Andy Kessler

WSJ:AI’s Education Revolution

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/ais-education-revolution-khan-academy-tutor-animation-schools-5aec9a5e

The Journal’s headlines tell the story: “Eighth-Graders’ History, Civics Test Scores Hit Record Low.” “Fourth-Grade Test Scores Plummet.” “ACT Test Scores Drop to Lowest Levels in More Than 30 Years.” Plus, 67% of fourth-graders nationwide score below “proficient” on reading tests. Disgraceful.

Millions of students use Khan Academy’s online videos and problem sets to supplement their schoolwork. Three years ago, Sal Khan and I spoke about developing a tool like the Illustrated Primer from Neal Stephenson’s 1995 novel “The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer.” It’s an education tablet, in the author’s words, in which “the pictures moved, and you could ask them questions and get answers.” Adaptive, intuitive, personalized, self-paced—nothing like today’s education. But it’s science-fiction.

Last week I spoke with Mr. Khan, who told me, “Now I think a Primer is within reach within five years. In some ways, we’ve even surpassed some of the elements of the Primer, using characters like George Washington to teach lessons.” What changed? Simple—generative artificial intelligence. Khan Academy has been working with OpenAI’s ChatGPT since before its release last December.

In the novel, the main character Nell asks about ravens, and “the picture zoomed in on the black dot, and it turned out to be a bird. Big letters appeared beneath. ‘R A V E N,’ the book said. ‘Raven. Now, say it with me.’ ‘Raven.’ ”

Later, she asks, “What’s an adventure?” and “both pages filled with moving pictures of glorious things: girls in armor fighting dragons with swords, and girls riding white unicorns through the forest, and girls swinging from vines, swimming in the blue ocean, piloting rocket ships through space. . . . After awhile all of the girls began to look like older versions of herself.”

Mr. Khan’s stated goals for Khan Academy are “personalization and mastery.”

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WSJ: Dear Grads: 1% Inspiration, 99% Preparation

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/1-inspiration-99-preparation-76a2877b

Dear Grads: Finish that “Ruth Bader Ginsborg” jug at your final Borg party. Wind down your Wednesday Addams and M3gan dances. Quit hating on Nepo Babies. And stop saying “super great” like NoHo Hank on HBO’s “Barry,” even ironically. This merits your attention.

The expression “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration” is often attributed to Thomas Edison. But apparently around 1890, a writer and academic named Kate Sanborn gave a lecture saying genius was a combination of inspiration and perspiration and “talent is perspiration.” Even without Twitter, ideas floated around and permeated society. When Edison was later asked what genius was, he answered “2% is genius and 98% is hard work.” When asked if genius was inspired, he blurted out, “Bah! Genius isn’t inspired. Inspiration is perspiration.”

Two lessons here: 1) If you have great ideas, others will repeat them without attribution. 2) There was a lot of sweating going on in the 19th century—modern antiperspirant wasn’t available until 1941.

Let me update the saying for the 21st century: “Success is 1% inspiration and 99% preparation.” Ideas are shooting around faster than ever, but most are worthless because no one does the hard work to implement them. Implementation requires hours and hours not of sweat—we’re in a service economy now—but of preparation. You must do it all: reading, researching, falling into one rabbit hole after another on the internet to find the right series of precedents and test cases and quotes to make your point, pitching your idea coherently and succinctly so it doesn’t sound pie-in-the-sky but practical.

Preparation is everything! Forget football’s old-timey “3 yards and a cloud of dust.” After a 2021 touchdown, Los Angeles Rams receiver Cooper Kupp shared his read of the defense: “They had a little three-deep fire zone. Brought the nickel off the edge, safety dropped down. They didn’t look like they were doing a replacement fire zone.” That level of understanding required preparation, memorization and practice. And news flash, Stephen Curry draining half-court shots isn’t luck.

Watch the amazing 2021 video of the Perseverance rover landing on the surface of Mars.

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WSJ: Ignore the Hysteria on AI and Jobs

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/ignore-the-hysteria-on-ai-and-jobs-chatgpt-automation-workforce-tech-innovation-51b3d994

Will artificial intelligence destroy jobs? As sure as night follows day. Old jobs disappear and new jobs are created all the time. It reminds me of the time I got jobbed. On a “radio tour” promoting a book a decade or so ago, I was up at 4 a.m. California time calling drive-time radio programs on the East Coast, switching every five minutes and then calling in to stations farther west. I remember two things. Every radio personality sounds the same: “Hey, we’ve got a new book author coming atcha, right after these messages . . .” And the ambush.

I called into a big-city public-radio station, a great catch. We discussed my 12 rules for entrepreneurs and investors including lower costs, waste what’s abundant, scale and get horizontal. But the host wanted to discuss only the title, “Eat People.” OK. I walked through the history of how technology has replaced lower-end jobs—tellers, librarians, travel agents, stock traders—with higher-value, better-paying jobs.

I thought it was going well until the host said, “Well, I’m against it.” I asked, “Against what?” “I’m against technology destroying careers and lives. It has to stop. That’s why we have unions.” Ruh-roh, I thought. I calmly explained that you can’t be for or against it—it’s part of progress and happens again and again, from buggy-whip manufacturers to elevator operators. And history shows that more and better-paying jobs are always created as some jobs are destroyed. He didn’t want to hear it and babbled on about the evils of big business and the need for unionization. I was ready to move on to St. Louis and Denver.

New and better jobs are always created, yet no one believes it. We no longer have “Mad Men”-era typing pools, stenographers, compositors or typesetters. A 2022 paper studying automation and job categories, led by economist David Autor, states that “roughly 60% of employment in 2018 is found in job titles that did not exist in 1940.” A Goldman Sachs report from March goes further: “85% of employment growth over the last 80 years is explained by the technology-driven creation of new positions.” Bingo.

Job destruction is still happening. Last July, Southwest Airlines ended expiration dates on flight credits. Generous? Nah. Having real people handling calls is expensive; I bet the airline figured it would be cheaper to have no expiration date so customers would stop calling and use its website instead. And people fight against job destruction: A few weeks ago, dockworkers reached a tentative deal with West Coast ports on automation technology—a decadeslong battle. The union wants limits on everything from computer-controlled cranes to bar codes—anything that threatens jobs. Yes, bar codes. And now this: Striking Hollywood writers are demanding that AI not be used to write “sloppy first drafts.”

Now touch-screen cash registers are turned around at McDonald’s and lots of other restaurants to face customers. White Castle is using…

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WSJ: Sherlock Diverts the Fire Hose

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/sherlock-diverts-the-fire-hosesherlock-diverts-the-fire-hose-technology-social-media-notifications-twitter-6f4c49f5

We all drink from a fire hose of information, an unfiltered stream that blasts facts and photos and figments of truth, bloating and overloading us. Phones buzz with updates. Breaking news. Snarky tweets that demand a peek. Kardashian sibling fashion faux pas. Amazon deals, Instagram hamming, TikTok twerks and daily BeReals—these torrential rains strain brains.

When Elon Musk bought Twitter, President Biden remarked, “There’s no editors. How do we expect kids to be able to understand what is at stake?” Great question. And the fire hose refuses to be turned off. But there is a way to slow the flow, at least to a manageable trickle. Ask Sherlock Holmes.

Trusty assistant Dr. Watson expressed astonishment that Holmes was “ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System.” Holmes replied, “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.” He explained further, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out.”

We all remember the stupidest things. Holmes’s advice is to forget. But what to keep? “Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order.” Here are some tips:

• Filter. Search engines and social media bypass newspaper and TV editors. This helps free us from bias and censorship, but we’re all editors now, perusing the water blast to find what’s important. The trick is to filter almost everything—start with Meghan and Harry. If it isn’t in your wheelhouse or meaningful for your friendships, career or personal development, let that fire hose soak someone else.

• Favor the right topics. A college friend moved to Oregon to study the effects of Mount St. Helens’s volcanic eruption on nearby forestry. I presumed the simple answer was “not good.”

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