Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education by Salman Khan

For a fairly fresh dad and an AI enthusiast who uses AI for everything from book note keeping, exercise tracking and planning, to work-related tasks, such as writing, data analysis, research and idea generation, reading Salman Khan's Brave New Words was a no-brainer. I've seen how large-language models have been changing the world, how much they have evolved in the last couple of years, and the potential to make an even bigger dent into pretty much every daily activity of our lives - from personal to work-related tasks.

Lots of people feared - and for a good reason - that AI was/is/will be a threat to learning (who will write their own essays when ChatGPT can do it in a matter of seconds, and do an excellent job at that?). Salman Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, a leader in online tutoring, shows how AI has shaped the learning and teaching landscape, and its even farther-reaching potential to disrupt established learning processes in the future. 

I was frank since the beginning - I do use AI models for a lot of tasks, including writing. I don't see anything wrong with that, especially if AI can do a better job than me while simultaneously saving me time. At the same time, I think it's extremely important to be transparent about it.

One of the key arguments made by Salman Khan that stuck with me was the use of AI models for idea generation and creativity. Instead of seeing it as a cheating tool, think how much good it can bring to the table. A conversation with ChatGPT or Gemini can really make one's neurons fire, and nudge ideas into one's head that otherwise would have a hard time to form.

As always, the first part of the review is written by me. Then, I let ChatGPT do the work and summarize it for me, making sure it is grounded in facts and reflects the book's essence. 

Here are some of the quotes and notes that I made (ironically, using ChatGPT while reading the book), and then - onto the summary by GPT, which is a true an accurate representation of the contents of the book.

Quote by Rabindranath Tagore:
"You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water."

Quote by Alexander the Great:
"I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well."

Quote by Horace Mann:
"A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron."

"Based on a 2020 Gallup analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 read below a 6th grade level."

"Long before Khan Academy, decades of research (and intuition) pointed to the idea that kids could learn much more if the pacing adapted to the student and allowed each one to truly ace a subject (that is, mastery learning)."

"In 1957, the psychologist Frank Rosenblatt created Perceptron, the first artificial neural network, a computer simulation of a collection of neurons and synapses trained to perform certain tasks. In the decades following such innovations in early AI, we had the computation power to tackle systems only as complex as the brain of an earthworm or insect. We also had limited techniques and data to train these networks."

"What it lacks in real-world sensory experiences of the human brain, it compensates for by having exposure to more language than any human might hope to read, watch, or listen to in multiple lifetimes."

"In the early 1940s, Claude Shannon, a brilliant mathematician, produced several consequential theories. Among them, he mapped out a theory of electronic communication that would become the basis of digital technology. In 1948, while working for Bell Labs, he started dabbling in the field we now know as artificial intelligence. Shannon decided to play with how an algorithm approximates language. He published a paper in The Bell System Technical Journal called 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication.' It was the early days of digital computers—well before the advent of the internet—and Shannon's information theory first made the case that a series of probabilistic processes could approximate the English language. By keeping track of how many times words appeared in a text, he devised an algorithm where he was able to predict what word was most likely to come next. Eventually, this small language model generated a sentence. The better this process got, the more natural the sentence sounded. It’s an oversimplification, but the likes of GPT-3 and GPT-4 are essentially far more complex large language models based on training a neural net in very specialized ways, and the underlying idea can be traced back to this early work by Shannon."

"You won't be replaced by an AI, but you might be replaced by someone using AI."

"The most successful students will be those who use AI to help make conceptual connections for developing ideas. Students who learn to use AI ethically and productively may learn not only at an exponentially higher rate than others but also in a way that allows them to remain competitive throughout their careers. They will have a deeper understanding of the given subject matter because they will know how to get their questions answered. Rather than atrophying, their curiosity muscle will be strengthened."

"Similarly, how many times have you been told to 'sleep on the problem'? I myself am a master of this art. In college, when I faced seemingly intractable math problems, I would engage with them for a few minutes and then delegate them to my subconscious. I would tell my brain to essentially come up with the answers and tell 'me' when it was done. Most of the time, I had the answers by the next morning without having to consciously struggle with them. I’m not alone in doing this. Many people find it a useful way to approach difficult problems."

"Based on a 2015 Department of Education report, roughly 50 percent of American high schools don’t offer a course in calculus. Forty percent do not offer physics. More than a quarter do not offer chemistry. These numbers get worse for high schools with high Black and Latino enrollment, where 62 percent of high schools do not offer calculus and 49 percent do not offer chemistry. Roughly a quarter of those schools don’t even offer Algebra 2."

"In 2022, for instance, researchers from the South China University of Technology tested the efficacy of AI-based therapeutic interventions by having a chatbot deliver cognitive behavioral therapy, another traditional therapy for treating depression and anxiety. The therapy chatbot was able to reduce depression in people within four months and anxiety in people in as quickly as one month. It worked significantly better than self-help books."