Hello Everyone,
We often talk about what Generative AI will do for coders, healthcare, science or even finance, but what about the benefits for the next generation? Permit me if you will, here I’m thinking about teachers and students.
It’s no secret that some of the most active users of ChatGPT in its heyday, were students. But how are other major tech firms thinking about this?
I actually think one of the best products with the highest ceiling from Google I/O 2024 is LearnLM. It has to be way more than a chatbot, it has to feel like a multimodal tutor. I can imagine frontier model agents (H) doing this fairly well.
What if everyone, everywhere could have their own personal AI tutor, on any topic? 💡
Google has been piloting new features in Google Classroom, powered by LearnLM, to help lighten the workload for teachers. Applying generative AI, they’re exploring how to help simplify the lesson planning process, empowering teachers to tailor lessons and content to the individual needs of their students so they can amplify their learning impact and meet students where they are.
LearnLM Video 1:22
I asked who is an incredible character of heart and mind and one of the best thought leaders on the impact of AI in education I know to delve deeper for us. Check out his viral article: ChatGPT4o Is the TikTok of AI Models.
👨🏻🏫 I’m trying to bring in more guest contributors who are experts in their field for the benefit of my readers. If you think this warrants support and also enables you to access more deep dives, feel free to support.
📶 From our sponsor: 📶
Join a 3-hour ChatGPT & AI Workshop by Growthschool (for $0)
Where you will learn:
Navigate 20+AI tools like Midjourney, Invideo, Humata, Claude AI, HeyGen and more
Research faster, save time, and automate your workflows
Do quick excel analysis, make AI-powered PPTs and build your own AI assistants
Please note: It’s free for the first 100 people & you will be asked for your Email + invited to a WhatsApp group, to schedule the free workshop.
The Big Four
Healthcare 🏥
Education 👨🏫
Science 🧪
Banking & Finance 💰
I’m always interested in how BigTech slowly moves into things like Healthcare, Banking, Education and Science, and these broad categories where technology improves the common experience for the average person in the world are important measure of AI for Good! Perhaps with GPT-4o, OpenAI becomes an Ed-Tech company in the end.
Of all the companies in the world, it’s Alphabet (Google) that has the most potential to innovate the impact of AI in healthcare and education, two areas which I think are the most important for global citizens at various stages of the human life cycle.
Learn about Google for Education
Learn about NotebookLM
Michael Webb on Google’s recent AI for Education Work.
👨🎓 What Makes LearnLM Different?
According to Diana Wolf: While other AI models like ChatGPT have demonstrated significant capabilities in language understanding, LearnLM goes several steps further:
Fine-Tuned for Education: LearnLM has been trained on a massive dataset of educational materials, making it uniquely equipped to understand the nuances of teaching and learning.
Personalized Learning: It has the potential to adapt to individual students’ needs, providing tailored explanations, feedback, and even curriculum suggestions.
More Than Just Words: LearnLM is being developed with multimodal capabilities, meaning it could eventually incorporate images, videos, and interactive elements to create richer learning experiences.
Does it really have potential? It may be too early to say. However, fine-tuned for learning and based on Gemini, Google is attempting to bring LearnLM to the classroom and real life use cases.
They are partnering with educators and other experts to improve these models and extend their reach to maximize their impact. So what do the teachers and professors really think?
I’m so bullish on LearnLM, I think Google should spin it off into an Ed-Tech startup.
Image by the Decoder.
🎓 What I’m reading by Nick
Deluge of Developments: The Recent AI Surge in Education
Quantify or Qualify? The Future of Assessment in the Age of AI
The Double Edge of ChatGPT’s Memory Function
Google Ed Suite
By May, 2024
Prelude
Last week’s announcements—OpenAI’s ChatGPT4o and Google I/O 2024—highlighted the competition between the companies for dominance in AI X Education. OpenAI offers an “omni-modal” chatbot now accessible without the exchange of personal data, while Google’s LearnLM promotes deep inquiry over immediate answers. The next several months will prove to be crucial for assessing the value of these two very different approaches.
Initial commentators have commended OpenAI for expanding access, but a few critics have raised questions about whether ChatGPT4o has become less safe and secure. Google’s products, on first inspection, seem more in tune with the broader educational community’s values. However, Google’s focus on source synthesis and tutorial agents leaves many K-12 educators still struggling with issues related to curriculum design, assessment, and academic integrity without sufficient support.
This outcome of this competition will profoundly impact how educators implement AI into today’s classrooms and in generations to come. As we review new tools and offers, we need to reflect on deep-think questions like the following:
How do we define the concept of learning in the 3rd Age of AI?
What do we want students to interact with AI learning tools?
How should the use of AI in education differ according to various developmental stages?
___________________________________________________________________________
1. Google I/O 2024
The day after ChatGPT4o was launched, Google presented its most detailed AI marketplace strategy during its I/O 2024 developers conference. At this event, the company introduced over 100 new products and applications. CEO Sundar Pichai dedicated his presentation solely to software advancements, with a special focus on Google’s AI large language model, Gemini.
Youtube: Google Keynote (Google I/O ‘24)
Gemini is the driving force behind a new suite of products. During the conference, Pichai unveiled new photo applications, AI entities known as “Gems,” and enhancements to Gmail, just to name a few new products. And yet, the most visionary aspect of his talk–one might argue, its ethical center—emphasized Google for Education and LearnLM.
On the same day of the event, Google released a 86-page technical report titled “Towards Responsible Development of Generative AI for Education: An Evaluation-Driven Approach.” detailing a specialized category of AI models known as LearnLM, which Google is tailoring to “optimize gen AI for educational use cases.”
After an extensive process of surveys, interviews, and interactions with educators, researchers, and students, Google has determined that generative AI tools need to push students’ cognitive horizons, not simply answer their questions. The desired functionalities for all LearnLM AIs, as outlined by the report, include:
____________________________________________________________________________
2. How Does LearnLM Work:
Avoid prematurely revealing solutions, instead motivating learners to discover answers themselves.
Simplify explanations, for instance, by relating concepts to real-world scenarios.
Foster a supportive atmosphere, celebrating learners’ progress and framing mistakes as opportunities for growth.
Proactively identify when learners are facing difficulties and initiate support.
Pose questions to gauge learners’ comprehension and areas of confusion.
Provide detailed, step-by-step explanations to help learners understand thought processes.
: Youtube: “Empowering Every Teacher to Reach Every Student with LearnLM”
Nick’s Takeaways:
Distinct Educational AI Approaches: Google’s strategy for educational AI diverges significantly from OpenAI’s strategy, which remains focused on general application tools. LearnLM is designed to stimulate student thinking, while ChatGPT4o is designed to cater to student preferences.
Delayed Launch into Educational AI: In the report, Google refers to LearnLM as the “first steps” towards tailoring generative AI for educational purposes. This prompts the question: why has it taken so long to initiate these developments?
____________________________________________________________________________
3. How Can Teachers and Students Utilize LearnLM?
Google will soon fully integrate LearnLM into various platforms and applications. Teachers and students will be able to choose the LearnLM option to get a distinctive kind of chat experience that motivates the user to discover the answers for themselves.
Google Search: Users can soon customize AI overviews for easier understanding of complex topics, adjusting the language or detail level.
Circle to Search on Android: This feature will expand to allow solving of complex mathematical and scientific problems, including those involving diagrams and graphs.
Gemini and Gems: The Gemini AI will introduce “Gems,” customized modules like the Learning Coach, which provides guided study, quizzes, and games. These will be further customizable with Gemini Advanced, launching soon.
YouTube: A new conversational AI feature will enable viewers to interact with educational videos, asking questions or taking quizzes directly, leveraging Gemini’s long-context capabilities. This is currently rolling out to select U.S. Android users.
Nick’s Takeaways:
Educational AI Agents: The announcement of Gems is quite thrilling. The capability to create instructional chatbots that adhere to LearnLM’s design principles will be a significant addition to classroom routines.
AI Agent Market Share: Clearly, the introduction of Gems represents Google’s attempt to enter the AI agent market..
____________________________________________________________________________
4. What Other LearnLM Products Will Soon Be Released?
Status: Currently in development; not yet publicly available.
Functionality: Converts research papers into brief audio discussions.
Features: Generates dialogues between two AI voices to summarize complex research quickly.
Upcoming Enhancements: Soon to include the ability to ask follow-up questions.
Participation: To access existing audio summaries or join the waitlist for creating your own, visit Labs.google.
Status: Under development with a call for early testers.
Purpose: Transforms information into understanding by integrating high-quality content with learning science and chat features.
Interactivity: Guides users through topics at their own pace using images, videos, webpages, and activities.
Additional Features: Allows users to upload documents or notes and request detailed explanations.
Early Testing: Register at the designated platform to become an early tester.
Nick’s Takeaways:
Gen AI as Content Engager: AI tools in education focused on content engagement might over-assist students, potentially deepening the “reading” crisis as Marc Watkins describes it at his Rhetorica Substack. The long-term impact of LearnAI’s inquiry-based approach is yet to be determined.
Second-Order Concerns for K-12: Currently, K-12 education primarily concentrates on challenges related to AI training, curriculum design, assessment, and academic integrity. Although LearnLM is an exciting development, it addresses these fundamental issues in K-12 only indirectly.
____________________________________________________________________________
What LearnLM Products Are Already Available?
Status: Publicly available.
Functionality: Centralizes research materials into a digital notebook, enhancing information management.
Features: Acts as a virtual assistant, quickly responding to queries and sourcing references from uploaded documents.
Upcoming Enhancements: Plans to improve processing of complex formats like multi-column layouts and tables.
Participation: Visit Labs.google for more details or to use NotebookLM, designed to revolutionize research management for students, academics, and professionals.
Nick’s Takeaways
Google’s University-First Approach: Google’s initial LearnLM tools excel at synthesizing large amounts of data and media, making them ideal for universities. While higher education may be ready for advanced, AI iterative learning cycles, K-12 may require different approaches and tools.
Definitely Not Khanmigo: Last summer, Khan Academy and OpenAI collaborated to launch Khamigo, an AI instructional platform featuring a Socratic chatbot. Although the concept was promising, practical use exposed limitations in the inquiry process after just a few chat interactions. However, my recent experiments with the LearnLM algorithm suggest it offers a more robust approach to inquiry-based learning. Educators have good reason to be excited about these advancements.
____________________________________________________________________________
6. What Special Offerings Does Google Have for Teachers?
Over the weekend, Shantanu Sinha, VP & GM at Google for Education, announced on LinkedIn the rollout of Gemini for Google for Education customers.
Here are the key updates:
This launch enhances Google’s educational tools, offering educators advanced resources to improve their workflows.
Nick’s Takeaways:
Catching Up with the Competition: Microsoft has offered similar protection for Education users of CoPilot/ChatGPT since December of 2023. To parse the wording here, your institution must be actively using Google Classroom and related products for a teacher to take advantage. Buying into these protections in both Microsoft and Google workspaces is prohibitively expensive for the individual.
___________________________________________________________________________
7. Final Word:
Google is making notable strides in AI x Education with a focus on advanced tutoring systems that leverage large data sets and offer students diverse, inquiry-based, multi-modal experiences. Powered by a specially designed AI, LearnLM, the future does look promising for Google Education.
However, it is notable that very few actual products have been released up to this point. Moreover, the launch of ChatGPT4o, now freely available to all users, seems to cast a shadow over these potential advances, raising questions about the appeal and market readiness of Google’s products.
Why would students opt for a chatbot that offers more obstacles over one that is easy to work with and anticipates their wants and needs that is universally accessible?
These are critical questions that Sundar Pichai and his team need to address in the coming months before the new school year begins–and quickly.
_________________________________________________________________________
For more interesting conversations about AI x Education, check out my Substack, Educating AI.
I am always excited to hear from my readers. Send me a message. I love to connect on Substack or on Linkedin.
I love to appear on podcasts, write guest posts, and collaborate on interesting projects. I am also available for keynotes, conferences, trainings, and school/individual consultations.
Remember, the journey to understanding AI is an ongoing process. Through sustained dialogue, we can forge the best practices for integrating AI into our current classrooms.
, May, 2024.
Read More in AI Supremacy
