"The Genie is out of the bottle." Is that a good thing?

Salman Khan, the founder of the ubiquitous online tutoring platform Khan Academy, is a big proponent of burgeoning AI technology. If you have school-age children, you've probably heard of Khan Academy, and if you haven't, it's very likely they have. His company is rolling out Khanmigo, an AI educational platform that promises to help students and teachers alike. But will it? Is the genie being out of the bottle really a good thing, or as we watch it become more and more ingrained in our daily lives, should we recall Oppenheimer quoting Bhagavad Gita, "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" and perhaps it will end up being the Skynet us 80s kids worry it is?

At the end of the day, no one knows how AI will transform society, and perhaps that's what's scaring everybody.

Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing) suggests that if it is not a good thing (which Khan thinks it is), it is here to stay, and in order to prepare our children and ourselves for a rapidly-changing world, we should embrace it. On one hand, the book seeks to assuage some of those fears of AI enslaving humanity (though not entirely ignoring the dangers and possible pitfalls of the technology) and in large part is an infomercial for Khanmigo, Khan Academy's new AI educational platform. Khan is a good salesman; he's become very successful after all, and this short, easy-to-read snapshot of the potential of AI to revolutionize education is both a love letter and a cautionary tale. Khan wants us to learn to use and embrace AI technology while clinging to our humanity. He's at time too optimistic, too-far reaching in his claims, and perhaps not realistic enough, but he's trying.

Khan's premise is simple and sound: AI technology is here to stay, it is growing at a rapid rate, it is likely going to change many things about our world, and we need to get on board with it while we still can. He compares the emergence of AI to the rollout of the internet, and how once upon a time, it was forecasted to destroy learning as we know it, (as was the calculator, radio, and television) but has perhaps made it better. He reminds us that change and new innovation is always challenging and scary, but we have survived them all. He brings in plenty of teachers, academics, and even artists such as famed film director Francis Ford Coppola to back him.

The overarching problem with his thesis is that it is almost completely speculative in nature. What most of this book is about isn't exactly what AI (and Khanmigo) can do, but what it WILL be able to do someday. That's not to say that Khan's premise is faulty; there's no doubt AI has the capability and promise he speaks of, it is just not there yet. On one hand, I am glad people are talking about AI and as an educator, I am glad we're looking at ways to get it integrated in our schools, I am very involved with this at the school I work at, and it feels as if those of us who were around before the internet and saw how it revolutionized the world are trying to get ahead of AI before it does just that. The school I work at is actually a pilot school for Khanmigo, and the feedback I'm hearing from teachers is that it is underwhelming at best. My main concern is that at this point, the majority of AI innovations have been monetized as commercial projects. This is one of the flaws of Khan's argument: he paints AI and AI technology as the benevolent technological savior we've all been waiting for, the altruistic product of a utopian society that has created this for the benefit of all humanity. He posits that AI will be the great equalizer in worldwide education, giving children everywhere access to free, dynamic, and effective educational resources. This ignores the fact of course that such a world, were it to even exist, because I'm not sure it's the one we're in now - relies on access to high-speed internet and reliable technology with people to maintain and update it and buy replacements when it inevitably craps out. Where are children in the third world going to get that if we can barely get them enough to eat?

Khan makes a few other big claims (or perhaps they're not claims, perhaps the daydreams of an optimist - or capitalist), how AI can be as effective as an actual therapist, how it can keep kids accountable, and perhaps the most outlandish, that it will free up more time for parents to spend with their kids. I think the last one had something to do with the fact that parents can use AI to help their kids with their homework instead of suffering through math or science classes they never took, and hey, I'm all for that.

Khan does offer plenty of warnings, too. There is a subtext to the book that he acknowledges, that the technology to do all this isn't there yet and that yes, bad actors can use and design AI (and likely will) too. Perhaps the book, which without a doubt in my mind is a sales pitch for Khanmigo, is an attempt to get people thinking differently about AI, because like Khan says, the genie is out of the bottle and there's no putting it back. When I was in my late teens, I remember hearing about this internet, even using it a little bit here and there. At the time, I thought of it little more than a curiosity, a quirky, fun bit of tech to spend a couple of hours on. I had no idea at the time how much it would change all our lives. I believe AI will do this too, and it is good we are talking about it, both the positives and the negatives. Sal Khan's book is a good start but could have been a better one.