AI Investor Forum: Gus Tai on AI in Education (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Now, the equation starts to change as we get to higher education, right? There’s the big experiment that came out of MIT and Harvard edX, which started putting all the lectures online. It was the beginning of these massive online open courses (MOOCs). Today’s technology can go much further with all this personalization and Generative AI stuff. However, the same model of children being able to learn more with that personalized, infinitely patient teacher or professor in college still holds.

Gus Tai: Yes, it does. As you were saying that Sramana, what comes to mind is that there could be a fragmentation of this norm setting of what it means to be a freshman or a sophomore. If people are on their own pace prior to college and then within college, it may lead to individuals becoming more specialized in terms of skill and then losing their connection with each other or commonality with each other. It’ll be interesting to see what the role of a college and university will be going forward.

In Silicon Valley, there’s a lot of discussion around that and perhaps a resistance to valuing “liberal arts education”. There are benefits to have a shared experience for citizenship and for society.

Sramana Mitra: Yes. What is the curriculum? I think your point about liberal arts education is incredibly valuable. If there is no liberal arts education as a requirement, then we will get droids basically with no empathy, no ability to understand human emotions and how human beings operate with each other. They will not be able to formulate relationships. As a result, they will have very unsatisfactory lives, which already is the case in Silicon Valley.

Gus Tai: There is wisdom through experience. Wisdom can be derived by looking at the past and learning from the past. We are in a very disruptive environment with technology and with AI. This is a major revolution, and it’s needed to explore the future; but let’s not forget about past benefits. One of the past benefits is that as we are a community, we’re a society. We can be enriched by history, by literature, by the arts. It’s a type of training that would be opaque to us if we weren’t exposed to it. However, it has helped us through history; we know that it rounds us out. It provides a lot of benefits that you’re pointing to. I see trends of more myopia in specialization, and it would be helpful to have that.

Sramana Mitra: All skill and no wisdom is what I see.

Gus Tai: That’s a reasonable point of view from my standpoint.

Sramana Mitra: Part of the problem is also that society is not prioritizing wisdom. Society is prioritizing skill. Society is compensating skill at very high levels, and wisdom is kind of an afterthought. That’s the society that we are building; and it’s a real problem.

Gus Tai: Hence Sramana, one area that I want reflecting upon involves startups but is not directly about startups. Of course, there could be a difference of opinion here. However, we are at this juncture of a disruptive form of technology, which can be applied in beneficial and harmful ways.

How do we use AI to cultivate wisdom and a wisdom culture? I think, from an optimistic, realistic point of view, this can be developed. Now, is that a for-profit startup or a non-profit like a Khan Academy? I don’t know, but AI can be used as a tool to accelerate wisdom, and I’m hopeful that that happens.

Sramana Mitra: Going back to looking at history, how has the practice of wisdom evolved for centuries? It is through the spiritual groups, religious groups, Churches, Buddhist temples, and meditation centers. That is how the formal practice of wisdom has come about.

As you know, I’m a big believer in literature as a source of wisdom. That is not necessarily a well-practiced point of view. The religious and spiritual groups is a more developed institutionalized form of imparting wisdom. Now, that construct could conceivably translate into AI.

Gus Tai: AI can augment or help to distribute it. It can help to reformat to make it more approachable.

Sramana Mitra: Exactly.

Gus Tai: For sure. Wisdom is having experiences and appreciating that much in life isn’t black and white. It requires judgment with experience and having a fatigue less mentor who’s pointing to examples or helping to ask questions. Wisdom is seeing the black and white in the gray. What is the black? What is the white? How do you hold both and discern and render a judgment against ethics and values that are wholesome? I could see a type of tutoring that could be very effective using AI.

Sramana Mitra: Is there a scenario in which that can be a basis for for-profit startups?

Gus Tai: I’ve been thinking about it from a commercialization standpoint for startups. I’m sure you’ve given this counsel, it’s oftentimes easier to focus on being a painkiller versus a vitamin. Just because of the acute need, you pay for the need. Well, there’s wisdom, and what does wisdom solve? It might be more of a vitamin; it’s important, but less urgent. What are the symptoms before that? The symptoms before that are this increasing amount of fear, anxiety, depression, worrying, regrets, and so forth. They might be destabilizing or clearly something that the person would want to work on.

In the context of providing the right, wholesome type of mental health applications, a lot of work needs to be done to do it safely and effectively. For people who have extra worry, extra fear, extra regret, engaging in a fatigue-less tutor or a fatigue-less support system with the right type of human support, you have to make sure it is safe, because errors here could be really catastrophic. Part of it is just seeing reality more clearly and understanding that black and white thinking creates a lot of suffering. That’s a ramp into wisdom, I believe.

This segment is part 4 in the series : AI Investor Forum: Gus Tai on AI in Education
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