Sal Khan is hopeful that AI won't destroy education
This is Hank Green, cofounder of Complexly. You might remember last year when I turned the tables on Nilay and interviewed him on his own show. That was a ton of fun, and it was so much fun that they’ve brought me back again. This time, I’m stepping in for Nilay to host the next few Decoder episodes while he’s out on parental leave.
Today, I’m talking with a very special guest: Sal Khan, the founder and CEO of Khan Academy. Sal was actually Nilay’s second-ever guest on Decoder, back in 2020. And well, a whole lot has changed since then. So I wanted to have Sal back on to ask what it’s like running Khan Academy today, in the aftermath of the pandemic. But also how online learning is about to change, in really dramatic ways, due to artificial intelligence.
Links:
Sal Khan on A.I.'s promise and its risks | NBC News (YouTube)
The best-case scenario for AI in schools | BBC News
Meet Khanmigo: the student tutor AI being tested in schools | 60 Minutes| 60 Minutes
Remote learning is here to stay — can we make it better? | Decoder
Hank Green makes Nilay Patel explain why websites have a future | Decoder
In classrooms, teachers put AI tutoring bots to the test | NYT
Elite colleges have found a new virtue for applicants to fake | NYT
Everyone Is cheating their way through college | New York Magazine
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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1:03:33
The quest to keep OpenAI honest
Despite being one of the most valuable companies in the world, OpenAI is still technically a nonprofit. That’s what set the stage for the dramatic board coup in 2023 that briefly ousted Sam Altman as CEO. And now, OpenAI is trying to shake this nonprofit structure so it can raise even more money and, eventually, go public. There’s a lot at stake here, and not just for OpenAI.
Links:
OpenAI abandons plans to become a for-profit company | Verge
Why California’s AG must continue investigation into OpenAI | CalMatters
An open letter to OpenAI | EyesOnOpenAI
OpenAI eyes $50B valuation in potential employee share sale | Reuters
OpenAI thinks its critics are funded by billionaires | San Francisco Standard
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Rewind: Bookshop CEO's crusade to save books from Amazon
Hello, and welcome to Decoder! This is Senior Producer Nick Statt. We’re on a small break for the end of summer, and, sadly, Nilay will still be out a little while longer when we come back. But we have an excellent slate of guest host episodes starting up next month, so stay tuned for those.
In the meantime, we wanted to bring back one of our favorite Decoder interviews from earlier this year. It’s with Bookshop CEO Andy Hunter, who back in January launched a pretty bold ebook initiative to take on Amazon and Kindle. It’s been about seven months, but Bookshop has seen big results, including more than $1 million in ebook sales. So we thought it was a good time to revisit our conversation with Andy.
Links:
Bookshop.org reports 65% growth, e-books add $1 Million in sales | Publishers Weekly
Bookshop CEO Andy Hunter’s crusade to save books from Amazon | Decoder
Bookshop.org is launching an ebook store to take on Amazon | Verge
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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1:07:13
Is ChatGPT killing higher education?
Hello! Decoder senior producer Kate Cox here. I’m afraid I’m still not Nilay, but I hope you’ve been enjoying our series of guest hosts this summer while he’s out on parental leave. We have a few more really great guest episodes coming up, before Nilay returns to the host chair later this fall, so stay tuned.
The production team is taking our own break this week, so while we’re off we’re excited to share this episode of The Gray Area with you. Students all over the country — including my own kids, thank goodness — are back in school right around now, and so we thought it would be a perfect time to revisit host Sean Illing talking with journalist James Walsh about how AI tools like ChatGPT have kicked off a new cheating arms race that’s proving extremely disruptive to college education.
There are a lot of big Decoder ideas — and problems — wrapped up in all this. Okay, The Gray Area, with Sean Illing. Enjoy.
Links:
If AI can do your classwork, why go to college? | The Gray Area
Everyone Is cheating their way through college | New York Magazine
How to get students to stop using AI | Verge
I used the ‘cheat on everything’ AI tool and it didn’t help me cheat on anything | Verge
Inside the frat-bro startup that wants you to ‘cheat on everything' | SF Standard
A new headache for honest students: proving they didn’t use AI | NYT
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Amazon is betting on agents to win the AI race
This is Alex Heath, your Thursday episode guest host and deputy editor at The Verge. One of the biggest topics in AI these days is agents — the idea that AI is going to move from chatbots to reliably completing tasks for us in the real world. But the problem with agents is that they really aren’t all that reliable right now.
There’s a lot of work happening in the AI industry to try and fix that, and that brings me to my guest today: David Luan, the head of Amazon’s AGI research lab, a cofounder of Adept, and a former VP of engineering at OpenAI. David and I discussed the release of GPT-5, what Amazon wants with agents, and where he thinks the AI race is headed next.
Read the full transcript on The Verge.
Links:
The Platonic Representation Hypothesis | Phillip Isola
Amazon plays catch-up with new Nova models to generate voices, video | Verge
Amazon’s new AI agent is designed to do your shopping | Verge
Microsoft is racing to build an AI ‘agent factory’ | Verge
OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Agent can control an entire computer | Verge
24 hours with Alexa Plus: we cooked, we chatted, and it kinda lied to me | Verge
Why AI researchers are getting paid like NBA All-Stars | Decoder
OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off — and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google | Verge
This is Big Tech’s playbook for swallowing the AI industry | Command Line
Amazon hires founders away from AI startup Adept | TechCrunch
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Decoder is a show from The Verge about big ideas — and other problems. Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel talks to a diverse cast of innovators and policymakers at the frontiers of business and technology to reveal how they’re navigating an ever-changing landscape, what keeps them up at night, and what it all means for our shared future.
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