The Khan Academy has big ideas for GPT-Four’s “socratic style”

The example Open AI used in its announcement last week was the programme showing how to solve an equation step by step.

Language-learning apps are already on to this.

So is Khan Academy, which provides open-access on-line, largely school level course in computing, economics, literacy and mainly maths. Which is impressive as is– but what is amazing is what GPT 4 can add, and that is what founder Sal Khan calls, being “a thoughtful tutor.”

How it will work for what the academy does now and can do next is here.

“One of GPT-4’s chief capabilities is being able to understand free-form questions and prompts. That ability—to have a human-like back and forth—provides Khan Academy with perhaps the most key capability: asking each student individualised questions to prompt deeper learning,” a Khan staffer states.

The Academy is testing co-designs of courses with GPT-4.

Perhaps it will be a model for nations with education and training needs way beyond their physical capacity to meet – like, say, India which maybe could use teachers and trainers to focus on evaluative skills, and leave the basic-training to GPT-4

In a broad-ranging interview with CMM last week Cath Ellis (UNSW) suggested AI creates a question; “if it is more efficient, more effective for somebody to be trained to do something by a teacher that is an AI tool, that is infinitely patient, and can find seven or eight ways to explain the same concept … then what is the value of asking a human to do that?”