Khan Academy, a nonprofit ed-tech company founded by Sal Khan, is developing a new AI tutor called Khanmigo. The AI bot, based on ChatGPT will integrate with the existing videos and exercises and is expected to guide students in their studies.
The project began last June when Sal Khan came in contact with Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI. Sal was impressed with the bot’s capabilities and decided to use it on his own platform.
Khan Academy tweaked the AI bot with additional training and crafted custom prompts for specific situations. For instance, when Khanmigo is deployed with a video, the AI system has access to the entire transcript of the video. For the AI to solve math problems with ease, math-related interactions were designed to include special prompts to enhance the reasoning power of the AI.
Khanmigo encourages students to explain their reasoning rather than simply telling them they’re right or wrong. Furthermore, the system is designed in such a way as to reject the prompts by students if they ask the AI to complete their homework for them. The system will shut down as soon as it detects shady conversations while simultaneously notifying parents and teachers.
“We’ve prompted our way so that Khanmigo has a humility about it,” Khan told Fast Company. “It actually doesn’t just say ‘You’re wrong,’ it says ‘That’s not what I got, can you explain your reasoning?'”
Khanmigo will roll out more broadly within the next few months. Final pricing for individuals and schools is not yet determined. Those who are selected for the waitlist were asked to commit at least a $20 per month donation.
Khan admits that as of now, the AI is not 100% accurate, though the accuracy rapidly increases when it’s prompted to explain its work before presenting the final answer. He envisions future iterations of Khanmigo having features like long-term memory for interactions with users, the ability to provide feedback and coaching on student writing, and the ability to host multi-user interactions.
At some point, the chat interface may even be the main interface people use to interact with Khan Academy. The project is a game-changer for education technology and could dramatically transform what Khan Academy is going to become.
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