Photo by Rachel Murray/Getty Images for The LA Promise Fund’s “Hello Future” Summit
AI agents grading papers, monitoring student performance, learning their interests, and making suggestions to the teacher.
That’s what the classroom of the future could look like, according to Khan Academy CEO Sal Khan, a learning environment where AI will act as a powerful aide for teachers, not their replacement.
“Imagine if your child’s school district just discovered a billion dollars and they decided to hire some amazing graduate students to hang out in the classroom,” Khan said in an interview with BBC. “And so, every classroom is going to get four or five of these graduate students. These graduate students are going to be on call for the teacher of the classroom — to help grade papers, to help bounce ideas, think of really creative lesson plans.”
The US is suffering from a teaching shortage, with instructors leaving the classroom in droves over the past few years. A combination of conditions — including heavy workloads and minimal pay — is driving away many veteran teachers, while also de-incentivizing new blood from joining the profession.
For those choosing to work in the classroom, Khan said that AI assistants could help alleviate the strain while also improving student engagement.
The AI teaching assistants, he said, will be able to monitor the classroom along with the actual teacher. They’ll be able to help children when needed and “report back to the teacher.” For example, he added, AI could determine a student’s personal interests and suggest relevant adjustments to the lesson plan to increase the odds that the student would engage with the material.
“‘Hey, I noticed Catty is not as engaged as she was yesterday,'” Khan said. “Or, ‘Look, Sal is really engaged today, why don’t you go praise him on this thing that he did last night you might have not noticed?’ or ‘Did you know that he’s really into baseball? Let’s make the next example about that, just for Sal.'”
“And then they’re able to distill all of that and communicate to the parents, so it’s not even once a term, it’s almost real-time,” he added.
The AI agents could then debrief with the teacher at the end of class to make a game plan for tomorrow, including identifying students who may be in need of some additional one-on-one time.
“I think that would be everyone’s dream: the students would love it, the teachers would love it, and the parents would love it — and that’s essentially what’s going to happen with AI,” Khan said.
AI has become an increasing presence in the lives of both students and teachers, and its role in the classroom has been widely debated.
Proponents of its use in the classroom, including some educators and business leaders such as Bill Gates, say it could help alleviate understaffed schools and “enhance” education. Critics of AI in classrooms point to concerns of academic dishonesty and skill atrophy. A scenario like Khan is describing, where agents learn deeply about students’ personalities and skills, also opens up privacy and security concerns.
Though parents may have “legitimate fears” that children could outsource their learning to AI, Khan said that even if the tech rapidly develops into a highly capable presence in the classroom, he doesn’t believe it could fully take over for human educators. As AI continues to advance, social skills will become more important than ever, he said — and so will the teachers that help impart them.
“It’s honestly the main reason why a lot of parents, including myself, feel the need to send their kids to a physical school with other kids, with a social environment, etc.,” he said.
As the “human being in the room,” teachers will take on responsibilities that AI just can’t — like holding students accountable and developing “person-to-person” connections, he added.
“What happens in school, we often focus a lot on just the standards: Can kids factor a polynomial? Can they grammatically correct a sentence?” he said. “Those skills matter, but to some degree, the more important skills are: Can you deal with conflict? Can you be held accountable? Can you communicate? Can you know how to navigate social pressures?”
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