When Satya Nitta worked at IBM, he and a team of colleagues took on a bold assignment: Use the latest in artificial intelligence to build a new kind of personal digital tutor.
This was before ChatGPT existed, and fewer people were talking about the wonders of AI. But Nitta was working with what was perhaps the highest-profile AI system at the time, IBMs Watson. That AI tool had pulled off some big wins, including beating humans on the Jeopardy quiz show in 2011.
Nitta says he was optimistic that Watson could power a generalized tutor, but he knew the task would be extremely difficult. I remember telling IBM top brass that this is going to be a 25-year journey, he recently told EdSurge.
He says his team spent about five years trying, and along the way they helped build some small-scale attempts into learning products, such as a pilot chatbot assistant that was part of a Pearson online psychology courseware system in 2018.
But in the end, Nitta decided that even though the generative AI technology driving excitement these days brings new capabilities that will change education and other fields, the tech just isnt up to delivering on becoming a generalized personal tutor, and wont be for decades at least, if ever.
Well have flying cars before we will have AI tutors, he says. It is a deeply human process that AI is hopelessly incapable of meeting in a meaningful way. Its like being a therapist or like being a nurse.
Instead, he co-founded a new AI company, called Merlyn Mind, that is building other types of AI-powered tools for educators.
Meanwhile, plenty of companies and education leaders these days are hard at work chasing that dream of building AI tutors. Even a recent White House executive order seeks to help the cause.
Earlier this month, Sal Khan, leader of the nonprofit Khan Academy, told the New York Times: Were at the cusp of using A.I. for probably the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen. And the way were going to do that is by giving every student on the planet an artificially intelligent but amazing personal tutor.
Khan Academy has been one of the first organizations to use ChatGPT to try to develop such a tutor, which it calls Khanmigo, that is currently in a pilot phase in a series of schools.
Khans system does come with an off-putting warning, though, noting that it makes mistakes sometimes. The warning is necessary because all of the latest AI chatbots suffer from what are known as hallucinations the word used to describe situations when the chatbot simply fabricates details when it doesnt know the answer to a question asked by a user.
AI experts are busy trying to offset the hallucination problem, and one of the most promising approaches so far is to bring in a separate AI chatbot to check the results of a system like ChatGPT to see if it has likely made up details. Thats what researchers at Georgia Tech have been trying, for instance, hoping that their muti-chatbot system can get to the point where any false information is scrubbed from an answer before it is shown to a student. But its not yet clear that approach can get to a level of accuracy that educators will accept.
At this critical point in the development of new AI tools, though, its useful to ask whether a chatbot tutor is the right goal for developers to head toward. Or is there a better metaphor than tutor for what generative AI can do to help students and teachers?
Michael Feldstein spends a lot of time experimenting with chatbots these days. Hes a longtime edtech consultant and blogger, and in the past he wasnt shy about calling out what he saw as excessive hype by companies selling edtech tools.
In 2015, he famously criticized promises about what was then the latest in AI for education a tool from a company called Knewton. The CEO of Knewton, Jose Ferreira, said his product would be like a robot tutor in the sky that can semi-read your mind and figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are, down to the percentile. Which led Feldstein to respond that the CEO was selling snake oil because, Feldstein argued, the tool was nowhere near to living up to that promise. (The assets of Knewton were quietly sold off a few years later.)
So what does Feldstein think of the latest promises by AI experts that effective tutors could be on the near horizon?
ChatGPT is definitely not snake oil far from it, he tells EdSurge. It is also not a robot tutor in the sky that can semi-read your mind. It has new capabilities, and we need to think about what kinds of tutoring functions todays tech can deliver that would be useful to students.
He does think tutoring is a useful way to view what ChatGPT and other new chatbots can do, though. And he says that comes from personal experience.
Feldstein has a relative who is battling a brain hemorrhage, and so Feldstein has been turning to ChatGPT to give him personal lessons in understanding the medical condition and his loved-ones prognosis. As Feldstein gets updates from friends and family on Facebook, he says, he asks questions in an ongoing thread in ChatGPT to try to better understand whats happening.
When I ask it in the right way, it can give me the right amount of detail about, What do we know today about her chances of being OK again? Feldstein says. Its not the same as talking to a doctor, but it has tutored me in meaningful ways about a serious subject and helped me become more educated on my relatives condition.
While Feldstein says he would call that a tutor, he argues that its still important that companies not oversell their AI tools. Weve done a disservice to say theyre these all-knowing boxes, or they will be in a few months, he says. Theyre tools. Theyre strange tools. They misbehave in strange ways as do people.
He points out that even human tutors can make mistakes, but most students have a sense of what theyre getting into when they make an appointment with a human tutor.
When you go into a tutoring center in your college, they dont know everything. You dont know how trained they are. Theres a chance they may tell you something thats wrong. But you go in and get the help that you can.
Whatever you call these new AI tools, he says, it will be useful to have an always-on helper that you can ask questions to, even if their results are just a starting point for more learning.
What are new ways that generative AI tools can be used in education, if tutoring ends up not being the right fit?
To Nitta, the stronger role is to serve as an assistant to experts rather than a replacement for an expert tutor. In other words, instead of replacing, say, a therapist, he imagines that chatbots can help a human therapist summarize and organize notes from a session with a patient.
Thats a very helpful tool rather than an AI pretending to be a therapist, he says. Even though that may be seen as boring, by some, he argues that the technologys superpower is to automate things that humans dont like to do.
In the educational context, his company is building AI tools designed to help teachers, or to help human tutors, do their jobs better. To that end, Merlyn Mind has taken the unusual step of building its own so-called large language model from scratch designed for education.
Even then, he argues that the best results come when the model is tuned to support specific education domains, by being trained with vetted datasets rather than relying on ChatGPT and other mainstream tools that draw from vast amounts of information from the internet.
What does a human tutor do well? They know the student, and they provide human motivation, he adds. Were all about the AI augmenting the tutor.
Read more:
A Technologist Spent Years Building an AI Chatbot Tutor. He Decided It Cant Be Done. - EdSurge
- What is Artificial Intelligence? How Does AI Work? | Built In [Last Updated On: September 5th, 2019] [Originally Added On: September 5th, 2019]
- Artificial Intelligence What it is and why it matters | SAS [Last Updated On: September 5th, 2019] [Originally Added On: September 5th, 2019]
- artificial intelligence | Definition, Examples, and ... [Last Updated On: September 5th, 2019] [Originally Added On: September 5th, 2019]
- Benefits & Risks of Artificial Intelligence - Future of ... [Last Updated On: September 5th, 2019] [Originally Added On: September 5th, 2019]
- What is AI (artificial intelligence)? - Definition from ... [Last Updated On: September 11th, 2019] [Originally Added On: September 11th, 2019]
- What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)? ... - Techopedia [Last Updated On: September 13th, 2019] [Originally Added On: September 13th, 2019]
- 9 Powerful Examples of Artificial Intelligence in Use ... [Last Updated On: September 18th, 2019] [Originally Added On: September 18th, 2019]
- What's the Difference Between Robotics and Artificial ... [Last Updated On: September 18th, 2019] [Originally Added On: September 18th, 2019]
- The Impact of Artificial Intelligence - Widespread Job Losses [Last Updated On: September 18th, 2019] [Originally Added On: September 18th, 2019]
- Artificial Intelligence & the Pharma Industry: What's Next ... [Last Updated On: September 18th, 2019] [Originally Added On: September 18th, 2019]
- Artificial Intelligence | GE Research [Last Updated On: September 18th, 2019] [Originally Added On: September 18th, 2019]
- A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) - IMDb [Last Updated On: October 5th, 2019] [Originally Added On: October 5th, 2019]
- 10 Best Artificial Intelligence Course & Certification [2019 ... [Last Updated On: October 15th, 2019] [Originally Added On: October 15th, 2019]
- Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: the future is amazing ... [Last Updated On: October 15th, 2019] [Originally Added On: October 15th, 2019]
- Will Artificial Intelligence Help Resolve the Food Crisis? - Inter Press Service [Last Updated On: November 18th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 18th, 2019]
- Two-thirds of employees would trust a robot boss more than a real one - World Economic Forum [Last Updated On: November 18th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 18th, 2019]
- UofL partners with industry experts to launch Artificial Intelligence Innovation Consortium Lane Report | Kentucky Business & Economic News - The... [Last Updated On: November 18th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 18th, 2019]
- China Sees Surge of Edtech Investments With Focus on Artificial Intelligence - Karma [Last Updated On: November 18th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 18th, 2019]
- NIST researchers use artificial intelligence for quality control of stem cell-derived tissues - National Institutes of Health [Last Updated On: November 18th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 18th, 2019]
- Indiana University Touts Big Red 200 and Artificial Intelligence at SC19 - HPCwire [Last Updated On: November 18th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 18th, 2019]
- One way for the Pentagon to prove it's serious about artificial intelligence - C4ISRNet [Last Updated On: November 18th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 18th, 2019]
- Artificial Intelligence Will Enable the Future, Blockchain Will Secure It - Cointelegraph [Last Updated On: November 18th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 18th, 2019]
- Artificial intelligence has become a driving force in everyday life, says LivePerson CEO - CNBC [Last Updated On: November 18th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 18th, 2019]
- 4 Reasons to Use Artificial Intelligence in Your Next Embedded Design - DesignNews [Last Updated On: November 18th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 18th, 2019]
- Artificial Intelligence Essay - 966 Words | Bartleby [Last Updated On: November 18th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 18th, 2019]
- AI News: Track The Latest Artificial Intelligence Trends And ... [Last Updated On: November 18th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 18th, 2019]
- AI in contact centres: It's time to stop talking about artificial intelligence - Verdict [Last Updated On: November 20th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 20th, 2019]
- Newsrooms have five years to embrace artificial intelligence or they risk becoming irrelevant - Journalism.co.uk [Last Updated On: November 20th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 20th, 2019]
- Scientists used IBM Watson to discover an ancient humanoid stick figure - Business Insider [Last Updated On: November 20th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 20th, 2019]
- The Mark Foundation Funds Eight Projects at the Intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Cancer Research - BioSpace [Last Updated On: November 20th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 20th, 2019]
- Colorado at the forefront of AI and what it means for jobs of the future - The Denver Channel [Last Updated On: November 20th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 20th, 2019]
- Highlights: Addressing fairness in the context of artificial intelligence - Brookings Institution [Last Updated On: November 20th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 20th, 2019]
- Artificial intelligence won't kill journalism or save it, but the sooner newsrooms buy in, the better - Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard [Last Updated On: November 20th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 20th, 2019]
- How To Get Your Rsum Past The Artificial Intelligence Gatekeepers - Forbes [Last Updated On: November 20th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 20th, 2019]
- Epiq expands company-wide initiative to accelerate the deployment of artificial intelligence for clients globally - GlobeNewswire [Last Updated On: November 20th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 20th, 2019]
- Preparing the Military for a Role on an Artificial Intelligence Battlefield - The National Interest Online [Last Updated On: November 20th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 20th, 2019]
- Podcast decodes ethics in artificial intelligence and its relevance to public - Daily Bruin [Last Updated On: November 20th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 20th, 2019]
- Global Military Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Cybernetics Market Report, 2019-2024: Focus on Platforms, Technologies, Applications and Services -... [Last Updated On: November 20th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 20th, 2019]
- Artificial intelligence warning: Development of AI is comparable to nuclear bomb - Express.co.uk [Last Updated On: November 20th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 20th, 2019]
- Google's new study reveals 'Artificial Intelligence benefiting journalism' - Digital Information World [Last Updated On: November 23rd, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 23rd, 2019]
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Retail Market worth $15.3 billion by 2025 - Exclusive Report by Meticulous Research - GlobeNewswire [Last Updated On: November 23rd, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 23rd, 2019]
- With artificial intelligence to a better wood product - Newswise [Last Updated On: November 23rd, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 23rd, 2019]
- Report to Congress on Artificial Intelligence and National Security - USNI News [Last Updated On: November 23rd, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 23rd, 2019]
- Most plastic is not getting recycled, and AI robots could be a solution - Business Insider [Last Updated On: November 23rd, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 23rd, 2019]
- Fujifilm Showcases Artificial Intelligence Initiative And Advances AI - AiThority [Last Updated On: November 23rd, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 23rd, 2019]
- Artificial intelligence could be one of the most valuable tools mankind has built - here's one small but meani - Business Insider India [Last Updated On: November 23rd, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 23rd, 2019]
- Artificial Intelligence: A Need of Modern 'Intelligent' Education - Thrive Global [Last Updated On: November 23rd, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 23rd, 2019]
- Drones And Artificial Intelligence Help Combat The San Francisco Bays Trash Problem - Forbes [Last Updated On: November 23rd, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 23rd, 2019]
- DesignCon Expands Into Artificial Intelligence, Automotive, 5G, IoT, and More For 2020 Edition - I-Connect007 [Last Updated On: November 23rd, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 23rd, 2019]
- Is St. Louis ready for artificial intelligence? It will steal white-collar jobs here, too - STLtoday.com [Last Updated On: November 23rd, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 23rd, 2019]
- IT chiefs recognise the risks of artificial intelligence bias - ComputerWeekly.com [Last Updated On: November 23rd, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 23rd, 2019]
- PNNL researchers working to improve doctor-patient care through artificial intelligence - NBC Right Now [Last Updated On: November 28th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 28th, 2019]
- How Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence Are Helping Entrepreneurs Create a Better Customer Experience - CTOvision [Last Updated On: November 28th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 28th, 2019]
- Manufacturing Leaders' Summit: Realising the promise of Artificial Intelligence - Manufacturer.com [Last Updated On: November 28th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 28th, 2019]
- 2019 Artificial Intelligence in Precision Health - Dedication to Discuss & Analyze AI Products Related to Precision Healthcare Already Available -... [Last Updated On: November 28th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 28th, 2019]
- Artificial intelligence will affect Salt Lake, Ogden more than most areas in the nation, study shows - KSL.com [Last Updated On: November 28th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 28th, 2019]
- It Pays To Break Artificial Intelligence Out Of The Lab, Study Confirms - Forbes [Last Updated On: November 28th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 28th, 2019]
- The Best Artificial Intelligence Stocks of 2019 -- and The Top AI Stock for 2020 - The Motley Fool [Last Updated On: November 28th, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 28th, 2019]
- Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) Market Research Report 2019-2024 - Embedded AI in Support of IoT Things/Objects Will Reach $4.6B Globally by... [Last Updated On: December 1st, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 1st, 2019]
- How Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence Are Helping Entrepreneurs Create a Better Customer Experience - Entrepreneur [Last Updated On: December 1st, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 1st, 2019]
- SC Proposes Introduction Of Artificial Intelligence In Justice Delivery System - Inc42 Media [Last Updated On: December 1st, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 1st, 2019]
- Artificial intelligence in FX 'may be hype' - FX Week [Last Updated On: December 1st, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 1st, 2019]
- Fujifilm Showcases Artificial Intelligence Initiative And Advances at RSNA 2019 - Imaging Technology News [Last Updated On: December 1st, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 1st, 2019]
- The Surprising Way Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Transportation - Forbes [Last Updated On: December 1st, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 1st, 2019]
- Artificial Intelligence in 2020: The Architecture and the Infrastructure - Gigaom [Last Updated On: December 2nd, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 2nd, 2019]
- AI IN BANKING: Artificial intelligence could be a near $450 billion opportunity for banks - here are the strat - Business Insider India [Last Updated On: December 2nd, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 2nd, 2019]
- The impact of artificial intelligence on humans - Bangkok Post [Last Updated On: December 2nd, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 2nd, 2019]
- Should the EU embrace artificial intelligence, or fear it? - EURACTIV [Last Updated On: December 8th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 8th, 2019]
- BioSig Technologies Announces New Collaboration on Development of Artificial Intelligence Solutions in Healthcare - GlobeNewswire [Last Updated On: December 8th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 8th, 2019]
- Artificial intelligence-based fitness is promising but may not be for everyone - Livemint [Last Updated On: December 8th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 8th, 2019]
- Pondering the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Health Care Kansas City Experts Team Up on Emerging - Flatland [Last Updated On: December 8th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 8th, 2019]
- Baidu Leads the Way in Innovation with 5712 Artificial Intelligence Patent Applications - GlobeNewswire [Last Updated On: December 8th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 8th, 2019]
- Artificial Intelligence and National Security, and More from CRS - Secrecy News [Last Updated On: December 8th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 8th, 2019]
- Longer Looks: The Psychology Of Voting; Overexcited Neurons And Artificial Intelligence; And More - Kaiser Health News [Last Updated On: December 8th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 8th, 2019]
- Emotion Artificial Intelligence Market Business Opportunities and Forecast from 2019-2025 | Eyesight Technologies, Affectiva - The Connect Report [Last Updated On: December 8th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 8th, 2019]
- The next generation of user experience is artificially intelligent - ZDNet [Last Updated On: December 8th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 8th, 2019]
- What Jobs Will Artificial Intelligence Affect? - EHS Today [Last Updated On: December 8th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 8th, 2019]
- Will the next Mozart or Picasso come from artificial intelligence? No, but here's what might happen instead - Ladders [Last Updated On: December 8th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 8th, 2019]
- Artificial intelligence apps, Parkinsons and me - BBC News [Last Updated On: December 8th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 8th, 2019]
- VA launches National Artificial Intelligence Institute to drive research and development - FierceHealthcare [Last Updated On: December 8th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 8th, 2019]