Eureka Labs an AI-Native School

Just saw this news about Andrej Karpathy, one of the founding members of OpenAI, launching Eureka Labs, a new kind of "AI-native" school. This school uses AI to boost learning with hyper-personalized lessons and advanced AI tutors.

Karpathy announced, "We're Eureka Labs, building a new kind of school that's AI native. Imagine learning physics with Feynman guiding you every step of the way. Real-life subject experts who are passionate, great at teaching, infinitely patient, and fluent in all languages are rare. They can't personally tutor all 8 billion of us.

But with generative AI advancements, this ideal learning experience seems possible. Teachers will design course materials, supported by AI Teaching Assistants who help guide students. This Teacher + AI combo could run a full curriculum on one platform. If we're successful, learning anything will be easy, reaching more people and allowing anyone to learn more subjects than they could today.

Our first product is the world's best AI course, LLM101n. It's an undergrad-level class that guides students in training their own AI, like a smaller version of our AI Teaching Assistant. The materials will be online, and we'll run both digital and physical cohorts.

We're currently focused on building LLM101n but look forward to a future where AI is key to increasing human potential. What would you like to learn?"

Karpathy also shared his passion for AI and education, which started with YouTube tutorials and led to starting CS231n at Stanford. His work in AI has included roles at Tesla and OpenAI, and he's now excited to focus on building Eureka Labs full-time."

Thoughts on AI in Education

I've always thought chatbots were excellent for the task of learning things. Provided hallucinations can be eliminated, being able to interact with your 'textbook', basically asking questions at any point any time you want, and the most stupid, embarrassing questions at that, is super valuable. It saves a lot of time and effort spent on trying to find the answers to your particular questions online or waiting for an opportunity to ask a professional teacher or tutor.

There is a particularly high probability of job disruption here. Sure, talented teachers will always find their place in the world, but the overwhelming majority can be largely replaced by AI, or at least have their hours reduced. I don't think the transition would be abrupt, as in one day we just switch to AI learning and AI testing and lay off all the teachers. There will be pilot projects, easing in, and trying new approaches.

I, for one, am using chatbots to quickly learn things already. Particularly useful is their ability to explain complex things in simple language. I find it's always better to build complex concepts upon a simple foundational understanding of the thing. This is what is brought to us with LLMs. Not every teacher is good at this task, but chatbots are. They can explain complex things in simple language, making learning more accessible and effective.

They can also be fine-tuned and personalized, even today you can go ahead and manage ChatGPT's memory, where it can store knowledge about you to more efficiently serve you and tailor its responses to your preferences. An educational model, fine-tuned to remember what a given student might struggle with, and what learning style is best for them, could become very successful at its task.

I wish this was available when I went to school. Hell, we didn't even have YouTube, nor internet, to enhance our learning experience, we thought a study book with nice pictures was gold, because most were just text with very few illustrations, or vivid examples for that matter. 

Existing Educational Businesses Adapting

Smart existing companies are incorporating the new tech into their structures. I've always thought Duolingo was amazing, studied a bit of Spanish there. But now they're also offering Duolingo Max - a new top-tier subscription that uses GPT-4 to boost language learning with two new AI features: Explain My Answer and Roleplay.

'Explain My Answer' gives detailed feedback on your responses in lessons, whether you got them right or wrong. You can chat with Duo for more clarification and examples.

'Roleplay' lets you practice real-world conversation skills with in-app characters in different scenarios, like planning a trip or ordering coffee. The AI responds interactively and gives feedback on how accurate and complex your responses are.