AI Investor Forum: Gus Tai on AI in Education (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: There is one other vector we need to consider in this – the human centric element. The history of education is that the human provides all the content. For a rural India teacher to teach English as a second language, he or she has to know English as a second language from that particular vernacular in the region first. But in this model, we are eliminating that requirement. Or are we eliminating that requirement? Does the teacher need to not know, know? What is the role of the teacher in this?

Is it human as a guide on the side instead of sage on stage? What is the requirement of that teacher? That teacher will still be a bottleneck if the requirement is that the teacher knows.

Gus Tai: In this context, there’s a lot of research. The dilemma with psychological research is a lot of it is not replicable, but it’s common sense and resonates that when a teacher is attuned to the needs of a student and believes in the student, the student performs better. That seems reasonable. There’s a lot of research that indicates that this attuning is easier to do with where generative l LLMs are heading.

The personas of these fatigue-less LLMs are informed around how to use the right language and are deeply, deeply patient. They aren’t fatigued by staying up late! There’s going to be much higher consistency and much greater opportunity to switch from a persona to find the right persona of the LLM for the student. In this particular case, I would expect that the majority of students will find LLM personalization on a persona a better form of education than of an individual.

One side note – it’s interesting to reflect upon what is this element of human-to-human connection, which is real with the energy and trust that comes from us being social beings. I believe it will be a while before we would want to replace a physical doctor with an AI program or a pilot from a plane with an algorithm; but we’ve driverless cars. It’s really just a matter of acclimation and understanding what the value from a human versus the value from an intelligent algorithm is.

Sramana Mitra: There’s also the question of the role of the school. School performs the function of daycare and childcare while the parents can go to work. It also has a tremendous social function – the social intelligence that is developed from children being together at school or the playground or playroom.

All that needs to be managed or administered by human beings. The actual personalized learning of English as a second language, or chemistry or physics or anything with an infinitely patient, highly personalized teacher can be automated and augmented with AI, but that social, class managed classroom management still needs a teacher.

Just administering the whole process of being in school all day long needs to be managed by teachers. That’s kind of how I’m seeing the evolution of schools.

Gus Tai: What you said resonates with me, Sramana. I’m more familiar with American history of public school systems rather than other countries. From a public standpoint, at the turn of the 19^th century, there was a pushback against having child labor. Then you had the requirement for a babysitting methodology for children if they’re not working in the factory. I think babysitting is a function of public schools historically among other things, but then we also want, as parents, for children to develop emotional and social intelligence.  

I would just argue that I’m not sure the schools have had the teaching of social intelligence as an intentional curriculum. There are many other methodologies of education and social intelligence. Judith Rich Harris wrote the Nurture Assumption as a meta study of psychological papers arguing that social intelligence comes from engaging and playing with your peers. That takes place in school and out of school.

I felt that school systems had a deficit regardless of teaching as much social intelligence and emotional intelligence as I would like to see.

Sramana Mitra: Yes. So that could be enhanced. It could become more of a structured, intentional way of teaching children social intelligence. I think this is becoming a big problem. With the advent of smartphones and social media, social behavior has changed, not for the better; there are a lot of mental health problems that are coming to the surface right now that needs to be dealt with.

Gus Tai: Beautiful point. Jonathan Haidt is a professor who writes about a lot about this and has been an advocate for removing the phone from the school system. What you’re highlighting is that whether the schools have had an important informal role in promoting social and emotional intelligence. Perhaps since it’s been informal, generally, technologies have allowed that capability of education to erode. So, let’s acknowledge that. Let’s change the conditions, let’s add in a different curriculum to reinforce that type of education, which is very valuable.

This segment is part 3 in the series : AI Investor Forum: Gus Tai on AI in Education
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