In his latest book, titled “2041,” Chinese author Kai-Fu Lee explores the impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI) through short stories that depict people’s lives in the year 2041. After each story, he analyzes the AI technologies involved in the scenarios described.

Chapter 3 is about education and tells the story of two twins who are very different from one another and who attend a school that provides each student with a personalized, intelligent tutor (an AI bot ). 

The virtual tutor is created based on each student’s profile and is designed to monitor learning levels and suggest strategies for overcoming academic and even social challenges. In the book, each virtual tutor is given a name and unique characteristics, and—with guidance from educators and parents—becomes an important part of each sibling’s development.

We probably won't have to wait until 2041 for fiction to become reality. Recently, Khan Academy announced the creation of its AI-powered assistant and tutor called "Khanmigo." Still in the testing phase, Khanmigo will serve both as an assistant to teachers in lesson planning and as a one-on-one tutor for students.

This type of technology offers solutions to an educational problem that, until now, seemed impossible to solve on a large scale: individualized tutoring. In 1984, psychologist Benjamin Bloom published a study that became known among researchers as the “2-sigma problem.” 

The study shows that students who receive individualized tutoring achieve significantly higher levels of learning (+2 standard deviations) than those taught in a classroom with one teacher and 30 students. The problem lies in the demand for professionals and the high cost of providing tutoring on a large scale. Tutoring is often a privilege that few students can access.

As early as the 1980s, Bloom envisioned that technology could provide solutions to this problem. But he would be surprised by recent advances in Artificial Intelligence, which have made it possible to create robots (bots) capable of identifying and proposing personalized learning strategies for each student. In doing so, they can act as virtual assistants to teachers, helping them create learning experiences that integrate individual and group activities and meet the needs of all their students.

Artificial Intelligence will certainly enable other important solutions to ensure quality and equity in education. But the possibility of providing an intelligent tutor—one that complements and enhances the work of teachers—is undoubtedly an extraordinary contribution. Our commitment must be to ensure that students have access to technology so that individualized tutoring is transformed from a privilege into a right to learning.

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*This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bett Brasil.

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