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Background: I taught high school science for half a decade and now I am in tech. This will never take off. One, there is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money

Background: I taught high school science for half a decade and now I am in tech. This will never take off. One, there is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money in Ed.Tech. What little money there is goes to the obvious stuff like student records databases. Anything that requires an ongoing subscription fee is dead in the water. The only reason those stupid smartboards took off is because they make school boards look cool, they are a one time cost, and can be paid for with bonds (because they are a one time cost). Teachers don't want them (projectors and document cameras are good, though). Ed.Tech is a wasteland of failed startups. Part of the problem is also that classic "the people with the purchasing power are not the people who will be using the product" problem. Two, everyone outside of education thinks "well has anyone just tried sitting down with the kids and talking to them/explaining it to them?" Yes, obviously. The problem isn't that they are lazy, snot-nosed kids (that's a problem well within an experienced teacher's skill set to solve). The problem is what is the AI going to do with the kid says "fuck you" to the AI because they haven't eaten since lunch the previous day (school is the only place they get regular meals), or they don't even know what to ask because they are basically 4 grades behind in math, or the wifi is dead for the 8th time that month because the school board will never pay for infrastructure. Three, what if the AI is just wrong and starts confusing the student? Even GPT-4 fabricates things all the time. Sure it can generally put words in grammatically correct order and is passible for writing no one is going to read anyway (like marketing emails). But the moment it requires actual domain knowledge all these AI models completely fall down because, again, they don't actually understand anything, they just are really good at guessing what word comes next.

tangjurine 2y ago
Idk... My company is doing pretty well (ixl learning)
- hinkley 2y ago
  I suspect there’s a difference between selling to school boards and selling to individual learners. I know college kids are using edtech, but they don’t like it much. And there was one-time purchasing during the quarantine. And obviously Khan academy must be doing okay.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- kody 2y ago
  My students LOVED IXL. I couldn't believe when I found out the kids kept using IXL after school and on weekends to compete with each other.
babl-yc 2y ago
There may be "no money in EdTech" but that doesn't mean there can't be impactful products for it. Students don't want to pay for Google but every student still uses it. Some students will want to waste time if given access to more tools like AI agents, but the motivated ones will use it to their advantage. Even if it's wrong sometimes, it's right a lot, perfect for rubber ducking, and almost always gives answers that are at least interesting or point you in a useful direction. As for "GPT-4" fabricating things, I remember in school how I wrote essays and was given A's despite citing NYT and Wikipedia. Fabrications exist all over the place. If anything, hallucinations might give more examples as to how to be skeptical of any source and look for direct sources as much as possible. In college I went to office hours and there was 30 minute line to talk to the TAs. AI agents respond instantly. These things are going to overall transform education for the better.
- Pulcinella 2y ago
  As for "GPT-4" fabricating things, I remember in school how I wrote essays and was given A's despite citing NYT and Wikipedia. Fabrications exist all over the place. If anything, hallucinations might give more examples as to how to be skeptical of any source and look for direct sources as much as possible. "Actually it's good that AI sucks because it will teach people to be more skeptical" is not a very compelling argument.
  - neuralnetes-COO 2y ago
    This is the purpose of LLMOps. To provide guardrails for precise output to prevent hallucination.
    - pictureofabear 2y ago
      Is it too early for full-stack LLMDevSecOps?
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
selykg 2y ago
As an IT and data analytics manager in ed tech, I agree, there is no money in ed tech. I make a customer support rep salary. It's ridiculous.
tripdout 2y ago
Yet Khan Academy is free.
- Jtsummers 2y ago
  But Khanmigo isn't, it's $4/month.
  - nextworddev 2y ago
    Khanmigo is free for teachers I believe
    - Jtsummers 2y ago
      Who are not the learner which is the context of this particular writeup. Gates is talking about using LLMs to assist students as tutors, and that is not offered for free ($4/month, $44/year).
      - nextworddev 2y ago
        the bet is probably that the teachers will vouch for Khanmigo at schools but I’m sure Microsoft doesn’t mind giving away Khanmigo for students too
      - insane_dreamer 2y ago
        The idea is that teachers can use it with students. For parents who want to use it with their children, $4/month (for your entire family!) is very small compared to anything out there that you want to use to supplement your kids education (other than Khan Academy itself, which is free). Is it affordable to poor families in Bangladesh? No, but the barrier to sponsorship is low: "for $50K a year you could sponsor it for 1000 families in Bangladesh" is not a difficult sell. Also, I expect Sal to raise funding to give it for free to those who can't afford it (just as he did with Khan Academy). At least it's not some VC-backed venture that we know is going to be look for a 10~100x return, so we can be thankful for that.
Myrmornis 2y ago
> Sure it can generally put words in grammatically correct order and is passible for writing no one is going to read anyway (like marketing emails). But the moment it requires actual domain knowledge all these AI models completely fall down because, again, they don't actually understand anything, they just are really good at guessing what word comes next. Many of us are frequently using it to obtain answers requiring domain knowledge; the evidence that this works is that the answers it gives are often found to be correct, and yet things we did not know. So your description is simply contradicting the experience of many people. Perhaps you're using it in a different domain, or not writing clear prompts, but it's well worth experiencing what people are talking about.
- wrs 2y ago
  “Fall down” doesn’t mean they’re always wrong. It means they’re right just often enough to make you believe them when they’re making stuff up, which is a terrible characteristic for a teacher. At this point, ChatGPT is good enough that I can tell what authoritative source I should go look at for the answer, which is great, but I’m not going to believe any statements it makes without checking. I think people suffer a bit of Gell-Mann amnesia when dealing with ChatGPT. I actually do get a lot of value from ChatGPT as a self-motivated learner with a specific goal in mind, but that’s not the scenario we’re talking about.
- MajimasEyepatch 2y ago
  I can ask ChatGPT to write code and assess myself whether it's correct or not. (It's frequently not, but it can still be useful for certain tasks.) I can ask it to explain something about the industry I work in or adjacent fields and have a pretty good sense of whether it's leading me in the right direction. But if I asked it to teach me about, say, Chinese history, I would have very little ability to assess whether it's telling me the truth or sprinkling little falsehoods into things. I would only be able to catch the most blatant mistakes; the rest would require more detailed independent research. Now imagine you're a kid who's still learning reading comprehension and hasn't yet developed a functional BS detector. You're not going to have much of an ability to separate truth from fiction, but you're likely going to trust this thing that sounds authoritative.
tehalex 2y ago
There's some money but there's really two markets: small medium (eg a lot of work for a relatively small sale) and mega districts (and those generally just goes to the big established players because of connections) Most school wifi isn't that bad anymore - the bigger problem for us is web filters that break things in interesting ways.
seidleroni 2y ago
I understand the skepticism around AI in ed tech, and I think people have the right to be skeptical of this being portrayed as a "cure all". Saying that it is of no value because nobody will pay for it and the kids wont learn from it because they're hungry does not capture the whole picture. I was never a great student because I had trouble focusing in class, but if I had this to guide me through my homework, I believe I would have been a much better student. Looking at math homework and having no idea how to even start and no resources to help is very different than looking at the problem and working with AI to help you understand how to attack the problem. Sure, you can't turn every single kid into a math wiz, but I think there is a real possibility that this will help almost every kid become better at math than they would have. Assuming this is low cost, I think many parents would be very willing to pay for it.
- peppertree 2y ago
  If you have ever worked with children you will realize vast majority of them lack the willpower to learn new things and seek out answers. A good teacher can provide the social accountability and guide them, but it's not something you can put on auto pilot with AI.
  - pictureofabear 2y ago
    This is the crux of the problem in my opinion. Children look to adults as role models for what to learn and why. We already know that children respond better to role models who have similar ethnicities and backgrounds to them, let alone being the same species. AI cannot and will never be able to provide this motivation to learn, which is what kids actually need, because it is not human.
    - relativ575 2y ago
      > AI cannot and will never be able to provide this motivation to learn, which is what kids actually need, because it is not human. We hear all the time about digital addiction, gamification, FB, Tiktok, etc. Addiction is arguably more difficult to achieve than motivation. AI will be able to motivate people just fine
qaq 2y ago
[flagged]
- QuarterReptile 2y ago
  Textbooks do a better job than 90% of teachers, and that's not a dig at teachers. I spend more time, by far, figuring out how to keep student attention than thinking about the material itself. I'd be way more excited about getting 6 of my students to start reading and understanding textbooks than getting all 60 to pass. OTOH, my bosses would be pretty pissed...
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    IIRC studies show one-on-one attention is worth 2 standard deviations in test scores and a good teacher is worth 1 standard deviation. (Not coincidentally home schoolers have about one standard deviation of advantage). Khanmigo doesn't have to be as good as a teacher to provide an advantage to the student.
    - bsder 2y ago
      > (Not coincidentally home schoolers have about one standard deviation of advantage). Citation required as this is heavily dependent upon the purpose of the home schooling and the resources of the parents. Anecdata: My cousin was not doing well in 4th grade. So, they pulled her out and her grandmother taught her for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, every single day. By the time she came back to school in 5th grade she was doing extremely well and hyper motivated to never go through that experience again. :) She was, however, the exception, not the rule. So much so that a lot of teachers complimented her and her family on the outcome. Her family had no agenda other than "fix her education". Most homeschoolers do not bring to bear that amount of resource and attention, and they have quite a bit poorer results.
- bsder 2y ago
  > AI does a better job than prob 90% of the teachers. AI is better funded than probably 99.9% of teachers, so ... Ahem. Go sit in a class sometime before spouting that kind of unsubstantiated claptrap. Like anything with a distribution, some teachers are subpar. However, 90+% of teachers are trying very hard. They have too many students. They have too few resources. Many of them are fight against bad home lives of the students. And, through it all, they have a bunch of bureaucrats promulgating the latest and greatest bullshit that never works. We know what works. Small classes (<15 students) with two teachers. This has been documented over and over and over. Nobody wants to pay for it.
raisedbyninjas 2y ago
Maybe no school board buys and puts it into every class. Parents will still buy it and it can supplement learning gaps when doing homework. $20/month is a rounding error compared to pre-school, clothes, extra-curricular activies, private school, private tutors, etc.
- aeyes 2y ago
  The kids of people who can afford all you mentioned usually don't have problems with education. It's those who don't have $20. My parents spent almost nothing on my education, just a couple of $ per year to buy a notebook or two. I used the same pens for almost ten years. I participated in zero sports, had zero tutors... I did ok but I had peers with even less resources and not all of them did good.
  - Kye 2y ago
    Fond memories of being mocked for wearing the same clothes I wore the previous year or two. Wait no, not fond. The clothes were fine: good condition, clean, etc. Just old from the perspective of kids who didn't understand they came from money or that their parents were bad with money and headed toward disaster. /u/raisedbyninjas was hopefully kinder than those kids even though it sounds like they were in the same cohort by how small $20/month sounds to them.
    - namlem 2y ago
      Idk I wore old clothes in school even though my parents were well off and no one made fun of me. Different local cultures I guess.
  - insane_dreamer 2y ago
    Given that Sal has never turned Khan Academy into a commercial product -- despite its resounding success and popularity, and the large amount of $$$ he could have made -- has proven he's not in this for the money. So I expect the AI version to also be free or at least have a free version for parents (and schools who can't afford it).
  - 2y ago
Kye 2y ago
>> "Three, what if the AI is just wrong and starts confusing the student? Even GPT-4 fabricates things all the time." It was bad enough when the text was wrong because of shoddy editing.
- neuralnetes-COO 2y ago
  This is the purpose of LLMOps. To provide guardrails for precise output to prevent hallucination.
  - dotinvoke 2y ago
    This is the first I'm hearing of LLMOps, please elaborate a bit on what it entails. How does it provide guardrails?
    - neuralnetes-COO 2y ago
      Basically, do you want a pipeline/process that utilizes LLMs and provides exactly the output you want? How do you formalize a human expert workflow using LLMs? With LLMOps. It is new, there is no standard or predefined resource that I'm aware of. At neuralnetes we are creating all of our methods ad hoc and use tight feedback loops to ensure ideal, precise output.
      - Kye 2y ago
        That sounds like technical editing but for LLM output instead of technical writers.
        neuralnetes-COO 2y ago
        It's mostly software engineering.
        sfn42 2y ago
        Sounds like it's mostly air unless you can point to an LLM that doesn't confabulate.
MR4D 2y ago
A couple thoughts... First, clearly you had a crappy experience. And that sucks. There are probably many others with bad stories as well. I'm deeply involved with my kids education and can only imagine how much that sucked. Second, we can't solve everything at once. Hungry kids, bad parenting, all that will take time, and may never be resolved. I wish it could be, but honestly, it will take time - probably a long, long time. Third, he's building for the future. Richer schools (both private and public) will get this first, typical schools will get it next, and poor schools (both administratively poor and monetarily poor) will get it eventually. This is where that great quote applies - "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed" - and boy will it apply to education. So much so that some parents will feel like they are left in the stone age by comparison. Fourth, an anecdote. I do volunteer work for an education-related non profit. I learned during covid that HISD (Houston school district) couldn't easily move to online learning because 30% of their students did not have internet access at home. Thirty percent!!! I was blown away. Still am. But it's gotten much better, and we've evolved. Does it still suck? Yes, undoubtedly (HISD was taken over by the state, if that tells you how big their problems are). So I know this will not be evenly distributed because of this experience.
jonas21 2y ago
> Anything that requires an ongoing subscription fee is dead in the water. The only reason those stupid smartboards took off is because they make school boards look cool, they are a one time cost, and can be paid for with bonds (because they are a one time cost). Bonds take a one-time cost and turn it into a recurring cost (like a subscription) that is paid in installments over time. It's baffling that that it's easier to do that than just having a subscription in the first place.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
I agree it's not a silver bullet doesn't begin to address the issue where students aren't learning because of issues they're dealing with outside of school. I see this as Khan Academy x10. It'll be a great tool for those for whom Khan Academy itself was a good tool. If it's free (or for a nominal free), then parents will use it at home with their kids as a supplement to school. Teachers might use it on a case by case basis with students who want to accelerate or who are behind. It will highly accelerate learning for those who want to and are able to learn. The problems you describe, which are very real and important, are social problems, not educational problems per se or problems solved with technology.
danielmarkbruce 2y ago
There is a small fortune spent on private education. After school classes, tutoring etc etc. The money is spent by the upper middle class and above. If this solution works better for some subset of those people, it will take off in that market.
- jasondigitized 2y ago
  This. Well to do people do not blink when it comes to funding academic and athletic growth for their children.
- turtlebits 2y ago
  Private education as "in person" . Not faceless SaaS subscriptions.
  - danielmarkbruce 2y ago
    I spend on private 1-1 sessions, group classes, books, apps, faceless saas subscriptions, toys, puzzles. You misunderstand the buyers in this market. In my town, I'm in a good sized minority spending up on this stuff, despite being otherwise careful with money.
jasondigitized 2y ago
There are obscene amounts of money in EdTedh. It lives in rich parents wallets.
mceoin 2y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
llm_trw 2y ago
> or they don't even know what to ask because they are basically 4 grades behind in math Then they start by asking "What is this" and just keep asking questions. Teachers seriously underestimate how much damage they do to students ability to learn by sneering at questions that they think should be obvious.
pacbard 2y ago
Agree 100% with the cost analysis. Let’s say you want to purchase a math tutoring platform. The cost is $30 per student per year. CA schools get about $5 per student per year in lottery funds to purchase instructional materials (shared across all materials). General fund is pretty much all spent on staff/teachers or facilities. One time covid funds are running out. Schools can purchase textbooks at ~$100 per unit and use them for years without subscriptions. In short, there is no money in public education for these tools. These platforms look great, but the price is prohibitive. Maybe some basic aid district could pick them up, but those are usually small (I.e., it won’t keep a start up in business). Note. This is an observation from California. Other states might find education better.
bufordtwain 2y ago
This might be the exception that proves the rule but I used to work for an outfit that made a school website product (SaaS) and they seemed to be making plenty of money.
- skrbjc 2y ago
  That's more of a service for the school as an institution. I believe the OP is saying that most ed-tech startups that have a goal of helping with the learning process have not been successful. The thing that comes to mind to me was all the hype around MOOCs and how much everyone thought they would be a game-changer for education, but the reality is that the problem wasn't the fact that people didn't have access to the education, it's that so few have the focus/discipline/resources to actually follow-through.
jcz_nz 2y ago
That’s a very limited perspective. While bulk of district spend (US) is salaries, buildings, pensions, busses, cafeterias etc. there is still a substantial spend on educational materials. It’s a tiny % of the overall budget, but the larger school districts have budgets in many _billions_. Smartboards and 3d printers etc. got popular because they came from a DIFFERENT budget - these were capital expenses. My personal experience (ed-tech reaching ~15% of school districts) is that it is impossible to sell a solution to a district _without_ support of the teaching and learning team - i.e. teachers. And if you do, it’s impossible to get a renewal. Lastly, 9 out of 10 startups fail. It’s not just ed-tech.
aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> One, there is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money in EdTech for pupils. Better go for continuing education for adults. There potentially is money.
- ukulele 2y ago
  They also have the Gates Foundation backing. If it is a shiny AI tech that could help lots of people, then the money is there
sensanaty 2y ago
> One, there is no money in Ed.Tech There is, but you usually have to rely on the gov't being the buyer, and not regular customers. I worked for a EdTech startup (catered to universities) so all our contracts were multi-year affairs paid basically by the government with the unis as an intermediary. But also keep in mind that the people even getting involved in EdTech generally don't do it for the money, as is the case with Khan. The money my old company was making was pretty crazy, but basically all of it went to various funds and charities and what-not relating to education, because the CEO didn't care about making a buck and likewise with anyone working there. I wholeheartedly agree with your points about AI though, outside of generating generic quiz questions and stuff like that I think it's a massive net negative on the entire educational system, though I suppose the cat is out of the bag now.
infecto 2y ago
Maybe my reading of the post is incorrect but I did not interpret it as solving the parenting problem. In the US there is a massive growing problem where parents are simply not parenting their kids and relying on institutions (schools) to do it. I honestly do not know what will solve that problem. To me this post shares a future where kids coming from good households will have the ability to learn more efficiently than before. It is not to replace the teacher but perhaps it will replace the tutor. Lastly, I am not sure why but I genuinely believe that folks focus too much on "hallucinations" and "fabrications" by LLM. Does it happen, yes but I think its one of those things you can actually tune for and it get down to low to no errors in a walled environment. It is definitely something to consider but not a blocker.
justinparus 2y ago
https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/06/kahoot-acquires-clever-the-us-based-edtech-portal-for-up-to-500m/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/06/kahoot-acquires-clever-the...

tangjurine 2y ago

Idk... My company is doing pretty well (ixl learning)

hinkley 2y ago
I suspect there’s a difference between selling to school boards and selling to individual learners. I know college kids are using edtech, but they don’t like it much. And there was one-time purchasing during the quarantine. And obviously Khan academy must be doing okay.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
kody 2y ago
My students LOVED IXL. I couldn't believe when I found out the kids kept using IXL after school and on weekends to compete with each other.

babl-yc 2y ago

There may be "no money in EdTech" but that doesn't mean there can't be impactful products for it. Students don't want to pay for Google but every student still uses it. Some students will want to waste time if given access to more tools like AI agents, but the motivated ones will use it to their advantage. Even if it's wrong sometimes, it's right a lot, perfect for rubber ducking, and almost always gives answers that are at least interesting or point you in a useful direction. As for "GPT-4" fabricating things, I remember in school how I wrote essays and was given A's despite citing NYT and Wikipedia. Fabrications exist all over the place. If anything, hallucinations might give more examples as to how to be skeptical of any source and look for direct sources as much as possible. In college I went to office hours and there was 30 minute line to talk to the TAs. AI agents respond instantly. These things are going to overall transform education for the better.

Pulcinella 2y ago
As for "GPT-4" fabricating things, I remember in school how I wrote essays and was given A's despite citing NYT and Wikipedia. Fabrications exist all over the place. If anything, hallucinations might give more examples as to how to be skeptical of any source and look for direct sources as much as possible. "Actually it's good that AI sucks because it will teach people to be more skeptical" is not a very compelling argument.
- neuralnetes-COO 2y ago
  This is the purpose of LLMOps. To provide guardrails for precise output to prevent hallucination.
  - pictureofabear 2y ago
    Is it too early for full-stack LLMDevSecOps?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]

selykg 2y ago

As an IT and data analytics manager in ed tech, I agree, there is no money in ed tech. I make a customer support rep salary. It's ridiculous.

tripdout 2y ago

Yet Khan Academy is free.

Jtsummers 2y ago
But Khanmigo isn't, it's $4/month.
- nextworddev 2y ago
  Khanmigo is free for teachers I believe
  - Jtsummers 2y ago
    Who are not the learner which is the context of this particular writeup. Gates is talking about using LLMs to assist students as tutors, and that is not offered for free ($4/month, $44/year).
    - nextworddev 2y ago
      the bet is probably that the teachers will vouch for Khanmigo at schools but I’m sure Microsoft doesn’t mind giving away Khanmigo for students too
    - insane_dreamer 2y ago
      The idea is that teachers can use it with students. For parents who want to use it with their children, $4/month (for your entire family!) is very small compared to anything out there that you want to use to supplement your kids education (other than Khan Academy itself, which is free). Is it affordable to poor families in Bangladesh? No, but the barrier to sponsorship is low: "for $50K a year you could sponsor it for 1000 families in Bangladesh" is not a difficult sell. Also, I expect Sal to raise funding to give it for free to those who can't afford it (just as he did with Khan Academy). At least it's not some VC-backed venture that we know is going to be look for a 10~100x return, so we can be thankful for that.

Myrmornis 2y ago

> Sure it can generally put words in grammatically correct order and is passible for writing no one is going to read anyway (like marketing emails). But the moment it requires actual domain knowledge all these AI models completely fall down because, again, they don't actually understand anything, they just are really good at guessing what word comes next. Many of us are frequently using it to obtain answers requiring domain knowledge; the evidence that this works is that the answers it gives are often found to be correct, and yet things we did not know. So your description is simply contradicting the experience of many people. Perhaps you're using it in a different domain, or not writing clear prompts, but it's well worth experiencing what people are talking about.

wrs 2y ago
“Fall down” doesn’t mean they’re always wrong. It means they’re right just often enough to make you believe them when they’re making stuff up, which is a terrible characteristic for a teacher. At this point, ChatGPT is good enough that I can tell what authoritative source I should go look at for the answer, which is great, but I’m not going to believe any statements it makes without checking. I think people suffer a bit of Gell-Mann amnesia when dealing with ChatGPT. I actually do get a lot of value from ChatGPT as a self-motivated learner with a specific goal in mind, but that’s not the scenario we’re talking about.
MajimasEyepatch 2y ago
I can ask ChatGPT to write code and assess myself whether it's correct or not. (It's frequently not, but it can still be useful for certain tasks.) I can ask it to explain something about the industry I work in or adjacent fields and have a pretty good sense of whether it's leading me in the right direction. But if I asked it to teach me about, say, Chinese history, I would have very little ability to assess whether it's telling me the truth or sprinkling little falsehoods into things. I would only be able to catch the most blatant mistakes; the rest would require more detailed independent research. Now imagine you're a kid who's still learning reading comprehension and hasn't yet developed a functional BS detector. You're not going to have much of an ability to separate truth from fiction, but you're likely going to trust this thing that sounds authoritative.

tehalex 2y ago

There's some money but there's really two markets: small medium (eg a lot of work for a relatively small sale) and mega districts (and those generally just goes to the big established players because of connections) Most school wifi isn't that bad anymore - the bigger problem for us is web filters that break things in interesting ways.

seidleroni 2y ago

I understand the skepticism around AI in ed tech, and I think people have the right to be skeptical of this being portrayed as a "cure all". Saying that it is of no value because nobody will pay for it and the kids wont learn from it because they're hungry does not capture the whole picture. I was never a great student because I had trouble focusing in class, but if I had this to guide me through my homework, I believe I would have been a much better student. Looking at math homework and having no idea how to even start and no resources to help is very different than looking at the problem and working with AI to help you understand how to attack the problem. Sure, you can't turn every single kid into a math wiz, but I think there is a real possibility that this will help almost every kid become better at math than they would have. Assuming this is low cost, I think many parents would be very willing to pay for it.

peppertree 2y ago
If you have ever worked with children you will realize vast majority of them lack the willpower to learn new things and seek out answers. A good teacher can provide the social accountability and guide them, but it's not something you can put on auto pilot with AI.
- pictureofabear 2y ago
  This is the crux of the problem in my opinion. Children look to adults as role models for what to learn and why. We already know that children respond better to role models who have similar ethnicities and backgrounds to them, let alone being the same species. AI cannot and will never be able to provide this motivation to learn, which is what kids actually need, because it is not human.
  - relativ575 2y ago
    > AI cannot and will never be able to provide this motivation to learn, which is what kids actually need, because it is not human. We hear all the time about digital addiction, gamification, FB, Tiktok, etc. Addiction is arguably more difficult to achieve than motivation. AI will be able to motivate people just fine

qaq 2y ago

[flagged]

QuarterReptile 2y ago
Textbooks do a better job than 90% of teachers, and that's not a dig at teachers. I spend more time, by far, figuring out how to keep student attention than thinking about the material itself. I'd be way more excited about getting 6 of my students to start reading and understanding textbooks than getting all 60 to pass. OTOH, my bosses would be pretty pissed...
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  IIRC studies show one-on-one attention is worth 2 standard deviations in test scores and a good teacher is worth 1 standard deviation. (Not coincidentally home schoolers have about one standard deviation of advantage). Khanmigo doesn't have to be as good as a teacher to provide an advantage to the student.
  - bsder 2y ago
    > (Not coincidentally home schoolers have about one standard deviation of advantage). Citation required as this is heavily dependent upon the purpose of the home schooling and the resources of the parents. Anecdata: My cousin was not doing well in 4th grade. So, they pulled her out and her grandmother taught her for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, every single day. By the time she came back to school in 5th grade she was doing extremely well and hyper motivated to never go through that experience again. :) She was, however, the exception, not the rule. So much so that a lot of teachers complimented her and her family on the outcome. Her family had no agenda other than "fix her education". Most homeschoolers do not bring to bear that amount of resource and attention, and they have quite a bit poorer results.
bsder 2y ago
> AI does a better job than prob 90% of the teachers. AI is better funded than probably 99.9% of teachers, so ... Ahem. Go sit in a class sometime before spouting that kind of unsubstantiated claptrap. Like anything with a distribution, some teachers are subpar. However, 90+% of teachers are trying very hard. They have too many students. They have too few resources. Many of them are fight against bad home lives of the students. And, through it all, they have a bunch of bureaucrats promulgating the latest and greatest bullshit that never works. We know what works. Small classes (<15 students) with two teachers. This has been documented over and over and over. Nobody wants to pay for it.

raisedbyninjas 2y ago

Maybe no school board buys and puts it into every class. Parents will still buy it and it can supplement learning gaps when doing homework. $20/month is a rounding error compared to pre-school, clothes, extra-curricular activies, private school, private tutors, etc.

aeyes 2y ago
The kids of people who can afford all you mentioned usually don't have problems with education. It's those who don't have $20. My parents spent almost nothing on my education, just a couple of $ per year to buy a notebook or two. I used the same pens for almost ten years. I participated in zero sports, had zero tutors... I did ok but I had peers with even less resources and not all of them did good.
- Kye 2y ago
  Fond memories of being mocked for wearing the same clothes I wore the previous year or two. Wait no, not fond. The clothes were fine: good condition, clean, etc. Just old from the perspective of kids who didn't understand they came from money or that their parents were bad with money and headed toward disaster. /u/raisedbyninjas was hopefully kinder than those kids even though it sounds like they were in the same cohort by how small $20/month sounds to them.
  - namlem 2y ago
    Idk I wore old clothes in school even though my parents were well off and no one made fun of me. Different local cultures I guess.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  Given that Sal has never turned Khan Academy into a commercial product -- despite its resounding success and popularity, and the large amount of $$$ he could have made -- has proven he's not in this for the money. So I expect the AI version to also be free or at least have a free version for parents (and schools who can't afford it).
- 2y ago

Kye 2y ago

>> "Three, what if the AI is just wrong and starts confusing the student? Even GPT-4 fabricates things all the time." It was bad enough when the text was wrong because of shoddy editing.

neuralnetes-COO 2y ago
This is the purpose of LLMOps. To provide guardrails for precise output to prevent hallucination.
- dotinvoke 2y ago
  This is the first I'm hearing of LLMOps, please elaborate a bit on what it entails. How does it provide guardrails?
  - neuralnetes-COO 2y ago
    Basically, do you want a pipeline/process that utilizes LLMs and provides exactly the output you want? How do you formalize a human expert workflow using LLMs? With LLMOps. It is new, there is no standard or predefined resource that I'm aware of. At neuralnetes we are creating all of our methods ad hoc and use tight feedback loops to ensure ideal, precise output.
    - Kye 2y ago
      That sounds like technical editing but for LLM output instead of technical writers.
      - neuralnetes-COO 2y ago
        It's mostly software engineering.
        sfn42 2y ago
        Sounds like it's mostly air unless you can point to an LLM that doesn't confabulate.

MR4D 2y ago

A couple thoughts... First, clearly you had a crappy experience. And that sucks. There are probably many others with bad stories as well. I'm deeply involved with my kids education and can only imagine how much that sucked. Second, we can't solve everything at once. Hungry kids, bad parenting, all that will take time, and may never be resolved. I wish it could be, but honestly, it will take time - probably a long, long time. Third, he's building for the future. Richer schools (both private and public) will get this first, typical schools will get it next, and poor schools (both administratively poor and monetarily poor) will get it eventually. This is where that great quote applies - "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed" - and boy will it apply to education. So much so that some parents will feel like they are left in the stone age by comparison. Fourth, an anecdote. I do volunteer work for an education-related non profit. I learned during covid that HISD (Houston school district) couldn't easily move to online learning because 30% of their students did not have internet access at home. Thirty percent!!! I was blown away. Still am. But it's gotten much better, and we've evolved. Does it still suck? Yes, undoubtedly (HISD was taken over by the state, if that tells you how big their problems are). So I know this will not be evenly distributed because of this experience.

jonas21 2y ago

> Anything that requires an ongoing subscription fee is dead in the water. The only reason those stupid smartboards took off is because they make school boards look cool, they are a one time cost, and can be paid for with bonds (because they are a one time cost). Bonds take a one-time cost and turn it into a recurring cost (like a subscription) that is paid in installments over time. It's baffling that that it's easier to do that than just having a subscription in the first place.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

I agree it's not a silver bullet doesn't begin to address the issue where students aren't learning because of issues they're dealing with outside of school. I see this as Khan Academy x10. It'll be a great tool for those for whom Khan Academy itself was a good tool. If it's free (or for a nominal free), then parents will use it at home with their kids as a supplement to school. Teachers might use it on a case by case basis with students who want to accelerate or who are behind. It will highly accelerate learning for those who want to and are able to learn. The problems you describe, which are very real and important, are social problems, not educational problems per se or problems solved with technology.

danielmarkbruce 2y ago

There is a small fortune spent on private education. After school classes, tutoring etc etc. The money is spent by the upper middle class and above. If this solution works better for some subset of those people, it will take off in that market.

jasondigitized 2y ago
This. Well to do people do not blink when it comes to funding academic and athletic growth for their children.
turtlebits 2y ago
Private education as "in person" . Not faceless SaaS subscriptions.
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago
  I spend on private 1-1 sessions, group classes, books, apps, faceless saas subscriptions, toys, puzzles. You misunderstand the buyers in this market. In my town, I'm in a good sized minority spending up on this stuff, despite being otherwise careful with money.

jasondigitized 2y ago

There are obscene amounts of money in EdTedh. It lives in rich parents wallets.

mceoin 2y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

llm_trw 2y ago

> or they don't even know what to ask because they are basically 4 grades behind in math Then they start by asking "What is this" and just keep asking questions. Teachers seriously underestimate how much damage they do to students ability to learn by sneering at questions that they think should be obvious.

pacbard 2y ago

Agree 100% with the cost analysis. Let’s say you want to purchase a math tutoring platform. The cost is $30 per student per year. CA schools get about $5 per student per year in lottery funds to purchase instructional materials (shared across all materials). General fund is pretty much all spent on staff/teachers or facilities. One time covid funds are running out. Schools can purchase textbooks at ~$100 per unit and use them for years without subscriptions. In short, there is no money in public education for these tools. These platforms look great, but the price is prohibitive. Maybe some basic aid district could pick them up, but those are usually small (I.e., it won’t keep a start up in business). Note. This is an observation from California. Other states might find education better.

bufordtwain 2y ago

This might be the exception that proves the rule but I used to work for an outfit that made a school website product (SaaS) and they seemed to be making plenty of money.

skrbjc 2y ago
That's more of a service for the school as an institution. I believe the OP is saying that most ed-tech startups that have a goal of helping with the learning process have not been successful. The thing that comes to mind to me was all the hype around MOOCs and how much everyone thought they would be a game-changer for education, but the reality is that the problem wasn't the fact that people didn't have access to the education, it's that so few have the focus/discipline/resources to actually follow-through.

jcz_nz 2y ago

That’s a very limited perspective. While bulk of district spend (US) is salaries, buildings, pensions, busses, cafeterias etc. there is still a substantial spend on educational materials. It’s a tiny % of the overall budget, but the larger school districts have budgets in many _billions_. Smartboards and 3d printers etc. got popular because they came from a DIFFERENT budget - these were capital expenses. My personal experience (ed-tech reaching ~15% of school districts) is that it is impossible to sell a solution to a district _without_ support of the teaching and learning team - i.e. teachers. And if you do, it’s impossible to get a renewal. Lastly, 9 out of 10 startups fail. It’s not just ed-tech.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago

> One, there is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money in EdTech for pupils. Better go for continuing education for adults. There potentially is money.

ukulele 2y ago
They also have the Gates Foundation backing. If it is a shiny AI tech that could help lots of people, then the money is there

sensanaty 2y ago

> One, there is no money in Ed.Tech There is, but you usually have to rely on the gov't being the buyer, and not regular customers. I worked for a EdTech startup (catered to universities) so all our contracts were multi-year affairs paid basically by the government with the unis as an intermediary. But also keep in mind that the people even getting involved in EdTech generally don't do it for the money, as is the case with Khan. The money my old company was making was pretty crazy, but basically all of it went to various funds and charities and what-not relating to education, because the CEO didn't care about making a buck and likewise with anyone working there. I wholeheartedly agree with your points about AI though, outside of generating generic quiz questions and stuff like that I think it's a massive net negative on the entire educational system, though I suppose the cat is out of the bag now.

infecto 2y ago

Maybe my reading of the post is incorrect but I did not interpret it as solving the parenting problem. In the US there is a massive growing problem where parents are simply not parenting their kids and relying on institutions (schools) to do it. I honestly do not know what will solve that problem. To me this post shares a future where kids coming from good households will have the ability to learn more efficiently than before. It is not to replace the teacher but perhaps it will replace the tutor. Lastly, I am not sure why but I genuinely believe that folks focus too much on "hallucinations" and "fabrications" by LLM. Does it happen, yes but I think its one of those things you can actually tune for and it get down to low to no errors in a walled environment. It is definitely something to consider but not a blocker.

justinparus 2y ago

https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/06/kahoot-acquires-clever-the-us-based-edtech-portal-for-up-to-500m/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/06/kahoot-acquires-clever-the...