Back in April of 2023, Sal Khan (founder of Khan Academy) did a TED talk with a timely title: How AI Could Save (Not Destroy) Education. It was near the start of what would soon become a full-blown debate about the role of AI in schools, whether kids are stunting their learning and intellect by using generative AI and what the future will look like if kids increasingly allow tools to do all their thinking. In this book, which was our pick for the Most Important Book of 2024 in the recent Non-Obvious Book Awards, Khan lays out his more optimistic vision for how AI could become a personalized tutor for students allowing anyone to have custom instruction available on demand anywhere in the world.
The book is not filled with wide-eyed hopes for an unlikely future though. Instead, Khan dives into some of the earliest trials and beta testing that his team has been doing for several years now already to help shape AI into the positive educational force it could be. Reading this book, you may be left with the same conclusion as me: if we are going to live in a future where AI offers more positive change, it will require people like Khan and his team remaining on the front lines to guide the technologists towards what they should do instead of letting them blindly chase what they can do.
About the Non-Obvious Book Selection of the Week:
Every week I will be featuring a new “non-obvious” book selection worth sharing. Titles featured here may be new or from the backlist, but the date of publication doesn’t really matter. My goal is to elevate great books that perhaps deserve a second look which you might have otherwise missed.
