Andrew NG’s startup wants to use AI agents to redefine teaching

The classroom obtains a technological upgrade with educational assistants powered by AI.

Kira Learning, an Edtech startup chaired by Google Brain Founder, Professor of Stanford, and the IA researcher, Andrew NG, has unveiled a new platform that brings AI agents to class.

Kira AI agents will perform repetitive tasks that often consume teachers of time. They can help the classification, lesson planning and analysis of class discussions to provide information on successful students and which students are struggling. The platform also offers individual tutoring for students.

The company says that its objective is to release teachers to focus on training the learning process – as opposed to the simple transmission of information.

While AI is more integrated into classrooms, NG sees it as part of a broader transformation of the roles of teachers.

“AI helps to redefine what it means to be an excellent teacher,” he told Business Insider by e-mail. “Traditionally, we expected teachers to be experts in matters. But with the work of the workforce so quickly and schools with new subjects to prepare students for a rapidly evolving world, what happens when a teacher is invited to teach something completely new, for example, in computer science, without years of experience in this field?”

Kira has already done this dance. It was launched in 2021 in order to help teachers without computer training effectively teach the subject. At the time, several states intensified legislation on the realization of IT.

“Computer science began to be introduced in secondary schools in a way that existed in parity with subjects like English and biology and history,” Kira’s co -founder and CEO. “Between the legislation adopted and this becoming a requirement for students, there was often a window of one, at most two years, and this required training.”

To help teachers develop quickly, Kira has developed tutors to help teachers master materials. He also developed educational assistants on AI to help them in class. In 2023, he joined the state of Tennessee – a first adopter of this legislation – to deploy the platform of all the colleges and public high schools of the State. It has since been adopted in hundreds of schools States districts across the country.

Now the company is expanding its platform to include all subjects. His new suite of AI agents will help achieve the company’s ultimate goal of personalizing the learning process – the one who, according to Pasinetti, is “almost impossible” today, given to what examples are in sub -effective.

Remember AI to make learning better

NG was at the forefront of AI and education. He launched Ed -Tech companies like Racera and Deeplearning.ai – where his last course “Vibe Coding 101” is available. In an interview with Forbes in 2014, he said that AI had the “potential to release humanity with a large part of the mental chore”.

More than a decade later, this notion seized the business world where workers use AI to eliminate tasks by heart such as e-mail writing, data analysis and research synthesis. However, what constitutes a “mental chore” in the field of education is less clear, in particular as educators – and students – fear that technology makes skills stagnate.

Kira, in a certain sense, reverses the constituent elements of the generative AI to cut the work occupied and improve the learning process.

AI-UA technology is “fundamentally discursive technology,” said Pasinetti. While methodical nature Can help students browse the equipment thanks to the Socratic method – allowing a back and forth dialogue – the problem is that it is also designed to produce responses as quickly as possible, said Pasinetti. Several of the most popular generative AI chatbots are also in a race against Google to become the default search engine in the world.

Kira’s goal is to present “FRICTION” in students’ conversations with AI to the right steps so that they really have a productive struggle and learn through the experience, said Pasinetti.

In practice, this means that the Kira platform can gradually guide a student through a difficult problem by spanning the understanding of the students of the subject.

Kira agents use these ideas to inform teachers of students’ capabilities by creating knowledge cards to determine what students know and do not know through a material.

Schools become warned in technology

Kira’s commercial model takes place on the growing embrace of classrooms not only of AI and data, but also to technology learning.

In recent years, schools have started to implement “adaptive learning technology” which can collect and take advantage of data on the performance, progress and style of learning of students to adapt the learning experience. This technology aims to increase equity through class and help teachers and students use time more effectively.

Which coincides with the generalized adoption of learning management systems during the pandemic. These are software that helps educators design and manage online learning like Blackboard, Moodle or Talentlms. They increased in popularity in 2020 and 2021, according to Educationweek.

According to Edweek’s survey of 1,000 managers, directors and teachers of the school district conducted in 2022, only 6% of educators said their school district had not used LMS. Schools can either integrate Kira into their existing LMS, or use the platform as an autonomous LMS.

Pasinetti said that by adopting Kira, schools can reduce at least four to five software – often the most expensive.

Kira leaders see the revision of AI on the revision between students, teachers and technology – which could cause more significant changes on the road.

“It is a big change that occurs, and especially if you have no expertise in matters, you learn in a way next to your student,” said Jagriti Agrawal, co-founder of Kira and vice-president of artificial intelligence. “I think this state of mind could be useful.”