AI chatbots will be teaching reading and writing in 18 months, predicts Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Artificial intelligence will be "as good a tutor as any human ever could," Gates said in a keynote talk at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego last week, reports Tom Huddleston Jr. for CNBC.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard are improving rapidly. At first, AI will coach students on reading and give students feedback on their writing, Gates said. Math tutoring will come later.
Gates hopes AI will make personalized tutoring available and affordable to more students. “This should be a leveler,” he said. “A tutor is too expensive for most students — especially having that tutor adapt and remember everything that you’ve done and look across your entire body of work.”
Hechinger's Jill Barshay sums up the latest research on combining educational technology with human tutors to lower the cost of tutoring.
In the past, ed tech has been underwhelming, she writes. It's hard to motivate students -- especially the ones farthest behind -- to use the technology. Many are burned out on screens and hungry for human-to-human interaction.