Review
AI
Books
Culture
Education
Monsters
5 min read

Are we letting a monster or saviour into the classroom?

Examining Sal Khan’s confidence in artificial intelligence.

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

A board of experts sit at a table against a conference backdrop.
Sal Khan, left, at an AI summit.
White House via Wikimedia Commons.

I've watched enough dystopian movies to know that there are lots of reasons to be nervous about the rise of the machines. Whether it’s the Terminator universe where the internet becomes sentient and creates autonomous robots to eradicate humanity, Neo battling an artificial intelligence that enslaves humans in The Matrix, or Will Smith fending off helper robots bent on taking over the planet in I, Robot, technological advances often fuel an array of nightmare scenarios. As if to make matters worse, science fiction has an uncanny knack for becoming science fact – I think of how shows like Star Trek accurately foretold mobile phones, wearable tech and virtual assistants. The line between imagined catastrophe and reality might be thinner than we might like to admit. 

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised then, that our creative industries are sending out dire warnings about the impact of the latest breakthrough technology - Artificial Intelligence (AI). Like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in the middle of the industrial revolution, and Godzilla in the dawn of the nuclear era, dystopian fiction is par for the course of scientific advancement. It all stems, I believe, from our deep human response to the unknown – the fear instinct. But I have recently come across a surprising new voice of reassurance in Sal Khan’s book Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing)

Khan’s book comes recommended by Bill Gates - a reliably voracious reader and one of the founding fathers of the global information technology revolution. But Khan also has his own excellent credentials. From tutoring his niece online using a simple online drawing programme called Yahoo Doodle, he began creating YouTube videos and soon amassed over 450 million views. This led to his creation of the now world-renowned Khan Academy which has revolutionised online education. By 2023, it had more than 155 million registered users, with students spending billions of hours of learning on the platform.  

Teachers are concerned that AI could undermine their expertise, much like satellite navigation diminished the skills of London Black Cab drivers. 

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It seems to me that AI has the potential to upend the Khan Academy business model, however Khan does not take the opportunity to discredit AI or even to highlight its dangers in a bid to reinforce the advantages of his existing products. Nor does he buy into the doom and fearmongering about the impact of digital technologies on young minds, as Jonathan Haidt does in his recent bestselling book Anxious Generation. Instead, he writes a hopeful and imaginative book on AI’s potential for further transforming education for good.  

Khan’s perspective comes amidst great fear in educational circles that generative AI will mean the end of education. Students can currently ask ChatGPT to generate an outline for them for an essay, suggest copy, check grammar and accuracy, offer improvements, translations, and factchecks, as well as write a conclusion, edit for wordcount, add footnote references and more. Indeed, entire books available for sale on Amazon have been allegedly written solely by AI. Teachers and lecturers are understandably concerned about the potential for plagiarism. If teachers are no longer able to discern what a student has written for themselves and what a computer has generated, the assessment process becomes meaningless. 

Teachers are concerned that AI could undermine their expertise, much like satellite navigation diminished the skills of London Black Cab drivers. After years of mastering 'The Knowledge'—an arduous and demanding process requiring exceptional memory and recall—this once-essential qualification was rendered almost obsolete. New drivers now need little more than a GPS and an Uber account to compete, a shift that highlights how quickly hard-earned skills can become irrelevant in the face of technological advances. Many teachers fear a similar fate as AI continues to encroach on their domain. 

While AI may not be the evil monster that will destroy us, neither is it the perfect saviour that will solve all society’s ills. 

Khan offers an important alternative view. He sees the possibility that AI could, for example, help coach students on essay writing. By reading work, marking it and suggesting improvements, AI could not only save the teacher valuable time but help students take their work to an even higher level.  

Khan offers a similar hopeful alternative to those who blame digital technology advances for the crisis in young person’s mental health. What if AI could help offer coping mechanisms, coaching and tailored advice that can help improve the mental health of students? His vision for the Khan academy virtual assistant ‘”Khanmigo” reminded me of BayMax from Disney’s Big Hero 6 – the large inflatable, huggable robot with a calm, compassionate and loyal personality, highly committed to every aspect of his user’s wellbeing.  

Amid voices that demonise AI, Khan’s is a useful antidote, however I wonder if he has gone too far. While AI may not be the evil monster that will destroy us, neither is it the perfect saviour that will solve all society’s ills. Understatement is not Khan’s strong point. Instead, sometimes he becomes so carried away in excitement that I feel his book begins to sound like an infomercial for his own, current and future products.  

I wish that Khan had taken a slightly different tack – no less inspiring about the potential of AI, but also recognising its limits. After all education is as much about transformation as it is about information. It should lead to character formation as much as skill acquisition. Emphasising these aspects of moral and perhaps even spiritual mentorship, we can see that education remains irreplaceably human.  

AI has huge potential to help and to hinder us in our educative responsibilities to the next generation– and so questions remain – not if AI will change our world, but how. We need to ask not just what benefits it could bring, but who it could benefit most usefully.  

Article
Culture
Digital
Economics
Psychology
6 min read

Do you believe in a coin called hope?

From fiat to faith: the rise of crypto evangelism
 An image show a braclet that has a bitcoin symbol beside a cross, a crescent and a Star of David.

“The bridge from chaos to hope.” This was the rather grandiose language used on social media platform X last summer by one prolific tweeter boasting 4.4 million followers. What they were describing, however, was not a religion or philosophy, nor a social movement or political party, nor a breakthrough in medical technology or a self-help technique. Rather, financier Michael Saylor was talking about the world's biggest cryptocurrency, bitcoin. 

Saylor’s profile on X declares that “#Bitcoin is hope.com”. That website contains, among other things, video clips of Saylor talking about how “bitcoin is the manifest destiny for the United States of America”, “bitcoin is economic immortality”, “bitcoin is forever money” and so forth. 

Saylor is in fact just one - albeit a particularly successful one (his net wealth stands at around $10 billion, according to Forbes) - of a number of vocal crypto advocates, trying to explain the huge, transformational impact on society that the cryptocurrency will supposedly have. Their precise arguments can vary, but are often along the following lines: the fiat money system is broken due to manipulation by governments and central banks - for instance through money printing - leaving control of the money supply in the hands of a small group of the rich, while the purchasing power of the general public is eroded; in contrast, bitcoin is incorruptible, not controlled by the government, available to everyone and finite in supply. 

A common thread running through some of the writings and talks of a number of these bitcoin enthusiasts is a quasi-religious language, used to convey bitcoin’s importance. 

Hope.com, for instance, includes a research paper on “The bitcoin reformation”. Its author writes: “It wasn’t until I studied the era around the Protestant Reformation that I felt I’d found a potential blueprint of sufficient scope” to describe what is happening with bitcoin. 

Particularly vocal crypto proponents are known as bitcoin evangelists, while some crypto investors will talk of fellow “bitcoin believers”. They can even drink their coffee from a ‘bitcoin salvation’ mug) (which depicts two winged cherubs holding the cryptocurrency). Non-believing sceptics are termed “no-coiners”. 

Early bitcoin adopter Roger Ver - who has been indicted on fraud and tax charges, which he says are false - is known by the nickname “bitcoin Jesus”. One non-profit decentralised community is named Bitcoin God. 

The precise mix of irony and sincerity being used in such examples is of course debatable and will vary. Nevertheless, among the most fervent crypto investors there appears to be an earnest belief in the transforming power of bitcoin. 

But there may be additional reasons why some of the most fervent proponents instinctively reach for such language. 

“There’s a link with forms of transhumanism - the idea that we’re in the middle of an upgrade of humanity.” 

Dr Roger Bretherton, a clinical psychologist and Seen & Unseen contributor, argues there are elements of tribalism and “the psychology of identity” in some of the most cultic aspects of the crypto world. He sees some similarities there with “old 60s cults of people believing UFOs were going to land in their backyard”, talking about crypto as a cult rather than crypto as a currency.

“People overlap their identity [with a particular movement]. They're saying ‘that's me, that's who I am,’” he said. 

“In periods of uncertainty we seek to find certainty in our groups. We're in an individualistic society.” 

Use of religious language also points to a belief that bitcoin/crypto/blockchain will bring about some form of a radical global change less on the scale of an incremental technological development, and more akin to a transformational religious experience. 

“There's an element of faith and an eschatology attached to crypto: 'this is the new thing that will change the world,'” said Bretherton. 

“There’s a link with forms of transhumanism - the idea that we’re in the middle of an upgrade of humanity - the kingdom of tech is coming. It feels like crypto becomes part of the same narrative. The key question is whether our future lies in technology and power, or in love.” 

For such fervent bitcoin proponents, attempts to rubbish their beliefs are often futile. Indeed, trying to do so may only serve to strengthen the believer’s resolve that they are right. 

“There's a cognitive dissonance,” said Bretherton. “The more ridicule you've had to go through, the more you've given up, the more social difficulty you've gone through - particularly if you've given up a career to pursue crypto - then the stronger your belief. It's the sunk cost fallacy.” 

So far, bitcoin believers have proved the doubters wrong. The price of the coin has gone from less than $20,000 in the wake of the collapse of crypto exchange FTX in late 2022 to around $118,000 at the time of writing. Saylor has turned MicroStrategy (now known as Strategy) - the company of which he was CEO in 2020 when he decided to use it to buy and hoard bitcoin - into a $110bn market cap firm that has spawned many copycats.  

But what importance bitcoin eventually assumes in society is still very much an open question. It has not yet become a form of payment for our morning coffee or for buying a house, and maybe it never will. Whether it can really function as “digital gold”, a hedge against inflation or “a bank in cyberspace” (as Saylor calls it) is debatable. But it has already made huge strides, soaring to a market price well above what most people would ever have imagined. In July, US Congress passed a landmark bill regulating stablecoins - a type of cryptocurrency pegged typically to the dollar - in what is being seen as a huge step forward for the industry. 

Nevertheless, it seems likely that some of the wilder claims made about bitcoin may not come to pass. What happens if true believers are left disappointed? 

Bretherton says such belief systems have to subtly change their “metanarrative” as and when they do not deliver on initial promises. 

“It can't make predictions that can be shown to be false,” he said. “If crypto doesn't deliver its promises in the future, it has to find another way that's softer but which lasts. So it either collapses or it finds a way to become more nuanced."  

Whatever importance bitcoin eventually assumes in society, our desire to put our faith in it - or in anything else - reveals something deeper about our human nature. 

In the Bible, the book of Ecclesiastes explores humankind’s attempts to find meaning in human lives without God. The main character tries career, pleasure and wealth. But ultimately, they find that these things are just “meaningless”, “vapour” or “chasing after the wind”. 

That search for meaning, for the eternal, is inbuilt in our character. As the book’s author puts it: God has “set eternity in the human heart”.  

We are not designed merely to be born, to live and then to die. Instead, each one of us has been created with an inherent desire to know if there is something eternal out there, and to find out whether we can be part of that story. Crypto cannot offer us that salvation. The only thing or person who can, the author of Ecclesiastes would argue, is the One who put that desire in us in the first place.  

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