Technology has promised to revolutionize education for a long time. Could AI finally be the unlock we’ve been looking for? With nearly 20 years at the intersection of education and technology behind her, Leah Belsky is head of education at OpenAI. She joined host Molly Graham in this episode of the TED podcast WorkLife to discuss what AI really has to offer as a learning tool — and where it falls short of the hype. |
- The truly effective AI tutor isn't here quite yet. Today's models give personalized answers, but learning requires friction. When a kid has ChatGPT solve their homework, it may feel like learning in the moment, but that process strips away the struggle and reflection necessary to make knowledge stick.
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Education needs a human touch. "Teachers motivate, they hold people accountable, they bring students together in community, they understand a student's context, their emotional context," says Belsky. "AI just doesn't do that." She expects AI tutoring to improve significantly, but not in a way that could fully replace human tutors or teachers.
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AI tools can empower students to discover more. Belsky’s daughter has difficulty reading due to dyslexia, so she introduced her to ChatGPT's voice mode. "I no longer had to worry about her ability to access the world's information," she says. Her son, meanwhile, used AI coding tools to build a website for a 3D-printed fidget business he helped create with his sister. Belsky says this gave him a "sense of agency that he can create and build."
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A short documentary from The New Yorker explores the advent of AI from a new angle: a wedding party. Brent, documentarian; Simon, comedy writer; and Dan, OpenAI employee, come together to celebrate the marriage of their friend Josh, a farmer, less than a year before the release of ChatGPT. From Dan’s obsession with the singularity to their collective realization of what AI means for each of their careers, the film is a touching study of how individual relationships evolve as we all grapple with our unknown future.
Related: From its inception six decades ago to its recent exponential growth, futurist Ray Kurzweil highlights AI's transformative impact on various fields (including comedy) and explains his prediction for the singularity: the point at which human intelligence merges with machine intelligence.
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| Are you more connected online, or in person? Host Melissa Fernandes explores the science of friendship and digital relationships, unpacking why the tiny ways we reach out to each other may matter more than we think. |
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Join us for TEDAI in Vienna, Austria, on October 28-30 for a rare gathering of AI builders, entrepreneurs, researchers, activists and philosophers — all united by a shared ambition to imagine a future worth getting excited about. |
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