你的人工智能辅导工具正在美国的学校里进行实地测试和线上测试，能说一说学生和教师们对这种工具的初步印象如何吗？
作为全面启用GPT-4的一部分，我们在2023年3月15日发布了 Khanmigo。使用这一工具的用户旋即有了数千人，其中包括加利福尼亚州山景城可汗实验室学校、可汗世界学校（线上）、新泽西州纽瓦克和印第安纳州霍巴特主流公立学校的师生。这个学年开始时，美国将有约11000名师生在正规课堂环境中使用Khanmigo。
我们首先要做的是了解人们的最初反应，并确保我们的做法不会造成任何伤害。我们从一开始就从师生那里得到了非常积极的反馈。而且从我们掌握的一些初步数据来看，Khanmigo是绝对不会带来任何伤害的。
能够向Khanmigo即时提问，这让学生们非常高兴。我们都曾经有过想不起来某事，也不好意思去问别人的经历——点播视频或是请教人工智能助教可以缓解我们的紧张感。
“能够向Khanmigo即时提问，
这让学生们非常高兴”
学生在课堂上不敢问的问题非常多，这让教师都感到惊讶。教师们表示，拿到关于这些问题的反馈报告很有帮助，这样他们就可以确保深入讲解相关概念。Khanmigo的制订课程计划和布置作业等功能也让教师们大为赞赏。
教师和学生欣赏的Khanmigo的另一项功能是，学生可以同历史人物或文学作品中的人物进行模拟对话。与人工智能展开辩论，让孩子们可以先在安全的环境中略微调整自己的论点，然后再返回课堂，进行实际讨论。
到学年结束时，我们将获得关于Khanmigo如何影响学生学习成果的真实数据。近期的一项研究发现，与其他学生相比，主流学校的学生在一年内进入可汗学院学习18个小时，其成绩可以提高30%—50%。我们能用Khanmigo做些什么，就让我们拭目以待吧。
© Itziar Barrio为联合国教科文组织《信使》创作
人们对于生成式人工智能最初的担心，是这种技术可能会被用来作弊。这就是我们使用了GPT-4模型而没有选用支持ChatGPT的GPT-3.5模型的原因之一。无论我们如何调试，部分早期模型只能给出答案，有时甚至是错误答案；而使用GPT-4，我们能让Khanmigo表现得像是一位苏格拉底式的导师。
未满18岁的学生与Khanmigo的每次互动都会被记录下来，供家长和教师查看。另一个人工智能正在监视这种人机对话，假如对话将进入“危险领域”，负责监视的人工智能将中断对话，并通知家长和教师。我们还确保对姓名和地址等所有个人身份信息都进行匿名处理。我们不会使用学生数据来训练人工智能。
“未满18岁的学生与Khanmigo的每次互动都会被记录下来，供家长和教师查看”
生成式人工智能并不总是正确的，它有时还会捏造事实。为此，学生与Khanmigo之间的互动大多以可汗学院现有的信息为基础，尽量将Khanmigo限定在一定范围内。
在数学课程中，我们煞费苦心地消减了人工智能的傲慢自负。Khanmigo会在后台自动寻找答案，然后与学生给出的答案进行对比。假如二者不同，它不会马上说“你错了”，而是说：“嗯，我得出了一个不同的答案，你能解释一下你的推理过程吗？”
最后一项保障措施是确保用户（包括学生和教师）了解这项技术，即知道它能做什么，不能做什么，知道何时可以信赖它，何时应该复查它的工作。
可汗学院倡导“为全世界所有人提供免费的一流教育”，但Khanmigo是收费的，也没有在全球范围内普遍投入使用。可以采取哪些措施来确保这些工具同样可以惠及偏远地区的居民和低收入群体？
美国境内的所有人现在都可以注册使用Khanmigo。我估计在几个月后，我们就可以为世界各地的所有付费用户提供访问权限。
生成式人工智能的成本取决于其使用量，目前的平均成本是每名用户每月9—10美元。我预计其成本到明年将至少减半，甚至可能降至目前的四分之一。
美国等富裕国家的公立学校系统每年为每名学生支出10000—40000美元，对于这些国家来说，Khanmigo的成本可谓物有所值，我希望学生们可以免费用上这项技术。
即便是考虑到世界其他地区的教育成本，如印度或非洲地区，我想Khanmigo也是有吸引力的。我希望我们能够在5年后为全世界大多数国家免费或低价提供Khanmigo。
我认为Khanmigo是一种补充工具，但非常强大。在目前的状态下，对于好奇心强、希望借此弥补概念缺陷的学生来说，Khanmigo是非常有效的，但我希望它也能帮助那些散漫的学生树立目标，并且实现自己的目标。
假如学校资源充足，教师可以进行一对一辅导。但在传统公立学校，学生得不到这种额外关注，人工智能至少可以陪伴学生一起学习。
我对自己的孩子就是这么做的，我确保他们每天都有一点额外的补充学习。我们希望人工智能也能做到积极主动，会发短信给你，而且有一天会给你打电话：“嘿，我发现你今天没有用功读书啊，这是怎么回事？要让我怎么做，你才肯埋头学习？”我认为只要人工智能简单易懂，就能让学生真正参与进来。
Sal Khan: "I see AI as an additional tool, but a very powerful one"
Since March 2023, Khan Academy, a non-profit organization offering free online education, has been piloting a teaching assistant powered by artificial intelligence (AI) called Khanmigo. Khan Academy’s founder Sal Khan is convinced that, when properly supervised, this tool can help students consolidate their learning and improve their self-esteem.
Your AI-powered tutoring tool is currently being tested in schools in the United States and online. Can you share with us some early impressions from students and teachers?
We launched Khanmigo on 15 March 2023, as part of the general launch of GPT-4. It was immediately used by several thousand people, including students and teachers in Khan Lab School in Mountain View, California, in Khan World School (online) as well as in mainstream public schools in Newark in New Jersey and Hobart in Indiana. Now, as we go to this school year, tens of thousands of around 11,000 students and teachers are going to be using it in a formal classroom setting in the United States.
We first wanted to capture people's immediate reactions and to make sure we weren't causing any harm. Right out of the gate we heard very positive feedback from both teachers and students. We also have some preliminary data showing that it's definitely not doing harm.
The students really appreciated being able to ask Khanmigo questions right in the moment. We've all forgotten things and felt embarrassed to ask someone else – an on-demand video or AI tutor can feel less intimidating.
"Students really appreciated being able to
ask Khanmigo questions right in the moment"
The number of questions students were afraid to ask in class surprised teachers. They said it was useful to get a report back on these questions, so they could ensure such concepts were covered in more depth. They also appreciated using the tool for things like creating lesson plans and assignments.
Another thing that teachers and students have enjoyed is Khanmigo’s feature where students can talk to simulations of a historical or literary character. Debating with AI allows kids to fine-tune their arguments in a safe environment before going back to class and entering discussion.
By the end of the school year we'll have some real data on what it is doing to students' learning outcomes. A recent study indicates that mainstream school students using Khan Academy for 18 hours over one year see their level growing 30 to 50 per cent faster compared to a typical student. We'll see what we can do with Khanmigo.
Amid fears of AI taking over education, how can you ensure that the environment you have introduced is safe and under meaningful human control?
The first immediate fear that people have with generative AI is that it can be used to cheat. This is one of the reasons why we use GPT-4 and not GPT-3.5, the technology behind ChatGPT. No matter how we tried to steer some of the earlier models, they would always just give the answer, and sometimes an incorrect one. Using GPT-4, we've been able to make Khanmigo act like a Socratic tutor.
Every interaction a student under the age of eighteen has with the tool is logged and accessible to parents and teachers. A second AI is monitoring the conversations and if they go into any ‘dangerous places’, the AI will not allow that conversation to go on and it will notify parents and teachers. We also make sure that any personally identifiable information like names or addresses is anonymized. We are not using student data to train the AI.
"Every interaction a student under the age of eighteen has with the tool is logged and accessible to parents and teachers"
Generative AI is not always right, and it can sometimes make up facts. This is why most of the interactions that students have with Khanmigo are anchored on Khan Academy information, reducing the likelihood that it would go beyond that. On the maths side, we've done a lot of work to make it less overconfident. Khanmigo tries to find the answer on its own behind the scenes, and then compares it with that of the student. If the answers are different, it won't immediately say, ‘You're wrong’, but instead, something like, ‘Hmm, I got a different answer. Can you explain your reasoning?’.
The last guardrail is making sure that the users, both students and teachers, are educated on what this technology is, what it can and cannot do, when you can rely on it and when you should double check its work.
Khan Academy promotes an “open access free world-class education for anyone anywhere”. Khanmigo, however, is neither free nor yet accessible worldwide. What can be done to ensure that these tools also reach people living in remote areas and those with low income?
Today anyone in the US can sign up to Khanmigo. I think in the next few months we're going to be able to give access to it to anyone in the world who pays.
The generative AI costs depend on how much it’s used, but the average cost today is around 9-10 dollars per user per month. I predict that in the next year the cost will be at least half, maybe one quarter of what it is today. For rich countries like the United States, where the public school system spends between US$10,000 and US$40,000 per student per year, this is a very valuable thing – and hopefully the students will get it for free. But even if you think about the cost of education in other parts of the world, like India or Africa, I believe it becomes interesting. My hope is that in five years we can afford to give it for free or almost free to most of the world.
I see Khanmigo as an additional tool, but a very powerful one. In its current state, it works very well for curious students who want to make sure they have their conceptual gaps filled in. But hopefully it's also going to help disengaged students set and reach their goals. If you go to a school that has more resources, the teacher can sit one-on-one and do this. But in a traditional public school, where you don't get that type of extra attention, at least the AI can sit with you.
I do this with my own kids. I make sure that every day they get a little bit of supplemental learning. We want AI to get proactive like that. It's texting you, eventually it’s going to call you up on the phone and say, ‘Hey, I see you're not working today. What's going on? What can I do to get you working?’ As long as it's transparent, I think it can actually get students to engage.
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