--- title: "Silicon Valley Private School Giving Kids “AI Tutors” Quietly Created by OpenAI" description: "OpenAI teamed up with Khan Academy creator Salman Khan to create an AI-powered chatbot tutor for Khan's schools, debuting it last week." date: "2023-04-03" modified: "2023-04-03" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/silicon-valley-school-ai-tutors-openai" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "OpenAI" tags: - "chatbot" - "chatgpt" - "OpenAI" - "the digest" --- # Silicon Valley Private School Giving Kids “AI Tutors” Quietly Created by OpenAI ![OpenAI teamed up with Khan Academy creator Salman Khan to create an AI-powered chatbot tutor for Khan's schools, debuting it last week.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* ## Wrath of Khan Would you trust OpenAI's ChatGPT to help teach your kids? You might be inclined to say "no." There's a wealth of evidence out there demonstrating that ChatGPT and other chatbots can [frequently get the facts wrong]() and [make plagiarizing all too easy](). But a Silicon Valley private school called Khan Lab School thinks differently. Enter its newly unveiled, AI-powered tutor called "Khanmigo," quietly created with the help of OpenAI, the [*Washington Post* reports](). "I'm still pretty new, so I sometimes make mistakes," Khanmigo told a student in a pop-up window, according to the newspaper. "If you catch me making a mistake... press the thumbs down." ## Student Input Many chatbots, especially those that augment search engines like [Bing](), are meant to come up with answers. The goal with Khanmigo is instead to *lead* kids to answers, more of "a thoughtful tutor that's actually going to move you forward in your work," Salman Khan, the founder of Khan Academy and its off-shoot Khan Lab School, told *WaPo*. Julia Doscher, a teacher at the school, said she expected her elementary students to ask Khanmigo more "silly" questions when it was unveiled. She was pleasantly surprised to find that many of them were quite serious and focused on math. Though Doscher cautioned that it could slow students down if they relied on asking it questions too often, the upside of that same coin is that the students asked Khanmigo more questions than what they might have out loud. That could prove either invaluable or a crutch to students too shy or too embarrassed to ask for further help. It's early days, though, and clearly Khanmigo has some ironing out to do, per the precocious students using it. "It gives more detailed description than I would have run through in my head or write on paper, which can be helpful, or it can be annoying," opined Neil Siginatchu, an eight-year-old boy. "Because if it's too detailed... it's a lot to read and if I don't need it, it's just excessive." ## Safety First That's all well and good, but the ultimate barrier to getting Khanmigo accepted by parents and educators is its safety. You probably don't want an AI telling an impressionable child that [doing drugs is awesome](), nevermind [spouting hate speech](). Khan says his team spent thousands of hours putting in stronger guardrails than ChatGPT's, allowing educators to monitor the input of students using it as well as flagging swear words and other concerning content. "Parents for the most part are pretty excited about it," Khan said. "Most people see the power here, they just want reasonable guardrails." Still, the jury's out on whether this will prove to be an optimal way of educating a child to be critical, thoughtful, and curious — or if it will simply end grooming them to be a so-called "[prompt engineer]()." **More on AI:** *[Lord Help Us After They Hooked ChatGPT Up to a Furby]()* ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()