Chancellor’s Colloquium With Sal Khan

Watch Chancellor’s Colloquium with Sal Khan

For his next colloquium, Chancellor Gary S. May will speak to Sal Khan, the founder and CEO of Khan Academy and an online educator who has become a leading voice in discussions about how AI should be used in education.

Khan got his start in online education by creating tutoring videos for friends and family, but when they gained popularity online he left his job as a hedge fund analyst and formed Khan Academy. The nonprofit, incorporated in 2008, now provides free courses in math, writing, SAT prep and more.    

In recent years, Khan has focused on the disruption AI will have on the economy and in education, and published the book Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing) in 2024.

May and Khan will speak virtually on April 6 as part of the Chancellor’s Colloquium Distinguished Speaker Series, and attendees are encouraged to submit questions before the event. The event is free and open to all.

AI as a teaching assistant

Khan argues that AI can finally address something educators have known for decades: that students learn most effectively in a one-on-one setting. He said in a 2023 TED Talk that allowing students individual access to AI can help them perform better in the classroom.

In that same talk, Khan demonstrated Khan Academy’s AI tutor, which takes the form of a chatbot students can ask for help. Khan stressed it won’t just give students answers: instead, the chatbot is designed to ask struggling students how they arrived at an answer, then show the correct method. 

He has also argued that teachers shouldn’t be replaced by AI, saying another of the technology’s benefits could be to give educators more time back for one-on-one interaction with students.

“I’ve always said if I had to pick between an amazing teacher and amazing technology for myself or my own kids I would pick an amazing teacher every time,” he said in an event last year at the Computer History Museum.

That same year, Khan told NBC News that his greatest memories of teachers were times they spent individual time with him, and said technology might “take some things off their plate” to allow for more interactions like that.

He argues teachers will always have value.

“In a time when many worry about AI replacing jobs, teaching may be one of the most resilient professions because it thrives on what no machine can replicate: trust, encouragement and connection,” Khan wrote in a Newsweek op-ed a few months later.

A coming need for retraining

But even though Khan is optimistic about the impact AI will have in some fields, he doesn’t think it will be a positive in all areas. 

“In the coming years, AI and robotics are likely to significantly reduce the level of human labor needed in occupations as diverse as warehouse work and software engineering,” Khan wrote in a New York Times op-ed in December. “We’ve seen economic displacement caused by globalization and immigration lead to frustration and division. The next wave, fueled by automation, will hit faster and cut deeper.”

In that op-ed, Khan argued that businesses that benefit from AI and automation should set aside a portion of their profits to retrain workers who have been laid off. He said free access to education could help them find new professions.

“The threat of artificial intelligence doesn’t only present a job crisis. It creates an education challenge,” Khan wrote. “The problem isn’t that people can’t work. It’s that we haven’t built systems to help them continue learning and connect them to new opportunities as the world changes rapidly.”