No Priors Ep. 28 | With Khan Academy’s Creator Sal Khan

(instrumental music plays) Sal Khan democratized learning with his educational YouTube videos that turned into Khan Academy, which has 150 million learners from all over the world today. 15 years later, he's as energized as ever about making learning personalized with artificial intelligence. This week on the podcast, Elad and I talk with Sal about the impact of AI on education. He says, surprisingly, we're on the cusp of the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen. Khan Academy has recently created Khanmigo, a chatbot tutor that can nudge learners in the right direction if they get stuck. Sal, welcome to No Priors.

Thanks for having me.

Sal, can you start by giving us some background on yourself and how you ended up starting Khan Academy?

Sure. (laughs) Y- you know, you go way back, my original background was in tech. I go to business school, I end up being an analyst at a small hedge fund, and it was shortly into that, it was 2004, I was a year out of business school, I had just gotten married, I was based in Boston at the time. I was born and raised in New Orleans. My family was visiting me up in, up in Boston after the wedding, and it just came out of conversation, my 12-year-old cousin, Nadia, was having trouble with school, math in particular. She was being placed into a slower math track. Her parents, my aunt and uncle, hadn't gone to school in this country, so I don't think they understood the implications that, on that track, she wouldn't end up taking calculus in high school, et cetera, et cetera. So I took it pretty seriously. I said, "Hey, I'm up for tutoring you, Nadia, if you're up for receiving it." And she agreed, so she goes back to New Orleans, I start tutoring her remotely. She actually gets caught up with her class. She was actually having trouble with unit conversion. She gets a little ahead of her class. I call up her school. I said, "I really think Nadia Rahman should be able to retake that placement exam." They say, "Who are you?" (laughs) I say, "I'm her cousin."

(laughs)

And, and they let her. And that same Nadia that started off as, for lack of a better word, a remedial student, was then put into an advanced math track. So I was, I was hooked. I, it was fun to s- stay connected with family. I really enjoyed geeking out on the math and it was, it seemed to be really helping my family. And so, I started tutoring her younger brothers. Word spreads in my family free tutoring is going on.

Mm-hmm.

Before I know it, I'm tutoring 10, 15 cousins. And, you know, my, m- I still had the day job. I was working as an analyst at a hedge fund. And I saw a common pattern with my cousins. Uh, they just, the main reason they were struggling was they had gaps in their knowledge. Oftentimes, the reason they were having trouble with that algebra equation was because they weren't fluent in dividing decimals, or negative numbers, or exponents. And so, I started making software for them, which I did for fun, 'cause I, that, that part of my brain wasn't being used fully in my hedge fund job. (laughs) I started making software that would generate problems for them, give them immediate feedback, provide hints if they needed them, allowed me to keep track. I put a little database behind it and allowed me to keep track of what they were doing and when they were doing it, and what they were getting wrong and right. And I, I called that Khan Academy. That was the domain name, it was available! It was kind of a fun family project. And a- about a year later now, we're about 2006, and I was showing this off at a dinner party. A- and by this point, my family had moved out here to Silicon Valley.