EVERY SPOKEN WORD
45 min read · 9,326 words- 0:00 – 0:24
Intro
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I would hate to see a future where teachers outsource to AI the parts that I think really make good education, which is the connection pieces, when you really understand your students and can spend time with them. And AI can be used in so many ways that allow teachers to have more time to do that kind of work, and I'm excited for us to talk with institutions and discuss with them ways where we can amplify that knowledge they already have.
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One.
- 0:24 – 1:15
Introduction
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[claps] Hi, everyone. We're here to talk about my favorite topic, which is AI in education. Uh, my name is Drew Bent. I lead our work here in education on beneficial deployments. Formerly was a high school math teacher. My parents are educators. I worked in education nonprofits, and would definitely consider myself a lifelong learner. I'm joined here by my wonderful colleagues who work in education across the organization. Uh, do you wanna start, Zoe?
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Happy to, yeah. Hi, I'm Zoe. Uh, I'm on our education team here at Anthropic, and I support all of our non-technical audiences, including, uh, educating teachers and students about both our products and AI in general.
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Hi, I'm Maggie, and I founded and currently manage and support said education team, which we fondly internally call the Ministry of Education.
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Hi, I'm Efram. I'm a product engineering manager, and I've also helped build some of our products for facing education.
- 1:15 – 5:47
Why is Anthropic focused on this topic?
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So I think it's helpful to start here with why are we discussing education in the first place, or why do we even work on education in the first place at this general purpose AI lab? You know, we all know, of course, that at Anthropic we care a lot about studying both the potential of the technology that we're building, but also the risks. I think education is the perfect example and sort of embodiment of that because, of course, there's massive benefits, as we'll talk about in this conversation, but there's also a lot of concerns we have about the impacts of AI in education. And so when we think about the benefits, we think about, you know, I've had many conversations with you all about how AI can prevent teacher burnout, how it can transform and really democratize access to high-quality learning and tutoring, how it can change, you know, how and what teachers teach. But then we also, of course, see the other side of it, which are all the risks and the concerns around, you know, that teachers have about how AI could lead to more cheating and is leading to more cheating, of course, but also sort of the more existential risks of how do we make sure that these tools are actually enhancing and augmenting human thought as opposed to replacing it. And so my hope for this conversation is that we can sort of dig into all of these nuances, but also talk about the, the sort of practical type of work that we're doing at Anthropic to work towards these issues. So maybe to get started, I would love to hear, you know, I know all of you, I've known you for a while, but I don't necessarily know all of your stories on what got you interested working on education in the first place. Um, so Maggie, would love to start with you and what brought you into this work?
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Well, my interest in education is twofold. I think professionally, education and communication has always been part of every job I've ever held up until Anthropic. And I think personally, I, you know, have two lovely kids in my life, and I am grappling with, just as every other parent is in this era, what can I do to help nurture them to being kind of intelligent, uh, thoughtful, like, thinkers, uh, and, and critically engaged individuals as they grow up in the AI age. One is a lot more professional interest, uh, and, uh, where I feel like I can make a difference, and the latter is, like, pressingly concerning to my immediate, like, core as someone who is a guardian to young minds.
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How about you, Efram? Well, so I started my career in academia. I studied physics, maths, and I assumed I was going to be doing research for most of my life, uh, before switching to tech. Um, and I, I've taught classes when I was at MIT. I've been an adjunct faculty, so education has been something I've always been, uh, interested in. When it comes to AI and education, I have two children who are in college, so I worry every day about what they're learning, how they're learning, what will they do once they graduate. I'm also very passionate about, I'm sure we'll talk about later, on how do institutions deal with AI in, in their, in their education. So just a lot of stuff here that is both personal, but also, like, looking forward to society. What is it, you know, what does AI mean to education that I'm really interested in?
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I mean, I think, like you and I both having children in our lives is, like, one of the most pressingly concerning things-
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Right
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Yeah
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... where it makes it so real for you right now.
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Right.
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Right, uh, and I think that, like, your kids are college age, and so they're trying to figure out what they're doing in their lives.
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Right.
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Uh, and then my kids are younger, but I see it on the horizon that very soon there's, like, strong decision points where you can decide how to start nurturing this kind of thinking. Um, and I feel like if you don't catch it early, which is why we care about, like, education at, at all the different ages, that it can, can go pretty badly and compound, right?
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Yeah. I feel like that's hitting on a lot of, like, why I got into education in the first place, which is I have this very deep-seated belief that education is one of the most important things we can do to make change in our society. I don't-- I think most people can agree on that. And when I, you know, pivoted from the classroom into tech, it was because I wanted to work for organizations that could do that change at scale. I think there's some things with our education system that I would fix if I had a magic wand, and I, I'm hoping that AI can help accelerate some of that change for the better, but also, like, very much recognizing that we have a big responsibility to make sure that that change goes well today and then, you know, ten years into the future.
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There was a great quote that a, uh, from a professor that, uh, I talked to at some point where they were saying that all the problems in academia have existed for a while as an institution. It's just that AI is the forcing function that makes everyone deal with it now instead of keep putting it down. I guess kicking the can down the road, right?
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Yeah.
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Um, yeah, so I'm excited for us to deal with it. Our time has...
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Yeah.
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I'm just realizing now we have the parents on this side and the friend [laughing] as well, so we bring a good set of perspectives here, and yeah, I think on my end also, my parents are, are educators, and so it's always sort of looking up to them and wanting to do what they did. But I think it's helpful to
- 5:47 – 9:04
How is AI affecting education today?
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also ground this conversation in some of the research that we've all been working on here. And so it was, I think, late last year, um, that our societal impacts team at Anthropic had done research into all the ways that, you know, users are using Claude and found that some of the top uses were in education.I think we had seen this sort of in all chatbots to some extent, but I think it was also a wake-up call for us because, you know, what's interesting about it is that these LLMs, as we all know, were built not with education in mind, very much on answering questions. They're fine-tuned that way. They're meant for, you know, these productivity tasks.
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Right.
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And then it's kind of this interesting emergent, you know, phenomenon that they're very helpful for education, potentially sometimes destructive as well for people's learning. And so we started to, you know, dig, dig deeper into that. But I think what stood out in the research is, uh, one stat that's always comes up is forty-seven percent of the student interactions on Claude were very direct, transactional types of interactions with little engagement. And I think-- I know when Maggie and I were looking at that data at first, it was sort of, sort of a wake-up call because again, we, we have all these incredible ways that you can use it as a Socratic tutor, but then to see that in some cases, you know, people are using it to just do their homework. Um, and I know as a teacher, like for me, I sort of think about the different cognitive skills that I want, um, you know, my students to learn. And, you know, at the base level, it may be things like remembering a fact and understanding some knowledge, but then you want to eventually get them to the level of synthesis-
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Yeah
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... and, you know, creation. Of course, you know, we call this Bloom's Taxonomy. But what we saw in the data that I think was, um, fascinating was we started to study Claude's interactions in these conversations and saw how well Claude is performing on these cognitive tasks, and found that Claude was performing at the-- these top levels of creating and analyzing when, again, as a teacher, that's what you want your students to do.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. I think the students are kind of flipping the script on this in a way that's concerning to us as educators, and I don't know if that's necessarily-- I think the first blush reaction is that that's a bad thing, but I think part of what I want to challenge us to think about and, and the world to think about is, is there like a novel taxonomy where that's the baseline-
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Right
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... and you can build on top of that to something new that hasn't been possible before AI.
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We've also explored how the, you know, educators, um, are using it, and they're experimenting with it for, you know, great lesson plans, grading. I think there was one Northeastern professor who told us that they're never going to assign a traditional essay again because they just had too many students submitting, you know-
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Yeah
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... these AI assignments. Whether they use Claude or not, we don't know. But I think that's, uh, that sort of raised a lot of questions for us.
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I feel like you really hit on two of the things that we talk about a lot with educators, which is like AI is both changing how students learn in, in like also what they need to learn, right? Like, I don't actually know if it's important that students have the same memorization that they would have needed to have like ten years ago because they have AI tools readily available, or in theory they should have AI tools readily available. And then, you know, when you get into like higher levels of academia, there are potentially skills that we're teaching today that w-won't be as important in the future. And so it's, it's a ton for teachers to grapple with.
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I would love
- 9:04 – 13:42
What is the potential we see in AI for teaching and learning?
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to hear from all of you, what is one thing you're really excited about with how AI can transform teaching and learning?
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I think one thing that really stands out to me is, uh, interactive learning experiences. I have this very vivid memory of when I was in the classroom. My students did a virus simulator game that was fully programmed. They were the virus, and they worked into the cell, and they replicated, and the engagement that I saw from my classroom that day was unlike anything else, and I think most teachers have seen something like this. But AI really lets you do this at scale with any subject, right? Like imagine you're, uh, talking to a historical figure and, and teachers can put a lot of guardrails around this with the right tools, but I just am very excited to see that space developing over time.
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I think the interactivity is also really interesting to me. There's so much assistance you can get from AI that, uh, i-is really hard resourcing wise to get that interactivity, e-especially in like low resource regions where, you know, many students don't have access to like a personal career coach that can walk you through how to interview properly right at an organization. And with the power of an AI like Claude, you can like upload, uh, like the job listing, your resume and so on, and just ask Claude to help you role play through these things. I think there's a lot of really engaging, interesting role play experiences, whether or not with a dead historical figure or with some sort of like coaching situation that can really help you through a lot of experiences where an external perspective would be immense help. It's just really hard to get that other human being to find time to sit down with you, especially in regions with low resourcing.
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Related to that, I've, I've been very excited about how teachers are transforming their assessments with it. I was talking to a teacher a few weeks ago who at one point, I think during the pandemic, had taken time over, you know, Zoom to basically do oral interviews with all the students and really get to assess them on a more holistic way. But of course, that didn't scale very well, and so stopped doing it. But then with these AI tools coming out, was able to now sort of use the same rubric and start to have, um, you know, all the students doing on a regular basis these sort of assessments back and forth with the chatbot, and then the professor, the teacher is able to review them and assess them based on that process of going back and forth with an AI.
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I think assessment is a very interesting use of AI. I could, uh, you know, envision in, in the future where it isn't a specific moment in time where you get assessed, but there is a continuous sort of interaction with AI developing a much deeper understanding of do you really understand the concept behind this algebra sort of concept or not? One thing that I'm really, um, excited about AI could provide is personalized learning. There is a, uh, research done on one-on-one tutoring, and what they found is that on average, the average student that had one-on-one tutoring is better than the ninety-eighth percentile of students that didn't have one-on-one tutoring or just a classroom, um, setup.
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And that was with human tutoring
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That's with humans
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Hard to scale.
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Exactly, hard to scale. Assume maybe like an hour of one-on-one tutoring a day. Uh, with AI, you get continuous one-on-one tutoring, and that is available to everybody, uh, sort of around the world. So I think that is, has a great potential to transform the world and, and how people learn.
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Yeah, I agree. I think there's of course lots of challenges that as people have looked into the studies and how do you replicate lesson all of it, but I think it's a very useful sort of north star of what could be possible if you can have a very personalized but also personal type of tutoring experience.
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Absolutely. I think today we have classes maybe segregated by students that are in the top or, you know, you take a, like an AP class if you're, you know, in that certain group or not. But with AI, every student could have their own journey. Those that are able to advance could advance very quickly, and those that need help can get that personalized help.
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You know-
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So-
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... this reminds me of a really interesting use case that I, uh, talked to a teacher about where, you know, you kind of always wanna meet students where they're most interested, right? Like, that's like a very Montessori type of approach where it's like, "What is your favorite topic?" And then we'll kind of match all the subjects to that. That's really hard to scale-
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Right
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... right? But there was a teacher I talked to that was just like, "I ask my students what their favorite things are. They tell me a little story," and then now every single handout that you have, like, the same math concepts, maybe even the same problems, but it's like each handout is made for each student-
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Sure
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... and it's, like, exactly according to their interests. It's got a story that's engaging to them, problems they actually care about, and, like, she's noticed a, an uptick in the engagement for sure because suddenly these students have a through line through every subject in the classroom. It's building on itself in a way that's super personalized to their interests-
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Right
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... which, like, if that was in every classroom, imagine how much students would just lean into-
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It's amazing
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... like, exactly.
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Yeah.
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So how are you thinking about that question of what's
- 13:42 – 21:16
How should children and teachers approach learning in the age of AI?
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worth, you know, learning in, in the age of AI?
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As somebody who is in product, in product development, uh, what I see is this absence of product layer that would help both students and teachers use AI very effectively. For example, my daughter's class, she's taking Python, so both of my children are studying computer science, so very [laughs] very relevant. For their exams for writing Python, they want them to write on a piece of paper because they're afraid about cheating. Well, the reason it is so challenging now is there aren't products for the students could use to learn. There's also not products for the teachers to use to both assign and grade homework. All of these are very light lifts, like, from what we can do as a, as a product offering. Uh, but in the absence of an intentional product that is built on top of LLMs exposes a lot of uncertainty, fear, and abuses of the technology that we're building. So that's, I guess that's my take on this, is that, uh, you know, with a little bit of support and product thinking, so much of the, the sort of this, the uncertainty and, and, and maybe, like cheating and so on could be mitigated.
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And one of the things I struggle with is, you know, we can sort of backtrack from how jobs are changing and start to think about how university education should be changing, but then when we think about, you know, kids the, the age of your kids-
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Mm
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... you know, in K-12, it's an even harder question about what will be the skills, the durable skills that they need years from now.
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Yeah.
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So I don't have the answer, but I look-
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[laughs] I don't think-
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I always look to you [laughs]
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[laughs]
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I look to you, Maggie, too.
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Oh, man, it's, it's a challenging one. I think that what resonates a lot with the teachers that I talk to is that a lot of the skills you teach, um, young minds about how to critically think about the world around them in the world of humans can be quite applied to AI, um, especially in the world of just critical thinking about the facts that you're presented with. There's a stage of development where you go from trusting every single thing everyone says to you to starting to think about, well, what are the other things that you need to know in order to believe that this is true? With my kids, it's like a two-part framework where part one is just the importance of education, I think, is more important than ever, where you can't tell if an AI is bad at math if you're bad at math or you don't actually know what the right answer is, right? And we're not at the stage where AI is, like, always reliable like a calculator or something. And so just understanding that and emphasizing that learning, reading, writing, science, math, and so on is still very important.
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Mm.
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And the latter part is developing them into, like, critical consumers of information, where it's not just about this is what a fact that's given to me is, but, like, why is that the case? How do I trust that that's true? What other areas do I need to check in order to ensure that I can kind of corroborate what I'm learning here? And that kind of critical thinking skill you can develop from a pretty young age, regardless of if it's an AI giving you the information or another human being giving you the information. That kind of critical thinking, I think, is one of the most important things to get at a, like, an early age, that skepticism, curiosity, and combination.
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Right.
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Yeah. I wanna add onto that 'cause I feel like a lot of the, like, teachers and parents that I talk to feel this, like, really intense pressure to have the answers and to know what to teach their kids and to know, like, how to conduct the lessons in their classroom, and I think, like, kids are so much smarter than we give them credit for. And so there's something really profound about just sitting with, whether it's your students or your actual children, and just, like, learning with them, asking AI something, and then evaluating what comes out of that together and, like-
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Totally
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... having kids reflect and building their own frameworks for interacting with AI that I think is really, really powerful. And we all here, we don't have the answers, therefore no one [laughs] does.
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Yeah.
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Um, obviously we're working really hard to figure out what they are, but I think just encouraging that reflection at any age where- wherever it's developmentally appropriate-
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Right
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... um, is, like, one of the best things people can be doing right now.
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You know, I, I recommend sitting down with your kids and going through AI together, right? Like, ask a question and then say, "Well, this is, was really confidently said, but is that enough? When someone says something confidently, is that enough for you to believe that?" And hopefully the answer is no, right? What else can you check? Can you look somewhere else? What information do you need to think about this and genuinely, uh, uh, internalize if that's correct or not? That exercise is, I think, super fruitful, and I think of it, the, the converse side is to kind of demonstrate what it's like to not know something. I think that a lot of times, like, showing uncertainty and, uh, modeling for your kids-When you don't know something, what is your own process of finding that out, right? What is your process for learning? I think that, like, uh, what, what I wanna impart upon my kids is, like, finding the answer is just the start of your learning journey.
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Mm.
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And I think for many institutions, schools, and so on, getting to the answer is really what we're testing right now. But if we get- make that the beginning of someone's journey, especially learning with AI, then that, I think, opens up a whole series of doorways. And so yeah, at home, I, you know, try to show my process for discovering something, and that adults don't always have the answers. Kids are super smart, and they're able to find answers on their own in ways that if we just talk and ask the right questions, then they'll be able to discern for themselves what is true and what isn't, and not just trust things at face value.
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Yeah. And I love the way you framed that of, like, modeling how to work through that problem, like modeling uncertainty is just such an important thing-
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Oh, yeah
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... that we're all uncertain, so let's use that to our advantage.
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And we don't do that nearly enough.
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Right.
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What work is Anthropic doing in the sector?
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I think it's important, and we all know, of course, that we have a responsibility here. We are building this technology that's having this impact, you know, on the education system, even though it- we didn't intend it that way initially. And so we have a responsibility as a company, as a public benefit corporation, but particularly as individuals working in this company, former educators. And so I think it'd be helpful to sort of talk through what are the things we're doing, what are we wrestling with. Um, I don't know if, you know, Zoe or Maggie, you wanna talk about some of the work we've been doing with AI fluency?
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Yeah. Yeah, happy to start. So I work on education content, so that's one of the main ways that I can make a difference in this space. So one of the things I'm really excited about is our AI fluency courses. We partnered with two professors, Joe Feller and Rick Dakin, who built this really great, uh, framework about how to think about using AI. And what's cool about this is we're taking a step back from the products that are available today and the, the prompting and kind of like all these hacks that you see, um, out in the world.
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There's a lot of them. [laughs]
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And there is a lot of them, right? It's like it's pretty overwhelming.
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And they get outdated so fast.
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And they, so they get outdated so fast. And so, uh, the idea here is we wanna give people, uh, a tool that they can use to understand the interactions that they're having with AI and, uh, work towards interactions that are efficient, effective, ethical, and safe. That's the AI fluency, uh, definition. Um, so we have this core course that I think is pretty great, and then we've also created spinoff courses for educators and for students, as well as a longer course for, uh, educators who are interested in teaching AI fluency. And so the idea is that anyone who goes through one of these courses is kind of better equipped to assess their own, uh, AI interactions. I talked about, like, learning with your students earlier and the power of reflecting on your AI interactions. And at its core, that's really what this course is about. It's just reminding everyone, teachers, students, parents, that they have autonomy in their AI interactions. So that's one thing I'm excited about.
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Yeah, I think the interesting thing about our AI fluency work is the fact that we're taking a step back to the fundamentals. Like, when we started this AI fluency work way, way, way back when, I don't know if you remember, Drew, the question that we were trying to answer was, you know, all of these, uh, prompt engineering tips and so on, they are developed by other humans, right? And it's not as if, like, we at Anthropic have greater superpowers than everyone else externally. We just have a different way of thinking about approaching models, and it's like, how do you teach that mindset-
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Yeah
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... to somebody? 'Cause to Zoe's point, it's, like, in all of us. That sounds so cheesy, but, like, we have that capability to be critical thinkers that engage with this, and I think sometimes the fear-Of needing to get it right kind of supersedes our ability to just experiment, and what I love about AI Fluency is we're opening the door to experimentation and saying, "You can try these things. They may not work for you."
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Mm-hmm.
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And it's just as important to learn when they don't work for you and when you shouldn't use AI as it is to, you know, learn when you can use it. Uh, and there's something that we say in the education team every now and then, uh, which I think resonates a lot, which is like, we would much rather teach a million people to not use AI, uh, than, like, watch a billion people become dependent on the technology, right? And in practice, that can be quite hard, uh, but AI Fluency, I think, is a very solid start.
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I still remember when I first heard you say that, and I was so happy, and I knew I'd been... come to the right company-
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[laughs]
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... because here I was in an AI lab, and Maggie was saying, "Yeah, I don't think we should use AI in this case," or-
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Right
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... "It's f- let's teach people how not to use AI."
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It's like giving them the tools to make the decision on their own.
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Right.
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Thought that was right. Back to critical thinking every time.
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Yeah. [laughs]
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But I think, so of course, part of it is an education and a training and awareness part, but we are also building products and models that are used out there in the wild, and so I think the work that, Efram, you and your team have been doing on learning mode is a really important part of it, so would love for you to share-
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Absolutely
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... more about how did that even come about?
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So learning mode is a set of features that positions Claude as a tutor to students. Um, students could come in, for example, and, and upload their assignments, and rather than answer the questions explicitly, it would help the students through the material that is covered in their classroom. It would guide them through how to answer the question. It will tutor them. It will also help them prepare for exams, for example, by showing them, uh, flashcards based on the content that they've uploaded. It's actually very much of a grassroot effort, so a lot of people at the company that are really passionate about education and wanting to add education tools within the main product line. So with learning mode, what we did is added... it's really like small features here and there, but then tailor, uh, uh, Claude app to be, uh, really good at helping students, uh, with learning. Along the line, we've also added a few more features, like, you know, expanding how much content you can add into projects so that more and more content can go in there, uh, connecting to classroom management systems so that content could flow in and out very easily. So that's just the starting point and, um, of like, you know, what I think this could be, um, in the future.
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And I think what's interesting is some of that early research that led into, to learning mode is we were interviewing uni- university students, and we, we sort of knew that the educators wanted some form of learning mode. They kept saying-
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Right
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... "Where's your learning mode?" And so Efram was like, "Okay, now we have to build it."
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Right.
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But it was, uh, really the students who I think really drove the point home for us because they of course use a different word, which is brain rot, but we heard them talking about brain rot, and they, you know, realize that in the short term it could- they can use AI chatbots to, like, help them, you know, just finish an assignment.
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Right.
- 31:19 – 38:20
What are the things we’re still uncertain about?
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what our personal views are on AI in education, what we're doing as a, as a company, but we definitely haven't solved it. Um, so [laughs]
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[laughs]
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[laughs]
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So what are the things we're still uncertain about? I mean, I'd be curious to get your takes on this. You know, what are the things we're still trying to figure out?
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I have a couple things.
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Go ahead.
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Um, both pretty different, but one thing we touched on earlier is AI is changing, like, what it is that you need to teach. You brought up coding. We are pretty sure that coding curriculums will look very different in five years. I'm interested to see how things start to shift and if there's any, like, frameworks or really anything that we can develop to help, uh, academics along in these areas to understand what kinds of skills may be more augmented in the future and which kinds of skills, um, are gonna need additional human support, like reviews or management. Uh, I think we're starting to understand that in areas like computer science, but it's very, very early, and we know this is gonna affect a lot more fields.
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Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
So especially in higher education, that's something I'm interested in. I hear a lot of concerns in K-12 about the different tools and trying to understand what hap- what happens to the data when you put it in those tools, and I think right now there's this, like, massive proliferation of AI tools in classrooms, and teachers and administrators are really overwhelmed for very good reasons. Like, there's a lot of concepts that are really new to everyone. There are elements of the data privacy that is new and hard to understand, and so I'm really interested to see how that landscape evolves, um, whether we need to really ramp up our education around data privacy so people can better assess the landscape or whether we start to, like, you know, see clear winners in this space. I'll just be really interested to see what happens there.
- SPSpeaker
I think in addition to that, I mean, the technology is really changing very rapidly. So one of the concerns, I'm not sure how it sort of will play out o- over time, is how will institutions adapt? They are generally slow-moving and intentionally built that way, and, uh, the technology pace of change has been very rapid. It's harder to predict, like, what would happen six months from now or a year from now. So I think that pace of change to how institutions generally adapt to new technology is one area that I'm uncertain about.
- SPSpeaker
I always think that, like, just everywhere, every institution feels an immense amount of pressure to just do something with AI instead of doing nothing, and I, you know, I have no idea how to kind of balance or help organizations balance the fact that pressure is really real. But also when it comes to education especially, moving fast and breaking things is not an option, right? And that's just so challenging for both the individual teacher, but also the entire institution at large.
- SPSpeaker
I mean, I kind of call this unbundling of education. One is just the knowledge itself, which this AI is really good at, uh, providing personalized education, but institutions provide more than just knowledge, imparting knowledge into students. The other is really, like, I have two children in, in college. It's not just learning they're getting there. It's-- But also that's where they're growing. That's where they're maturing, learning responsibility and so forth. So what AI solves, you know, very like really well is knowledge, imparting knowledge, and learning. I think what we would have to do as a society moving forward is how do we leverage AI in the knowledge transfer part but also retain these institutions to-- for all of the other great roles that they play in society.
- SPSpeaker
Right, to separate out some of the pieces such as-
- SPSpeaker
Exactly
- SPSpeaker
... like the success metric of a good educator is not to do every single part of this thing. But I think what you're saying is to like-
- SPSpeaker
Yes, correct.
- SPSpeaker
Do more of one thing, and then let AI handle things that are, like, maybe knowledge, like, acquisition oriented but not like, I don't know, uh, a relationship with a student, right?
- SPSpeaker
Correct. Correct. I mean, one of the feedback, for example, we've received when we were visiting universities is that while AI assignments, uh, are very compelling, that's something they would like to do, but AI assignments means students with AI. They're forced large assignment sets that might take, say, six months, but they could end up taking, like, two weeks. How do you grade them?
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- SPSpeaker
Right? So there is a lot of AI involvement means there's a lot of learning that could happen much, much quickly. As you leverage AI to do the learning aspect of it, what about everything else that is-- those teachers, institutions are providing the students? I think that is where that's unbundling and, you know, just leveraging all the right pieces from, uh, both the technology but what institutions do.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. And I mean, I think the best case scenario of this is reducing burnout at, at scale-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- SPSpeaker
... which is, like, the number one issue facing most of the teachers and-
- SPSpeaker
If you unbundle-
- SPSpeaker
... anywhere
- SPSpeaker
... you can maybe [laughs] do this.
- SPSpeaker
Right? Like-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- SPSpeaker
... where every educator is really, really talented at some things, and those things bring them a lot of energy, and they're exceptional at it. And what if AI could, you know, support them in the things that don't bring them energy? And I think that just creates a much more well-rounded system for their personal lives and then also for the students that they're supporting.
- SPSpeaker
This conversation's also reminding me of, like, a, a part of the AI fluency curriculum we have for educators that I found super compelling, which is to have AI be so integrated, uh, like into the assignments, the experience, and so on, and to instead start grading AI use and not grade the outcomes as much, right?
- 38:20 – 42:19
What would the successful incorporation of AI look like?
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
... um, I would love to hear from all of you, as we think about five years out, what does success look like for teaching and learning?
- SPSpeaker
Five years is a crazy-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- SPSpeaker
... kind of time to predict in the AI world. I guess I'll-
- SPSpeaker
Funny
- SPSpeaker
... I'll give you my hope, right? I don't know if I know what success looks like, but I do know what I hope for, which is that in educational institutions, we have... Like, teachers have so much more time to engage individually in the relationships and the fostering portion of it. You know, going back to Efren's point, like, maybe it's not the knowledge acquisition part of things that teachers participate in as much versus, like, synthesizing that knowledge into the greater ecosystem of your life and the world and understanding how any given individual can best be helped to learn, 'cause we're still all unique individuals in this future, and celebrating and emphasizing that uniqueness is something that I hope-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- SPSpeaker
... we can get to with education.
- SPSpeaker
Right. I think five years is a very long time. [laughs] But I think, I think success to me by then will look like every person on the planet has a personalized tutor, uh, ready for them at any time. And then also, if we've made that transition successfully, our institutions will have survived and are playing the vital role they already play, uh, in our society.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. For me, I think it's going back to that critical thinking piece. I want every person really, every student, every teacher, to have, uh, a shared vocabulary and cultural understanding around what it means to use AI in learning. I think just a lot more discernment and reflection on and just being intentional about using AI.
- SPSpeaker
I know I feel like I go back to this like a broken record, but wouldn't it be great if, like, every single student could articulate when they wanna use AI and when they don't want to and why? Like, that kind of knowledge about your own habits and how you think and how you learn best, that personalization of knowledge is so exciting. Uh, and I'm... Like, that's a shorthand heuristic, I guess, for what success could look like.
- SPSpeaker
Or maybe on the other hand, like, they don't have to make that decision because technology-
- SPSpeaker
The technology, yeah, the product
- SPSpeaker
... is, the product itself is all adapted.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Together, definitely.
- SPSpeaker
Together.
- SPSpeaker
The product and the experience and the education all have to go hand-in-hand.
- SPSpeaker
Exactly.
- SPSpeaker
I think the thing I keep going back to, which to me brings optimism, 'cause some days in this work, there's a lot of pessimism of-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- SPSpeaker
... jobs are changing, and we have no idea what my, you know, our jobs are gonna look like.
- SPSpeaker
And a lot of personal responsibility that we feel-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- SPSpeaker
... over any, you know-
- SPSpeaker
The-
- SPSpeaker
... things that happen.
Episode duration: 42:20
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