New York: Khan Academy founder Sal Khan predicts AI in the classroom will be like "four or five" helpful grad students.
Khan said in a BBC interview that AI agents will act as teachers' assistants, not as their substitutes.
Social skills will soon become more important than ever, he added, and students will still go to school to learn them. "Imagine if your child's school district just discovered a billion dollars and they decided to hire some amazing graduate students to hang out in the classroom," Khan said in an BBC interview. “Every classroom is going to get four or five of these graduate students. These graduate students are going to be on call for the teacher of the classroom — to help grade papers, to help bounce ideas, think of really creative lesson plans."
For those choosing to work in the classroom, Khan said that AI assistants could help alleviate the strain while also improving student engagement. The AI teaching assistants, he said, will be able to monitor the classroom along with the actual teacher. They'll be able to help children when needed and "report back to the teacher." For example, he added, AI could determine a student's personal interests and suggest relevant adjustments to the lesson plan to increase the odds that the student would engage with the material.
