E53: The AI Revolution in Education with Shawn Jansepar, Director of Engineering at Khan Academy

In this episode, Nathan sits down with Shawn Jansepar, Director of Engineering at Khan Academy, to discuss their GPT-4 powered Socratic tutor, Khanmigo. In this conversation, Shawn and Nathan chat about Khan Academy’s collaboration with OpenAI and how they helped fine-tune GPT-4, how Khan Academy leveraged GPT-4 to build Khanmigo, and the impact of providing access to an AI tutor to any student. If you're looking for an ERP platform, check out our sponsor, NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/cognitive

We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com.

TIMESTAMPS:
(00:00) Episode Preview: Education 10 years from now
(04:42) Khan Academy’s early access partnership with OpenAI
(06:31) Khanmigo: journey from Chrome extension to AI tutor
(11:36) GPT-4’s ability to be Socratic vs 3.5
(15:05) Sponsors: Netsuite | Omneky
(16:40) Integrating Khan Academy’s Pedagogy into AI
(20:06) The future of education 10 years from now 
(22:37) Khan Academy’s models
(27:20) Demo-driven development process
(31:16) Sculpting the behaviour of a Socratic tutor model 
(35:59) Khan Academy’s contribution to GPT-4’s fine-tuning and RLHF
(38:41) Being data-informed vs data-driven as a practice 
(42:10) Incurring tech debt to get ahead of the curve
(45:28) The boundary for what an AI can/can’t t tutor 
(49:30) Identifying when the user is confused and avoiding AI hallucinations
(53:54) Khanmigo’s development patterns 
(59:11) Making Khanmigo jailbreak resistant 
(01:01:50) Delivering personalized education with AI 
(01:04:08) How Shawn and his team are thinking about AI education
(01:05:33) Khanmigo’s future multimodal interactivity
(01:08:42) Evaluating Khanmigo’s efficacy for student learning 
(01:11:41) How widely is Khanmigo deployed today and what is the future for universal public access?
(01:05:11) Distribution through teachers and districts
(01:16:30) What are the reactions from teachers and education institutions to AI?
(01:18:15) Khanmigo’s pricing model
(01:19:03) The future roadmap for Khanmigo
(01:20:45) How will the AI tutor change the world at large?

LINKS:
Khanmigo: khan.co/khanmigo23
Benjamin Bloom’s 2-Sigma Problem: https://web.mit.edu/5.95/www/readings/bloom-two-sigma.pdf

X/TWITTER:
@shawnjan8 (Shawn)
@labenz (Nathan)
@eriktorenberg
@CogRev_Podcast

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