Kristen DiCerbo

Despite persistent hype, educational technology (“EdTech”) has so far failed to live up to its promise of improving and democratizing education. Kristen DiCerbo, Khan Academy’s Chief Learning Officer, is cautiously optimistic that AI will be different.

The education nonprofit has developed an AI called “Khanmigo”, currently powered by GPT, that offers support for teachers, parents, and students across subjects and grades. In a conversation with TIME, Dicerbo, whose background is in educational psychology, emphasizes that the student-facing tool is better understood as a tutor than a teacher. It’s modeled on human tutors who know “when to ask questions, when to summarize information, when to probe for more [or] give a hint.’”

AI tutors enable students to engage in independent practice and receive immediate feedback—key components of learning—at scale. For teachers, they can assist with tasks like lesson-planning and analyzing student data. In partnership with Microsoft, Khan Academy made Khanmigo for Teachers free in 49 English-speaking countries. 

The ambition is for Khanmigo to save teachers time on administrative tasks while also improving educational outcomes. DiCerbo hopes to help at least 4 million students worldwide to increase their learning by at least 30% (versus what they would achieve without these tools) over the next five years. DiCerbo also thinks AI will allow teachers to assess things they’ve long wanted to, like teamwork. “You can imagine having a conversation with an AI that's part of your assessment of how you work with another tool or another person.”

Over the past year, they’ve run a pilot program in classrooms across the U.S., training teachers how to work with AI and learning how students use it. The results weren’t uniformly optimistic. They found that, as many teachers know, students are not always great at asking questions. “We saw in these chat transcripts that students…they just say, ‘idk’, ‘idk,’” DiCerbo says.

DiCerbo also contributed to the recent U.S. Department of Education guidelines for AI and EdTech developers. She hopes to not just develop Khanmigo, but also ensure EdTech is developed and used safely and responsibly.