Traditional education is restricted to a curriculum lead in a classroom setting filled with mundane day to day schedules for students. Limited to what their teacher is prescribed to teach, and what the faculty is given permission to teach can feel tough for students wanting to pursue their own education. Intelligent tutors are changing all of that.
Is there a better way to learn than the traditional education systems we have today? According to Mark Andreesen from the Lex Fridman podcast, there is.
"Intelligence can be increased with the use of AI systems such as Chat-GPT. Let's say a student with an IQ of 110 is conversing with a tutor that has say an IQ of 140, well in that case, we could certainly say that student is going to improve their horizons by learning from someone or something more knowledgeable than they are. As these AI systems improve, to say an IQ of 150, 160 (the same level as Einstein) then we can see their economic and lifestyle improving enormously compared to traditional education systems can give them." (Summarized in my own words)
This is astronomical! Just imagine having the world's brightest educators being right at your fingertips to give you an education directed towards your interests and giving you the opportunity to discover further topics that are geared towards your current level of knowledge. Expanding upon what you know and what you can and will know, is going to have huge ramifications for every student around the world. You will have instant feedback and be able to improve upon your base knowledge.
Students will be able to get generated studying material to help them understand what needs to be expounded upon and what should be rehashed to get the learning material to stick. Currently, we can say many students in the U.S. and around the world need better education solutions that are tailored towards their level of learning. Some students are more advanced than others, while other lag behind their peers. Artificial intelligence systems can provide the necessary legwork for these students at a moment's notice, without the high tutoring fees required by human agents.
In the future we'll see Chat-GPT, Bing AI, Google Bard, Meta's LLAMA, and many other large language models providing these personalized study sessions with greater details. We can image a world with interactive games and quizzes coming into fruition, along the same line as Brilliant's model for math and science, or as a language learning system on par or better than the likes of Duolingo or Rosetta Stone just to name a couple world-renowned learning systems. And better yet, the student can customize these games and quizzes with further prompting for an RPG-like system where they can level up or be given a reward system for these educational pursuits to further motivate learning.
Of course, we have to look at the limitations with the current large language models available as of this time. Not all of the information provided is correct as LLMs can be prone to hallucination and required fact-checking on the user's end. They are also unable to provide full-scale education solutions as may be seen in the traditional classroom, such as lectures, assignments, and quizzes to assess what the student has learned over their time in the class or course.
Nevertheless, the limitations are easily going to be solved as time moves further along. We readily see DALL-E and other media solutions creating on-the-fly images, videos, and audio generated with a user's prompt. This can readily fit into the student's learning plan if an all-in-one integration is created for education. We may also see a specially tailored modeled created for education with which Khan Academy is trying to do as of this time. Could Khan Academy be the solution for at-home learners or the curious to generate dividends in their educational pursuits? As of this time, we cannot say with a definitive "Yes" as it is not able to fit into a student's custom interests outside of what Khan Academy has already created. This could all change in the future if Khan Academy is willing to allow their artificial intelligence model to become an open-ended and custom-prompted agent.
Traditional education is restricted to what can be taught by the teacher by their knowledge base, and institutional restrictions. These limitations should not hold students back from exploring the world around them and giving interest to their ideas. All of us are capable of great success if given the opportunity. While artificial intelligence models have given rise to a level of panic in academia (rightfully so), the incorporation of these models into traditional education can greatly enhance the learning experience. From my own experience as a former college student, I can see why students fall asleep at 8AM math lectures, and then in a later class, find themselves completely fascinated by a riveting art history lecture. We know the importance of STEM education, but in all truth the way lecturers can drabble on about something they have no interest in teaching can be well, a drag for students.
Let the systems do what they are best at: catering to the desires and needs of the student within the context of conversing with these large language models. The intelligent tutor is here to stay, becoming further advanced as the future continues onward.
Intelligent tutors are the future of education and when we'll see an all-encompassing solution utilizing multimedia and text seamlessly is in the near future. Keep exploring and keep building your future. Education is the key to all you desire.