On March 11, 2025, Khan Academy founder Sal Khan was on stage at CHM Live with KQED’s Rachael Myrow to share insights from his new book, Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing). In partnership with Silicon Valley Reads, the program was made possible by the generous support of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation.
A couple of years ago, Sal Khan didn’t think that generative AI would play a part in Khan Academy’s future. In the early days, ChatGPT was "just not very good," he said. But in the summer of 2022, Khan’s friends at OpenAI sent him a new model, and when he saw what would become GPT-4, he was impressed. He could immediately see how leveraging this kind of technology could provide rigorous, personalized learning at scale. Khanmigo is realizing that vision.
Mapped to existing models of teaching and learning, Khanmigo is a tutor for students and an aid for teachers. It has several guardrails to address concerns about generative AI in the context of learning.
Sal Khan explains AI tutor Khanmigo.
Khanmigo can report back to the teacher if a student is struggling or trying to cheat or initiating unhealthy conversations, like, “I want to hurt someone.” Teachers have access to the transcripts to see the interactions between Khanmigo and a student and can ask the AI assistant how the student is doing. The process itself also helps identify things like cheating. For example, AI can flag if a student pasted in a big block of text for a writing exercise.
More than 450,000 students and teachers are currently piloting Khanmigo, and next school year 1.1 million will be formally using it. Costs have been coming down dramatically, and contrary to stereotypes about education as a slow-moving sector, teachers have been the fastest early adopters. They see its value for help with creating lesson plans, grading, progress reports, and freeing up their time to be more creative in the classroom.
Surprisingly, 80 to 85 percent of students don’t know how to ask questions or engage with Khanmigo, reflecting their reluctance to raise their hands in the classroom. While this high number might seem alarming, Khan notes that the tool can prompt these students and help them learn to be more proactive. It can also provide insights to teachers about where individual kids need help.
As with any new technology, some fear that AI will do too much of the hard thinking for kids. But, says Khan, tech really just amplifies original intent. Students with positive intent will use the tool to push themselves to learn, and guardrails can be put in place to try to prevent cheating and laziness. He’s hopeful that generative AI companies will be more accountable than social media.
Sal Khan believes generative AI is accountable.
Khan thinks that a lot of educators are in a little bit of denial, believing that they can detect AI in their student’s work. But, as long as the students are a little careful, Khan says, they can’t. Both students and teachers are navigating this new frontier.
Sal Khan describes students and teachers adapting to AI.
AI will continue to evolve, and to ensure that generative AI helps students learn, Khan recommends taking a step back and thinking about fundamental questions like, "What is the purpose of writing papers to begin with?" That might be to have students learn to make an argument, do research, or prove that they interacted with a book. AI can help with all of those, but there is value in other modalities too. For example, AI could interview a student in real time to test comprehension, or a student could give a speech to the AI and get feedback.
For those concerned that Khanmigo may present biased information, Khan notes that Khan Academy’s materials are used all over the U.S. and the world. He believes that AI actually helps with polarization because it does not immediately validate a student’s answer, but instead asks questions to push the student’s thinking, including prompting them to provide an argument for the opposing view.
Khan insisted that AI won’t replace teachers, but will instead free up time to create richer lesson plans, offer more interactives, design beautiful simulations or Socratic dialogues, facilitate group work, and focus on individual students. Everyone benefits if AI can help to strengthen those human connections.
Sal Khan's Brave New Words | CHM Live, March 11, 2025
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