and personalize feedback

💡 Key insight:

They enhanced GPT-4’s math tutoring by letting the AI “think before speaking,” generating internal reasoning steps before responding—just like a great teacher would.

🔐 The takeaway?

This isn't just about technology. It’s about amplifying human intelligence, democratizing quality education, and ensuring we shape AI’s future intentionally and ethically.

My #keeideas from this:

1. It is gonna get very fun when we are able to incorporate AI in our own teaching endeavours like Sal suggested, and let's do it, though some had warned about the risks of excessive personal data generation in the process!

2. 👨‍🍼𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙘𝙡𝙤𝙪𝙩 really matters in this AI age, and academics/researchers like us should strategically nurture that so that someone will sit up and listen when we share something. And it is important to have its source verifiable like on the immutable blockchain.