Bill Gates believes AI chatbots “are on track to help children learn to read and hone their writing skills in 18 months time,” reports CNBC:Historically, teaching writing skills has proven to be an incredibly difficult task for a computer, Gates noted. When teachers give feedback on essays, they look for traits like narrative structure and clarity of prose — a “high-cognitive exercise” that’s “tough” for developers to replicate in code, he said. But AI chatbots’ ability to recognize and recreate human-like language changes that dynamic, proponents say…
AI technology must improve at reading and recreating human language to better motivate students before it can become a viable tutor, Gates said… It may take some time, but Gates is confident the technology will improve, likely within two years, he said. Then, it could help make private tutoring available to a wide swath of students who might otherwise be unable to afford it…
“This should be a leveler,” he said. “Because having access to 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.”
Gates isn’t the only billionaire thinking about how AI will affect education. Mark Cuban recently retweeted a prediction that GPT-4 “will revolutionize homeschooling.” (Slashdot).
