1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Investor Gus Tai (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: As an aside, I think the human-centric aspect of AI can actually turn out to be a very beneficial factor in healthcare, just because it’s a natural propensity for human beings who are in need of care to want another human being to be taking care of them; not a robot, not a digital persona. So, I think this may be at the end of the day in an industry that can be augmented by AI – the training and the ability to care will be powered by AI. However, there is also the human aspect – the compassion and the care aspect that can, if we can make it survive from an economics point of view, make the industry become a far more efficient and better quality care industry.

Gus Tai: Yes, I agree with that.

Sramana Mitra: So, here I think human-centric AI has humongous potential. Now, education is another big, open problem. Hundreds of millions of people have to be educated every year – K–12, young adults, college, higher education, etc.

I was reading an article in The Economist about how predatory and how aggressive the tutoring industry is in places like Asia, for example. Tutoring is almost mandatory, and teachers withhold information in the classroom because they’re terribly paid. They withhold information in the classroom to make extra money by tutoring.

Now, tutoring isn’t natural for generative AI. I do feel that this is also a human-centric AI problem because human beings learn better from human beings because there are all these nurturing or motivational opportunities. There’re all kinds of things in a human relationship that happen – friendships evolve, a mentor – mentee relationship evolves. There’re all kinds of beautiful things that happen in the context of a human relationship. But if the actual content of that – the tutoring or the teaching – can be taken care by AI, then I think we have an ideal situation in many ways.

Gus Tai: Yes, I very much agree. Coincidentally, yesterday, I was watching Duocon, which is the annual Duolingo product release event. I felt they had made materially beneficial advancements in how to make an AI persona engage with a person. Human mind can bootstrap language. Children know how to learn languages and there’s an element of curiosity, interest, and novelty to put in the reps to learn. So they had this video dialogue of conversation and I thought I can see the trajectory now for how they’ll get there. I’m very bullish on Duolingo as a company. I’m not an investor, but I just think they’re doing amazing things.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, I’m an avid user of Duolingo. I’ve learned French. I took private tutoring early on in the pre-Duolingo era and got some French, but I have become reasonably fluent in French by studying Duolingo every day and it’s been amazing. I’m a complete advocate of the product of the company.

Also, Gus, as for Khan Academy’s Khanmigo experiment that is going on for which Bill Gates is behind it with Gates Foundation. I think he’s a huge believer in it. If Khan Academy can build these tutors for K–12 in particular and manage the whole K–12 curriculum with free tutoring, that is going to be a material change.

Gus Tai: Yes. There’re two elements that human-centric AI can really contribute to. By having more diversity, there’s an increased likelihood of novelty for the student. When we feel safe enough, we become curious and we learn. Human beings teach the same way, but an AGI would have a larger repertoire.

Then the second element involves using human connections and AI to teach, something you were alluding to earlier. Human connections provide energy and motivation, and the social context helps someone focus more and engage. In a Duolingo interaction, I can imagine having a relationship with a persona and feeling motivated to demonstrate my learning to it. Now, we might think that that’s odd, but is it odd? If it becomes commonplace where we trust that persona and say, “Oh, they’re actually helping me, and I’m feeling that I’m helping them.” Even though it’s an artificial character, it’s human centric. In a more wholesome way, it’s really taking advantage of the nature of the human operating system of wanting to connect and wanting to relate.

Sramana Mitra: I think in this discussion that we just had, if we bring that to the context of entrepreneurship and investment, Duolingo is a classical venture-funded company that succeeded in the B2C model. So that’s a traditional startup venture capital kind of model.

Khan Academy is a very different model. Khan Academy is a non-profit. It’s planning to offer everything for free, I think, more or less, to the schools and the teachers to use. Is there an entrepreneurial angle to the education problem that you are seeing or thinking about?

Gus Tai: I have not been seeing them on education per se in the US. I have been seeing a related tangent around how do we use these relatable personas to help people feel seen or heard in mental health and well-being applications.

I also think that the cost of these advanced, but soon to be basic capabilities will keep dropping. So entrepreneurs could be inspired by what Duolingo had done and by what Khan Academy has been doing. These are niches that can be very profitable and be of great service in delighting and nourishing customers. I think that’s a really interesting idea for people who want to get businesses to get to profitability pretty quickly.

Sramana Mitra: Gus, we have a couple of entrepreneurs that we will need to work with. Thank you for coming and I would like to continue this conversation later.

This segment is part 4 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Investor Gus Tai
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