This past Saturday, I was almost triple-booked. Between my birthday trip to San Francisco, the AI for Education summit at Khan Lab School, and a FIDE chess tournament where I was eager to compete in person for the first time, I had some choices to make. I eventually decided to attend just the first half of the summit, leave the second half for the the family, and skip the tournament, since I felt I still had room to improve before competing.
The AIED summit took place over the weekend, which struck me as unusual for a conference. One reason was that the organizers wanted to use Khan Lab School’s upper campus as the venue. I had recently toured the lower campus of KLS in Palo Alto, so I took this opportunity to see the upper campus near downtown Mountain View (we had driven past it so many times!). The school feels much like an open-plan office, with conference rooms around the perimeter. A little digging shows that the building was indeed an office before KLS converted it into a school.
Sal Khan delivered the opening keynote. It was my first time hearing him speak, and there’s no doubt he’s a great public speaker. He made an interesting point: every new technology has both benefits and risks. We need to ask what our intentions are and how we can use the technology to amplify the good. He offered an analogy: if paper had been invented yesterday, we shouldn’t ban it entirely just because someone used it to make cheat sheets.
The second talk I attended was by Rui Li, the founder of MarsNavi, an edtech startup based in Beijing. He shared his startup’s experience running online project-based learning (PBL) classes. As someone who grew up in that education system and in Beijing, I totally understand how difficult it can be to promote PBL in an environment where test scores are king. It was encouraging to hear that some parents are willing to try PBL outside the school curriculum to help their children learn to use AI, develop a product mindset, and build leadership and collaboration skills.
The last talk by Manpreet S. from Google, was about staying mindful in the age of AI, and I found it surprisingly inspiring. The idea of practicing gratitude for everything I already have really hit home. Like Manpreet, I consider myself fortunate to have a happy family and a fulfilling career. Yet I often feel unhappy without knowing why. During the talk, we spent several minutes in a guided mindfulness exercise, expressing gratitude for the ways AI helps us become more productive, think through ideas, and broaden our knowledge. The affirmation “I’m not scared of AI taking my job” hit especially close to home given the growing anxiety among software engineers.
Manpreet also made a very interesting point that we shouldn’t spend too much thinking about what we are gonna say. This is especially useful to me as I have always tried to be thoughtful about what I’m going to say . There are always a few conscious checks on “is this the most accurate way to say it” or “am I going to hurt this person’s feelings” that happen within a second before I spit out the words. The idea Manpreet shared “The way I think is the way I feel. The way I feel is the way I act” is eye-opening. If I’m thinking positively, there is no need to ponder on the next word as I’m naturally gonna output positive things. The key is really practicing mindfulness and maintaining a more peaceful mind.
Together, the meditation exercise and Sal Khan’s talk made me realize that I had been holding on to a negative attitude toward AI even as I benefited greatly from it. That negative mindset had subtly shaped my actions and reactions to the latest developments often without me realizing it.