hi everyone and welcome to in good company and today we are thrilled to have a bonus episode with Salan the Visionary founder of Khan Academy.

now we are a lot of people who have to thank KH for all his help with our homework and learning including uh on behalf of my own children so it's a pleasure to have you here you have really revolutionized education.

thanks for having me and and also Sally it's kind of fun to have uh somebody else on the bcast who has a a background in in a hedge fund because uh you're the first one actually oh yeah.

okay we're hedge fund refugees.

absolutely I just think it's such a lovely story the way you went from you know a hedge fund to starting Can Academy would you mind just recapping in a in a few words how you got started on this.

yeah you you go back to 2004 I was a year out of business school my original background was in tech but I go to business school I end up at a very small hedge fund in Boston a year out of business school.

I I'm get I Get Married in New Jersey I was born and raised in New Orleans my family comes for my wedding in New Jersey and then comes and spends time with me in Boston.

and just comes out of conversation that my 12-year-old cousin Nadia who was staying with us uh was having trouble in math.

so I offered to tutor her when she went back to New Orleans she agreed and the tutoring worked to a long story short.

and uh that same naadia who was struggling with unit conversion in seventh grade uh by that summer was taking calculus classes at the University of New Orleans.

uh so I started tutoring her younger brothers word spreads in my family- free tutoring is going on.

before I know it I'm tutoring 10 15 cousins family friends uh after work every day.

obviously this was just a hobby and I saw a common pattern that they were struggling because they had gaps in their knowledge they needed to review things they need to refresh things.

so in 2005 I started writing software for them once again it's a family hobby but I called it KH Academy.

and that software would give them practice problems and for me as their tutor to keep track of it it didn't have videos at the time.

then in 2006 a friend suggested Ed that I make YouTube videos from my cousins to help scale my lessons cuz I actually was having trouble scheduling with 10 15 cousins and I felt like I was repeating the same thing over and over again.

and so I started making those videos and my cousins famously told me that they like me better on YouTube than in person.

and what they were saying I think is uh they liked having an ond demand version there was no shame if they had to review something from a few years earlier they could watch it in the middle of the night if that's when they were working on the problems.

they still appreciated having me check in on them Etc.

and by 2008 2009 there were about 50 to 100,000 folks using the videos and the software.

I actually had to turn off the access to the software because it was overwhelming my web hosting uh.

and that's when I in 2008 I set it up as a nonprofit at the time I didn't think I was going to quit my hedge fund job I actually liked my hedge fund job uh.

but I set it up as a nonprofit with a mission free worldclass education for anyone anywhere.

and then by 2009 I had trouble focusing on my hedge fund job because it was I was getting letters from all over the world.

I was just waiting to get home to work on the next video or to write the next software module.

and so that's when I quit my day job my wife and I looked at our finances and we said okay maybe I could do this for a year live off of savings a bit um.

and that first year was tough whenever you try to start anything it's you you have a maybe delusionally optimistic view of maybe people will come and support it but it took a little while.

but by uh fall of 2010 we got our first significant uh philanthropic support.

amazing and fast forward to now how many people do you do you help.

oh well you know it depends how you account for it uh I think our registered users is 160 or 170 million registered users now.

I think if you counted it by You Know lesson views it's in the billions uh if you count it by learning minutes per year that's also in the on I think it's on the order of 10 10 billion.

but in the beginning um when you when it was um slower what kept you motivating motivated because I think it's interesting you know successful companies such as Nvidia uh you know nearly went under a few times spottify and nearly went under a few times what kept you motivated through all this.

just me being able to connect with my family and them being able to accelerate in math or make sure that they have confidence in science or whatever they're doing that was worth it for me very much worth it.

and um but once it started to getting out there and people who are not my cous cousin started using it and they started sending me notes that note was like my pickme up of the morning.

it still is we still get letters at Khan Academy.

and the thing that you know every I love my job but there's good days bad days and and but whenever I read those letters from people all over the world saying how you know.

some of them are just simple thank yous like hey you helped me pass this exam or that exam but some of them are pretty emotional where they're talking about how they had no self-esteem in some topic they you know people thought they were were dumb their whole life then they went some other career track or they joined this or that and then they found KH Academy.

and then they started working at their own time in Pace they discovered a a love for the subject and then they go back to college or now they're getting a PhD in something um.

when you get letters like that from people you don't know all over the world it's incredibly motivating.

and so that you know the hardest point was probably that year from Fall of 2009 to fall of 2010 where I had quit my day job we're digging into our savings my wife was still in training to be a doctor um our first child had been born.

you could imagine I had given up a very good job that was paying very well um.

that was you know three or four months into that it was very stressful and whenever I was tempted to you know re refresh my resume and apply for another Finance job I would look at these letters I was like no this it's something here.

and I I did tell myself if if I didn't get any real philanthropic funding in the next year I wouldn't give up the project I would go back to work so I could support myself and my family but I would keep working on it as a hobby um.

and maybe the the timing just wasn't right so I I did want to make it unkillable because I I I I felt in my heart of hearts that there was there was something there.

what when through your head when you were thinking okay I'm either going to work in a hedge fund make a lot of money or I'm going to start this philanthropic Venture and you know really help the world what what went through your head.

you know it's interesting when I um came out of B you know as as I mentioned I business school was a little bit of like what am I going to do with my lifetime and while there uh I I had never no I had no experience in finance before that um.

and once I was there I I took a class in Capital markets which was pretty math heavy uh.

but I was fascinated because it had a math aspect to it but it also had a very historical uh human psychological aspects to it you really have to understand how the world works.

and I remember asking the professor there hey I love this class what should I do and he's like oh you should work at a hedge fund.

and I said well that sounds great what's a hedge fund and you know we explain it's it's like a it's an investment firm but they have more flexibility and they can do more creative things than say a mutual fund um.

and so I I was drawn to that career because of the intellectual Journey that it seemed to have and I was so naive I started asking some friends in finance I said hey do hedge funds pay well and they said yeah I said about how much and um.

once I learned that and I had I still had some debt from undergrad and then I had about $120,000 of debt from business school I said you know I did not grow up I I think you know my family I grew up in a single mother household at best I would call us a lower middle class at best.

and it was intellectually stimulating so that's what drove me down the hedge fund path.

but my my wife at that time my fiance always used to give me a little bit of grief about it she's like you know people like you you're you you have this education you have all of these skills and you're just using it to make in to make investments.

I was like well you know the head world needs hedge funds it helps price Discovery and liquidity and all this kind.

well I'll tell you I'll tell you s I've heard I've heard exactly the same thing um but I'm I'm I'm I'm really glad you saw the light.

now when did you realize that this was really going to be big.

we all remember or many of us remember what was happening in um 2008 and 2009 uh you have the financial crisis.

and I was already making videos from my cousins on algebra and physics and SAT prep.

and then I saw that people were not did not understand the difference between um insolvency and illiquidity they did not understand what a credit default swap is or what a mortgage back sec security.

and these things that historically were kind of exotic things that people in High Finance would know we now on the headlines on on in the newspaper or on the news.

and so I started making videos on how does a Federal Reserve work what does a financial contagion look like um what's a mortgage back security credit default swap etc etc.

and um it turns out that the mainstream press I started getting letters from the the mainstream Outlet saying hey we're watching your videos before we're reporting on the financial crisis.

and then they the first National publicity or International publicity that Khan Academy got had nothing to do with academic subjects it was CNN brought me on to talk about the financial crisis for 15 minutes straight on the day that I think you know the market tanked by like 4% that day or 5% uh.

but that was a signal that to me that look though even though what I was you know now it's become mainstream for people to do something on YouTube and to get a lot of attention and even make a living in 2008 2009 that was not a mainstream thing as especially because I wasn't doing dance videos I was doing fairly you know I was explaining credit default swaps um.

but that you know when you get that type of attention for it I was like okay there's something here.

and then that helped bring even more attention and Word of Mouth to what was happening on the math and the science and and all the other subjects we were doing.

but there's something with this tutoring this uh kind of detail help that you talk about as the two Sigma well two Sigma problem but also to Sigma opportunity what what exactly do you mean by that.

yeah well I think people have always intuitively thought that hey the best education is going to come if you have a lot of attention if you have a one-on-one tutor or if you even have an army of tutors.

you if we think about throughout history what what princes and and kings and and future Emperors got as their education they did not sit in a class of 30 students and someone did not just lecture to them and every now and then they took a test and if they happen to fail the test the class just moves on to the next subject.

young Alexander the Great he wasn't Alexander the Great at that time um and I guess it's debatable whether he was great at this point but you know young Alexander back uh what 300 something BC um he his tutor was Aristotle uh.

and I am guessing that if you know Aristotle said okay this this kid's going to be Emperor one day if if he's struggling with military strategy I'm not just going to give him a c and move on.

I'm gonna work with him and make sure he understands military strategy if he's struggling with the accounting for the for the for the nation or for the Empire uh he needs to understand that in order for him to govern uh for his future.

so young Alexander was getting personalized tutoring personalized teaching from Aristotle.

you fast forward to about it's called 300 years ago a very utopian idea of Mass public education it started in some of these first countries to industrialize uh you know what is now Germany the UK the United States Japan were the first countries to say hey we should have Mass public education.

but they had to make a compromise.

they said well we can't afford to give everyone an Aristotle we're going to U use the tools of the Industrial Revolution we're going to batch students together move them at a set Pace.

we're going to create some standards we're going to create assessments that measure and you know we don't need everyone to be to master quantum physics or calculus they didn't know about quantum physics back then we don't need everyone to be able to become a a professor so we'll just sort people you know we'll just measure the product.

and at certain decision points certain product is really retaining the knowledge and those are the people who are going to go into the knowledge economy and then certain people are in the middle well you know those could people can kind of be the managers of the factories.

and then there's certain people who are struggling and those could be the less skilled uh labor that we need for for the Industrial Revolution.

and is that pretty much and do you and do you feel that's pretty much how Society still works.

yeah I mean that's that's that's the system that we've taken for granted that we just assume is how the world works for the last 300 years.

but we know today that it's not okay for only five or 10% of folks to really be able to participate in the knowledge economy that the knowledge economy is booming and that because of AI and Robotics everything else actually might might really shrink in the next let's call it 10 or 20 years uh.

and the good news is is that we do now have tools that we don't have to make the same compromises that we had in the Industrial Age.

and to you know you allude to the two Sigma study Benjamin Bloom this is back in 1984 he wrote this paper it's it's probably the most cited paper on tutoring and Mastery learning.

and Mastery learning is just this idea if you haven't learned it yet keep working on it that's all Mastery learning is don't don't move on or you can move on but come back and and and fill in that Gap.

and you know he argues in that paper and he has some data to back it up that you could get a two standard deviation Improvement by having one-on-one two ing in a Mastery framework.

now since then people have debated is it two standard deviations is it less but generally speaking there's there's a large evidence pool that more personalization one-on-one is good for is is good for students it has it has an effect.

but he he framed that paper as a problem because he's like well this is nice but how are you going to scale that.

well not what if you think about what KH academ has been doing even before we talk about things like generative AI I was trying to scale myself as a one-on-one tutor.

and the first thing I did is I created some of those personalized exercises then I created dashboards for myself to monitor my my students my cousins so that I could be more personalized with them when I got on the phone.

I started write making on demand video it's not the same as a one-on-one tutor but it has aspects of it if my cousins were stuck in the middle of the night they could get that on demand help.

and I was making these short 5 10 minute videos so was almost like and there's a library of hundreds and now thousands of them that whatever your question is you can click on that video.

and now with AI we can potentially go go go even further so that's always been a little bit of the motivation in hindsight that how do we scale what a one-on-one tutor do what I was doing with Nadia.

when we look at um some of the progress that has happened why why hasn't high quality education worked out properly.

I mean there was a there was a moment here where we had this Mongolian Shepherd story a 15-year-old aced the MIT entrance exam and and he was just like wow everybody from the whole world can can really make it but we haven't got so many Mongolians uh you know at top universities as we had thought so why has that not happened.

so I there's two narratives here actually to some degree it has happened um it's but the numbers aren't so large that you're seeing it move the entire distribution.

one of the big changes and we get letters to this effect almost on a daily basis in fact another story from Mongolia we had a a young uh orphan girl.

you know she she wrote me a letter I didn't know who she was I assume she's middle class but then she says that some volunteers set up computer lab in her orphanage in Mongolia speaking of Mongolia.

and she got hooked on KH Academy and then that allowed her not just only to to get her degree but it she's she then became the top creator of content in the Mongolian language for KH Academy there.

another young woman in Afghanistan Taliban keeps her from going to school she actually.

this her name is um her name is Sola she just wrote a book about it but she when she couldn't go to school an uncle introduces her to Khan Academy.

she was lucky enough to at least have an internet connection she's middle class family she uses that to self-educate herself starting at age I think she was about 12 years old.

by 16 or 17 this is all she's doing you know for two hours a day when she's not doing her chores and she decides she wants to become a Quantum uh a Quantum researcher uh in the United States.

and so she she lies to her parents to go to Pakistan to take the SAT because it wasn't administered in in in the US she does shockingly well um she.

for the most part educated only on Khan Academy and that's when I found out about her I I try to figure out what colleges will take her without any formal education.

Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times writes about her and then she was able to get a Visa ASU takes her.

she rocks the physics department there now she's actually a Quantum Computing researcher at tus University.

so these stories are out there and we get a letter kind of like this on a weekly monthly basis I just we just got one last week of a of a a a young person in the UK.

they had a child at a young age dropped out ended up becoming a construction worker found Khan Academy got hooked on it just started talking to everyone they could find about physics and chemistry.

and their manager said hey if you don't go to college I'm gonna fire you because you're just boring all of us talking about physics and chemistry all day.

and this person is now um you know first of all met their their their you know life partner in college uh they graduated you know with it sounds like straight A and now they're entering a PhD program in Biochemistry.

so so this is out there so that's one story that for for those who are reasonably motivated and I'm not necessarily High achieving because this last example was someone that the system was telling was was not achieving but if they're motivated and that motivation might kick in at different stages of life.

but if they're motivated and they at least have access to a internet connection a computer and awareness of Khan Academy and other tools there's mukes and other things we are seeing a little bit of a mini revolution of these people who would have otherwise been lost.

now for better for worse that that group of people that I just described is a a small minority of the broader population.

and so I think there's two tasks one is how do we lower how do we make it even easier and easier to do what these people just did so that you don't have to have quite their determination to to be able to uh pull it off.

and then I think the other elent is there there are just a lot of um Learners and I don't think they're inherently demotivated but I think something has happened to them over the years where they have just given up.

and I so I think there needs to be systems to re-engage them and I think that's primarily going to happen through the traditional school system and so that's where we're working to do that.

AI you did a great Ted Talk on how AI is going to change education tell us about it.

yeah and my dog wants to leave the room let me open the door sorry.

um should we take it yeah no we'll have your dog we'll have your dog in there what kind is it.

it's a little golden doodle but you she's our guard dog and I think my wife just came into the door so she ran over there but the.

um you know a AI has always been of interest to us at Khan Academy well before this latest gen ative AI Revolution.

obviously AI we've thought about hey could be used to inform recommended activities for students etc etc so that's and and we have experimented with that at KH Academy over the years.

summer of 2022 open AI Greg Brockman Sam mman they reach out to me they say hey we're about to generate we're about to train finish training our our next Generation model which would end up being gp4 we think this is going to be really interesting for a lot of people but it also might be a little bit jarring because it's going to be quite powerful.

we want launch with and partner with organizations that people trust that can show socially positive use cases of it and by their own words Khan Academy was was the first organization they thought of.

and first time you saw it and saw what it could do what did you think.

yeah I went into that meeting very skeptical because I I I had kept track of gpt2 gpt3 I thought they were cool super fascinating but they were like they were good at writing things that sounded thoughtful but when you really tried to read it you're like this is this is meaningless or or it's really not H it doesn't really have a good handle on the information it doesn't seem intelligent.

but when that first when they when they we you know they essentially shared their screen with us and this was months before chat GPT existed and chat GPT when it launched was based on GPT 3.5 here was GPT 4.

and they showed me a biology question and they said s what's the answer here and I've read it I'm like okay the answer is C osmosis.

and they said okay then they then they asked the AI the AI said c I'm like okay maybe I got lucky.

I I said ask it to explain why it explained it very good explanation perfect explanation I'm like okay uh this is interesting.

I said explain why the other choices aren't right very good explanations then now I'm getting Goosebumps.

then I said have it write another question like this it did it I'm like uhoh.

and then I said haven't write 10 more questions like this it did it now I'm like okay this is a this is like the world I'm in a science fiction book am I am I dreaming right now.

and they said hey would you like access to it I'm like yes please.

and so you know we signed all the ndas and everything and so we got myself our chief learning officer or CTO got access to it that weekend we couldn't sleep.

and you could imagine it was I have trouble keeping secrets I'm like an open book on like everything and like I felt like the three of us had like the biggest secret on the planet that no one else knew about.

but now you integrated in what you called Canam kigo right which is like an AI powered tutor what so what what can this do.

as as we started experimenting with it we started realizing that especially these NE this next generation of Frontier Model like gp4 they're capable of really taking on um uh personas and roles in ways that no other previous model could.

and it's not just pretend they really could do the things that a strong tutor would do a strong teaching assistant a strong coach or guidance counselor might do.

and so we immediately saw the potential like hey this could be that that that that tutor for every child and actually a teaching assist for every teacher helping them do things like develop lesson plans or understand what's going on with their students.

but we also realize there's a lot of fears here how do you have a 12-year-old useing Ai and what if they have a weird conversation inappropriate conversation an unsafe conversation what if they use it to cheat what if um how do we make sure there's data privacy safeguards Etc.

so we were having these debates and we decided look we can't shy away from this let's build this but let's turn all of those fears and risks into features.

so let's make it so it's transparent to teachers let's make it so that another AI is monitoring if it notices anything going funny it'll shut down the conversation and actively notify uh teachers.

you know we have all sorts of other guard rails on it it won't cheat it's more of a Socratic tutor but it will nudge you forward with with leading questions.

and so that's what we launched with kigo we launched alongside the gp4 launch back in March of 2023.

and uh you know we we launched it as a pilot and it's still in a lot of ways is a pilot but the response has been more positive and and people are ramping into it much faster than I would have expected.

I could I could speak for an hour about all the features we're hoping to add in the next in the next year but but it's a lot's happening there.

yeah I would recommend everybody to listen to your Tad talk and uh on on AI and education but um what uh but in terms of the general educational system how should they you go about applying AI or not.

well I they definitely can't ignore it uh this is going to be a key skill going forward already in almost every role.

at the same time I completely understand where Educators you know why they banned chat GPT because it's not made for Education it it can be used to cheat it is not it did not put as many safeguards it's it's not even allowed for under 18 users although I'm sure a lot of under 18 folks have you know said they're 18 and and and are using it.

and so the important thing is to use these tools in an environment that is one has all the right guard rails for education and you're not using a tool for the sake of it.

if we want to save teachers time on grading on lesson planning Etc they should be using tool like like kigo.

so um it's it's it's really about embracing the underlying technology but using it in a way that is thoughtful and purpose-built for Education.

if you got $1 billion dollar now how would you spend it to improve education.

if I had a billion dollars it's a fun question um I would I would accelerate I would accelerate the you.

know right now Khan Academy's budget is around 75 it's probably going to be about $80 million next year uh.

and every time I say that because I have to raise a lot of that money philanthropically I remind my I I tell donors hey that's just the budget of a large High School in the US and you know we're we're educating a lot of folks and reaching a lot of folks.

but I I would probably take another 30 to 40 million a year and further accelerate a lot of the content and software and and product development we're doing.

our goal has always been even before AI to cover all of the core academic subjects and grades we're close already but I would go and that's from prek through the core of college.

so I would use some of that to accelerate into even more uh subject areas we we already have math we already have pretty comprehensive I would go even further into college science we're quite comprehensive I'd go even further into sophomore junior level College.

we're starting to have a pretty robust humanities and um English language arts offering I would try to accelerate that.

and then on the AI front um yeah I would I would use a lot of those resources to just accelerate it that much more.

but you know with that type of resources I would also probably create National or International systems around credentialing uh where you know the tools exist now where you can learn a lot on your own or with support and those tools and then you can even prove that you know it.

but the the the Legacy systems don't fully recognize it yet yet.

and so you know I've told people if I was Secretary of Education or minister of education for any country the first thing I would do is create a competency based set of Assessments that if anyone did it these count as good or better than any University any High School any graduate program.

and then you allow the world to create resources organizations like Khan Academy to create resources to prepare people for those.

some people could use the KH like if you think about this young Afghani girl some people like her could use the the KH Academy resources alone to prepare and then take these assessments and then they have a degree that's better than any degree.

but if a lot of students would need more supports well then that's where the traditional school system could use Khan Academy plus all of the inhuman the the the main not inhuman the in-person supports uh to to actually support these students more.

so that's where I would put a lot of resources I still don't think that would get us fully to a billion dollars but you know then you know maybe I I I would create a new type of University U that is much lower cost and much more Hands-On and you know gives exposure to more kids.

the credentials element you talked about is anybody working on creating such a thing.

you know there there's there's been I would say small scale badging initiatives type of things but I don't think anyone has yet tackled it from a like we want to we don't want to make this like just a you got you know you took a moo course and you got a badge and now you go from being a general computer scientist to a data scientist that exists already um.

and that's great that that exists that that pathway but we don't have a pathway right now that says hey this is just as good as Harvard um if you do this you know right now in the US there's all of these debates about you know you have limited seats at these top universities um.

and so it's these debates between equity and Merit you know do you just take the top 2,000 kids at Harvard every year or do you make sure it represents the population etc etc.

but then there's questions about is it Merit b or is it quot so people are getting they're they're politically charged.

and you know I've told many University presidents I was like look this is a false tension the real issue why you're while you're having to do this game is because you cost too much and you don't have enough capacity.

if if you could bring the cost down so it's almost free like the actual cost is almost free it doesn't have to have massive government subsidy and um you make it so that any student who's capable of doing the work can do the work then anyone who does wants to do it at any age can do it um.

and and I think you know if if if I had my DRS over the next 10 years that will exist and I am pitching that to folks every now and then.

do you think AI will increase or decrease inequality in the world.

I'm not sure I think there's two trends that are going to happen.

I think from a um developing your potential point of view I do think AI is going to improve um equality.

and even though right now like in Silicon Valley in my friend Circle everyone I know is super AI Savvy including their kids including their seven-year-olds they already know how to prompt and they already know how to use these tools they're already creating videos on on you know these generative AI apps and you know they're using them for their school projects and so in the short term these kids and these families have a huge Advantage.

but what's happening I would say in the medium to long term is that these these families have always had a huge Advantage.

if their kids are struggling they hire tutors for their kids and paid $50 an hour $100 an hour.

if they're when their kids apply to college they hire coaches for their kids.

these families themselves are highly educated and often times have more flexibility for travel and to tutor their kids themselves they know how the system works.

I mean these are all things you know I know how the system works and so my kids are going to have that that that that Advantage.

now if you're bringing an AI in the AI overnight is not going to completely level that playing field.

but it's going to allow let's call it the high school version of me that did not have those advantages to be able to to to tap in to more opportunity to be able to learn things faster to be able to um have some you know.

my my guidance counselor in high school was great but he had no experience he there were 300 students for every guidance counselor so I had like you know half an hour with him once a month or something and he had no experience with um you know I wanted to apply to MIT he no one in my school had ever gotten into MIT so he had no context there.

now we have an activity on kigo where you can talk to the AI and and we've had some of the top college coaches in the in the country help work with that AI to make sure that it's giving the best advice it's really almost IND you know indistinguishable from what a top college adviser would now give.

so that starts to level the playing field and over time it's get in educated Market ineducation yeah and in uh markets which are pretty well off what about then Africa.

well well what it happens is is that and it's not just AI it's even if you think about tools like Khan Academy before AI with videos and exercises it takes the problem of education and say you know before the inequality is like okay if you're in this rural Village in India or Africa to have the same education as Sal's kids in Mountain View California all right you're going to have to find a a faculty and is there any is there anyone even the village who can teach algebra or calculus or physics you're going to have to find a facility you're going to have to maybe be flexible around these kids might have other family responsibilities like it it's it was an expensive proposition and the world has been trying to do it for hundreds of years and frankly hasn't been able to pull it off.

with tools like KH Academy and especially as you start introducing the AI the problem becomes much more of hey can we get people devices and internet access at least to start I'm not saying that that's equivalent to a full school but at least it raises the floor pretty dramatically.

and then if you want to create a school the problem is no longer you need to find someone who's a master of physics you just you just have to create a nice safe environment have access to resources the adults in the room just have to motivate keep the kids motivated and on task but then they could use some of these tools for some of the content expertise it's great if those adults have it but they don't have to have it.

so I think it starts to level the playing field there once again not going to completely level it but it's going to be more level than it than it is today.

the place where I'm most worried about AI unleveling the plane field and we've we've to some degree seen this trend over the last 30 40 years with with technology generally is for those who know how to use these tools it massively improves productivity but what it does is it concentrates that productivity in a smaller and smaller group of people.

what used to take you know it used 50 years ago if I told you I have a even if you adjust for inflation if if you have the equivalent of a billion dollar company today people would assume that company must have 100,000 employees.

when WhatsApp sold to meta for $18 billion doar it had 18 employees and this is before AI they weren't even using you know coding co-pilots to write that code.

but 18 employees were able to create an18 billion doll company I think over the next 10 15 years you're going to see five 10 person companies using AI create billions of dollars in value.

now that could be overall good for society it's going to create tools that increase productivity or entertainment or whatever but that a lot of that wealth's going to acrw to a very small concentrated people.

and if it used to take 100,000 people to do it and now you're able to do it with 10 people well what happens to the other what what happens to the other 99,99 people um in terms of in terms of work um.

now there are some good utopian scenarios where it frees up resources for for more human- centered work for nursing Health Care education teaching but then there's dystopian scenarios where these people get marginalized destabilizes countries maybe you have to do Mass redistribution and even Mass dist redistribution whatever people's views are on that I don't think it's good for the people who get it because they lose their sense of purpose they're like well I don't know what I'm what I'm contributing.

so I think this is something we have to tackle and honestly the best way to tackle it is is to let as many of those people as possible learn how to use these Technologies and learn how to how to leverage them.

absolutely talking about smaller smallish companies we achieve um amazing things I know about this company called K Academy they got roughly 200 people and they educating M educating millions of people unbelievable.

now how do you how do you run the organization what are your leadership principles.

um you know I I've I've I've never written them down but if I were to say um you know what what I implicitly like to happen is you know try to be as close to to to the users as possible.

uh this is something I still do I still make video videos I still uh you know one reason why I started a school the one school my kids go to is so that I can under I can be close to Learners and and teachers and understand what their and teachers and understand what their lives are like uh.

a flat organization as much as possible uh right now you know there's you know one we have direct lines of communication between me and any member of the organization but you know there's there's only two levels of management at most but even then it's fairly porous so we try to do that we try to keep pushing ourselves to avoid bureaucracy.

you do need some processes as you grow and you scale to have Drive alignment and make sure things are happening as they should but we're always questioning it we're trying to have first principles thinking around like do we need that meeting does it need to be run in that way um.

are there ways that we could do this different so that we we can get more scale and leverage and you know one of the things I found a lot of times people think about the size of an organization and it is true the main cost in organizations these days is salaries but the one of the reasons to keep an organization is small small as possible isn't necessarily like cost savings it's actually communication and being able to be nimble.

if Khan Academy last year was a 20,000 person organization I don't think there was any way that I would have been able to make this move into AI that we did even with 250 people it it wasn't easy it's still you know we're not a we're not a speedboat we're kind of a yeah I don't know like a catamaran maybe like you know but we're not a cruise ship either and that cruise ship was very hard to change turn around when you realize that there's an iceberg if you don't if you if you don't turn around um.

so so I think in in you know going forward that's going to be even more important than than you know it's not about saving money and obviously we are limited by resources because we're we we raise primarily through philanthropy but it's more about being able to stay Nimble.

if you personally were to do another degree what would you do.

oh if I were to do another degree that's a good question um part of me you know when I went into college I I thought I wanted to be a theoretical physicist CU I just wanted to understand the nature of reality um.

now I've kind of reached the conclusion I should just meditate my way there but theoretical physics is still is is still um an area that I you know my my oldest son is kind of almost caught up with me in terms of uh his math and science and I said okay when you catch up with me we're going to start studying quantum physics together so that so that so that I can I can you know uh uh I I want to understand the frontiers of of of of reality of of how we how we understand reality.

do you think it's better to have one PhD or to mil degrees.

it depends what you're trying to do in the world you should be doing it because it's you you have a clear idea of of why of why you're doing it.

now you know I saying that I was the guy who just said I went to business school not knowing what to do I used that as a reason to figure out and I think there are some degree programs like mbas that are are good for just kind of figuring out what you want to do but I knew I wanted to do something in Industry uh at least I thought I did.

it's funny the only class I HB Harvard doesn't fail you anyone in the business school but they tell you internally that you would have failed if the only class that I was very cynical about that I kind of got the equivalent of a failing grade was called uh social entrepreneurship and and it was and and it was because I was such a cynic in that class.

I you know a lot of the cases we studied were you know someone's organizing a bicycle ride to cure some disease and I remember speaking up in class and saying well that's not going to cure the disease it's just a bicycle ride like how is that going to cure the disease and most of the money is going to fund all of the the pageantry around the ride so you could and I later realized the professor organized that that charity so it was not good.

but the um and I now come around I now see the importance of those types of things because they they they bring awareness to to an effort but it is there is an irony year that I I go to business school fail social entrepreneurship and that's what I do now.

what do you what do you read these days.

oh I you know I I I for the most part flip-flop between um hard science fiction and Victorian era Classics and uh you know all those V I just read um Great Expectations the first time I read it was in sth grade I hated it when it was forced on me in seventh grade they should not make seventh graders read that especially seventh grade boys read that unless they really want to they shouldn't Force anyone to do it um.

because you don't appreciate it I read it just now I'm like this is the most amazing book there's like so much wisdom and wit it's hilarious and it's modern in so many ways.

so I you know I I flip-flop between revisiting the great Classics that I was forced to read in school and now I have I can read it properly so I love doing that and then I you know and I read a lot of hard science fiction uh you know I've always been fans of like azimoff and Arthur C Clark and and now I'm just making sure I'm reading all of their books you know I've read their their most notable books but now I'm reading all of them.

how do you encourage um adults and grown-ups to continue to learn for the rest of their lives what's the key to it is it innate or is it something that can be encouraged.

you know we get letters we I mean tens of letters a day we get from folks saying I thought I was bad at math I just started doing 30 40 minutes a week just to keep my brain fresh and I realized I love it and a lot of them are like angry because they're now 30 or 40 years old and they're like I wish someone exposed me exposed this to me this way when I was 12 um.

so I would just say just start learning and it doesn't have to be through Khan Academy obviously Khan Academy is there but just reading exploring you know a lot of these AI tools are fascinating to have conversations with a kigo you can have a Socratic dialogue you can get into debates I personally really enjoy it when I when I have time to to dig into a debate that I'm you know I'm dying to have uh but I can't find someone to have with me.

well it's been um it's been amazing to have a dialogue with you s and um I have to say I can't think of anybody who's done more for for learning in the whole world so uh a big thank you and on behalf of of everybody really and um you're for sure passed that class in social entrepreneurship so big congratulations a real life class it's been tremendous Master learning based maybe a big thank you uh keep it up and uh look forward to staying in touch great thanks for having me.