Microsoft founder Bill Gates believes that the AI revolution is disrupting the education industry, but now the chances of success in edtech are only 2 in 1000.
On April 19, Gates spoke with Jessie Woolley-Wilson, CEO of DreamBox, a global edtech unicorn, at the ASU GSV Summit on edTech.
Gates believes that the flood of money pouring into the edtech industry will drive change in the space and help achieve educational equity, but investors should be prepared to fail:
Continued breakthroughs in AI will undoubtedly disrupt the field of education, and educational equity is not far away, but this does not mean that investors should enter blindly.
For now, many of the key developments are happening at the platform level, relying heavily on breakthroughs from Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI.
AI will enable equity in education
First, Jessie Woolley-Wilson took aim at educational equity, mentioning Gates' educational experience.
Woolley-Wilson points out that Gates' exposure to computers before most people and a good education set him up for later success.
Equity in education has become a matter of great importance for countries, if all children are guaranteed access to quality education?
Gates noted in the conversation that he believes the emergence of AI will eventually make education more equitable:
Most students cannot afford one-on-one private tutoring, making individual needs not well met, and the development of artificial intelligence will fill this gap.
Gates mentioned the creation of a GPT-4-powered AI assistant by Khan Academy, a well-known educational platform, Khanmigo.
Khanmigo is a non-profit organization that aims to provide free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. It can be used as a virtual tutor for students and as a classroom assistant for teachers to discuss and learn with students.
Gates recalls that at first, he was shocked by how ChatGPT helped scholars in the field of reading and writing:
Historically, providing high-quality feedback on writing has been a technical challenge, but now with the advent of large language models and generative artificial intelligence, that is changing.
But in mathematics, AI still falls short, and Gates index, AI systems like ChatGPT are not as strong in mathematics:
"We see the magic that the software is now working on reading and writing, and we believe that in the next 18 months, the shortcomings in mathematics will also be improved, and there will be breakthroughs in education."
Edtech startups still face significant challenges
While Gates believes that the future of technology will disrupt education, he warns that investors who want to enter the edtech space now need to think twice.
Gates believes that "the number of failed startups in the edtech space at this stage will be staggering" and investors need to look further:
Many of the key advances are happening at the platform level, relying heavily on future scale and computing power such as Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI.
"There may be some [startups or other new ventures] that completely surprise everyone and become the next Google or Microsoft based on their technological breakthroughs in AI," he said. "But I assure you, it won't be more than two thousandths. To be honest, in terms of the underlying technology, the probability is probably zero. ”