How AI Will Democratize Education for the World w/ Sal Khan & Jacqueline Novogratz | EP #72

In this episode, recorded during this year’s Abundance360 Summit, Sal, Jaqueline, and Peter discuss the evolution of education and the impact of AI on jobs and learning. The conversation also touches on the potential for a significant transformation in education within the next decade, provided that basic infrastructural needs are met. 03:48 | AI's Impact on Education 26:45 | Technology Transforming Education 34:58 | Serialization for Dyslexic Learners Sal Khan is the Founder and CEO of Khan Academy, a nonprofit that provides free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. Khan Academy partners with more than 280 school districts globally, has over 145 million registered users across 190 countries and is offered in over 51 languages. Khan has been named Teacher of the Year and recognized as one of the 100 Most Influential People by TIME. Jacqueline Novogratz is the founder and CEO of Acumen, a global nonprofit that invests in social enterprises, emerging leaders, and breakthrough ideas to tackle poverty and create sustainable change. She is an advocate for moral leadership and the author of "The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World," which details her journey from international banker to social entrepreneur. Learn about Khanmigo Learn more about Acumen Learn more about my executive summit, Abundance360 ____________ I only endorse products and services I personally use. To see what they are, please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: Use my code MOONSHOTS for 25% off your first month's supply of Seed's DS-01® Daily Synbiotic: seed.com/moonshots Get started with Fountain Life and become the CEO of your health: https://fountainlife.com/peter/ _____________ I send weekly emails with the latest insights and trends on today’s and tomorrow’s exponential technologies. Stay ahead of the curve, and sign up now: Tech Blog Get my new Longevity Practices book for free: https://www.diamandis.com/longevity My new book with Salim Ismail, Exponential Organizations 2.0: The New Playbook for 10x Growth and Impact, is now available on Amazon: https://bit.ly/3P3j54J Learn more about my executive summit, Abundance360 _____________ Connect With Peter: Twitter Instagram Youtube Moonshots Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:00Speaker 03

  How do we truly grow and focus on being loving, high-quality character and overly vulnerable humans related to where we are today and where we're headed?

• 1:10Speaker 04

  You had to ask the hardest question.

• 1:12Speaker 05

  What I'm really intrigued by is

• 1:21Speaker 05

  everyone's going to have a tutor in their pocket or on a computer.

• 1:25Speaker 04

  A college education doesn't get you a job.

• 1:27Speaker 05

  Your peers and your children are going to be like, wow, we were living in the dark ages at a time where not everyone had access to their potential.

• 1:36Speaker 04

  And right now, that humility to see the world as it is, is to go as fast as we can to build things, not necessarily to help people, but to enable people to help themselves.

• 1:50Peter Diamandis?

  Let's begin. And let's go to mic one over there. Hey, Bear. How you doing?

• 1:59Speaker 07

  I'm doing pretty good, how about you?

• 2:00Peter Diamandis?

  This is my deputy son Bear.

• 2:02Speaker 07

  Hi, nice to meet you guys.

• 2:05Peter Diamandis?

  First of all, Bear, how old are you?

• 2:07Speaker 07

  I'm 11.

• 2:08Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 2:09Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, I have two paternal twin boys, Chris and I have, we're 11 as well.

• 2:13Speaker 07

  They're pretty awesome.

• 2:14Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, they'll be here in a little bit.

• 2:16Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:17Peter Diamandis?

  What's up, Bear?

• 2:18Speaker 07

  Not much, am I allowed to ask my question?

• 2:20Peter Diamandis?

  You can, you're first. The most articulate.

• 2:22Speaker 07

  Okay, cool. This one's directed at Jaclyn. Um, so I've been wondering because it's kind of confusing for me because you're kind of helping fund these companies? And what if AI eventually takes over like those labor jobs and the thinking jobs? Because then what's the point of, I guess, helping those people if they aren't gonna... What do you think's gonna happen to them once AI takes over the labor jobs?

• 2:53Speaker 04

  You had to ask the hardest question of the whole coverage.

• 2:58Peter Diamandis?

  Not an easy one. It's hard. Yeah, he's a smart kid.

• 3:04Speaker 04

  I think about that a lot, actually. Um, that, you know, you take a country like India alone, and every year 20 million new young people are going into a labor force. And increasingly, where we work, a college education doesn't get you a job. We've got the largest chicken, um, farm in Ethiopia. And most of the people that are being hired now have college educations because that's where they can make money. So, my hope is that these jobs become... That word accompaniment? These jobs end up using the technology, uh, to do more things for the world

• 3:49Speaker 04

  rather than just push people aside. I also think that when we look at agriculture especially, where most of the poor people are poor, are farmers.

• 4:03Speaker 04

  We are going to see a lot of displacement, but we are starting to see new systems where young people are deciding they want to become farmers for the first time in my life, to become farmers rather than leave it because they can produce really beautiful foods for the people who live locally. And so we might start to see new things happening in the world. But in the short term, all we can do is what we can do. And right now, that humility to see the world as it is is to go as fast as we can to build things, not necessarily to help people, but to enable people to help themselves.

• 4:43Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  Thank you for your question.

• 4:48Peter Diamandis?

  Ryan, where are you on mic four?

• 4:52Peter Diamandis?

  Where's Ryan? This is Bear's sister, my deputy daughter. Hey, Ryan. Talk to us. What's your question, Ryan?

• 5:04Speaker 08

  This is kind of more directed to Sal.

• 5:08Peter Diamandis?

  Uh huh.

• 5:15Speaker 08

  How much do you think education for kids will change in the next 10 years with AI?

• 5:22Peter Diamandis?

  How old are you now, Ryan?

• 5:26Speaker 08

  Nine.

• 5:26Peter Diamandis?

  Nine, okay.

• 5:28Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 5:28Peter Diamandis?

  Cool.

• 5:34Speaker 05

  Great, great question, something I think a lot about. I think a lot of what we currently know about education, in some ways, some of those things will stay the same. But I think some of the main issues with education, like a lot of students honestly don't even have access to, you know, Jaclyn talked a lot about that. I think college education is, you know, more and more ridiculously expensive over time. I think, you know, just being able to have support, even if you have a reasonably well-resourced school, you really aren't able to get help right when you need it. And so I think those are the things that in the next 10 years, you literally are going to have, everyone's going to have a tutor in their pocket or on a computer that's going to be pretty rich,

• 6:19Speaker 05

  that you're going to be able to engage with pretty deeply.

• 6:25Speaker 05

  Isn't just a supplement, something on the side to help you, but it could also, if you need it to be, almost drive your complete education. You're going to be able to get credit and degrees. Let's call it, you know, proof that you have skills that are going to be valuable for folks. And hopefully you can get automatically connected to experiences, jobs, internships, that'll get you what you need. So I think education, I know, you know, education's one of the, been one of these areas that for a while, people have been very hopeful, but also they've been very like, oh, I don't know if anything good's gonna happen. We keep trying and nothing really changes. I've never been more bullish that, you know, by the time you're 19 years old, you're gonna

• 7:08Speaker 05

  have a world where, you know, your peers and your children are going to be like, wow, we were living in the dark ages at a time where like, not everyone had access to their potential. I think, I think 10 years will make that. And the only thing that might, that might keep it is gonna be other things like infrastructure, electricity, wars, that will keep people from having access. But if we have those basic things in place, I think pretty much anyone's going to have access to a world.

• 7:36Peter Diamandis?

  Ryan, let's give it up for Ryan Reese here. Everybody, I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that's very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love. Company's called Fountain Life. And it's a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented physicians. You know, most of us don't actually know what's going on inside our body. We're all optimists. Until that day when you have a pain in your side, you go to the physician in the emergency room and they say, listen, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have this stage three or four going on. And, you know, it didn't start that morning. It probably was a problem that's been going on for some time, but because we never look...

• 8:19Peter Diamandis?

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• 9:01Peter Diamandis?

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• 9:42Peter Diamandis?

  the CEOs of my companies, my friends. It's a chance to really add decades on to our healthy lifespans. Go to fountainlife.com/peter. It's one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners. All right, let's go back to our episode.

• 9:59Speaker 09

  Hi. First of all, thank you very much, Jacqueline and Sal, for two inspiring presentations. My question is for Sal. I'm here with, I'm 25, I'm here with my 14-year-old cousin Julian. We've both been users of Khan Academy for a while. It's surreal actually seeing you and hearing you talk, because I've seen, I've heard you through a screen so much, I feel like I wouldn't have made it-

• 10:26Peter Diamandis?

  It's a little disappointing seeing the-

• 10:27Speaker 09

  (laughter)

• 10:28Peter Diamandis?

  Older and shorter than-

• 10:31Speaker 09

  I've watched your Differential Equations Khan Academy video more than I would care to admit. But anyways, we're wondering how we can be guinea pigs for Khan Migo. Julian's been using Khan Academy in his English classes at school. He's in eighth grade and I've used them virtually through college through engineering. And it's very, very cool tool. We would love to help you further.

• 11:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, and there is a process, actually, anyone here. So this is an interesting phenomenon about these large language models, especially GPT-4, which is an order of magnitude more complex than GPT-3, is that they're not, they're not cheap. You know, it's not like internet where the marginal cost is like a few pennies. Right now, it's sizable. We're trying to gauge on how much people are going to use it, but it's definitely on the order of like probably five, $10, $15 a month or something like that. So what we've done right out the gate while it's in the beta test mode, is we're providing it to some school districts just to start testing it and using it. But we're also making it so that if people donate on our site at Khan Labs, I think it's $20 a month, then that will unlock, you can be on the waiting list of Khan Migo.

• 11:45Speaker 05

  So your parents can, if your parents donate, then they can unlock it once they're taken off the waiting list for their, for the children. So that's what we're going to do. And the reason why I'm bullish on it, because you know, even at that price, it's a lot of value relative to like hiring a tutor and all of that. But we have good reason to believe that over the next six to 12 months, that cost is going to go down by a factor of 10 or a factor of 50. Some on our side efficiencies, some on the side of the folks developing the large language models. But yeah, but if you want to get in like this week or next week or something, yeah, get on the waiting list.

• 12:18Speaker 09

  Okay, will do. Thank you.

• 12:20Peter Diamandis?

  Fantastic. Maximilian, let's get it up to Joe. Thank you, Joe, for your question.

• 12:26Peter Diamandis?

  Maximilian, what do you got?

• 12:27Speaker 10

  This one's for Jacqueline. Jacqueline.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  Oh, hi.

• 12:32Speaker 10

  Hi, hi. And may I actually say I'm a big fan of yours. You actually inspired my first MTP and moonshot back in 2009. And I spent the last 15 years essentially following that track.

• 12:44Speaker 04

  What was it?

• 12:46Speaker 10

  It was actually empowering entrepreneurs in Africa, building sustainable healthcare companies and for their local communities.

• 12:54Speaker 04

  Fantastic.

• 12:55Speaker 10

  So I've now actually moved on and amended or developed my moonshot further. And I'm now CEO of a company called Next Boardroom. And our mission is very much along the lines of what your challenge actually is. So bringing the right sustainable mindsets and competencies into boardrooms around the world. So I would love to talk with you how we can scale Acumen Academy in that context to, yeah, every company around the world.

• 13:24Speaker 04

  I would love that. And also, so many of the young social entrepreneurs, we need to teach them how to build their boards and then use, because many of them don't have family and friends networks. Find people who can really show up and be great board members for them. So would love to have that conversation with you. Thank you.

• 13:42Peter Diamandis?

  Awesome. And thank you, Max Millian.

• 13:44Speaker 10

  Thank you.

• 13:46Peter Diamandis?

  Let's go to our global virtual members next on Zoom. Josh, what do you have?

• 13:51Speaker 03

  Yes, hello, everyone. Zooming in from Denver. Can you hear me okay?

• 13:55Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, you're great.

• 13:57Speaker 03

  All right, great. Yeah, thanks for the chat here. Sal and Jaclyn's amazing comments. And this question's related to a quote and comment that you had yesterday, Peter, in a breakout session, where as humans need to become really great at being humans and let the AI and robots do the rest of the computerized and automated work. So leaning into the gratitude for this tech and removing the fear mindset, how do we truly grow and focus on being loving, high-quality character and overly vulnerable humans related to where we are today and where we're headed?

• 14:34Speaker 05

  I'll tell you, I mean, it could definitely connect to the, what we talked about earlier about the role of the teacher. And in a world of abundance, I mean, this is one thing, I don't know if we're ever going to have a surplus of human connection. And so as, you know, even if you just take a classroom as a microcosm for like the world, as you have AIs and tools like Khan Academy that's able to do a lot more of the coordination, a lot more of the assessment, a lot more of the practice, it unlocks all of that time and space for the human to just have more conversations, have more games, have more simulations. And I actually think we should just need to scale that up even, even beyond the classroom. And what I'm really intrigued by is ways that not only can the technology take things

• 15:19Speaker 05

  off of the human's plate, but actually can facilitate

• 15:22Peter Diamandis?

  Yes.

• 15:23Speaker 05

  human connections. You know, one, one thing that I'm hoping to have built in the next year is, we know in middle school, it's a tough time, there's a lot of dynamics, and there's the cool kids, and the lot of cool kids, and there's all these cliques. You know, how amazing if you could have an AI facilitate a conversation between two members of your class. Maybe you don't even know who the person you're talking to, but you can show that vulnerability, you can show that, hey, there's another human being, no matter what their stereotype is. I think, I think things like that are, are where we're going to get a lot of human value from.

• 15:54Peter Diamandis?

  There's a term that Dan Sullivan first shared with me, I think it comes only from the, from Four Seasons, you know, let's, let's automate the routine and humanize the exceptional, which I love that.

• 16:05Speaker 04

  Yeah. I, I, I love that question, and it's certainly something I'm obsessed with. As I said, how do you teach character, something Sal and I are talking about. What we're, what we found, at least on a, a global level, but with thousands, not yet millions, is through ritual, through language, through more organized groups, and, and the Socratic method of having people speak across lines of difference to build the sense of community really is possible. And my question now is, how do we scale it? And storytelling.

• 16:45Speaker 04

  Our media continues to tell stories of people who do a lot of bad things, and still are put on pedestals. Rather than those individuals who are have an abundance of kindness, an abundance of goodness, abundance of generosity, we know that wealth does not correlate to empathy. And so part of it, I think, is also finding a new kind of role model, which is sort of an old fashioned kind of role model, but the ones that we want to be like, but we're sometimes afraid to really celebrate and our media could do a better job and so can we.

• 17:23Peter Diamandis?

  We go to Julian on Zoom one more time. Thank you for your question and then we're going to go to John next over here. So Julian, where are you and what's your question?

• 17:35Speaker 11

  What's going on? Hey, I'm reporting here from one of the villas in the resort, so not too far, based in San Francisco, though. But yeah, great talk from the both of you. Yeah, I'm going to ride off of Bear's first question, since that's been very top of mind, because I'm building an AI learning tool. Name was Villas, so learning and AI has been super top of mind. And the question here is based on the challenge that there's, you know, the world's moving faster than ever and there's massive disruption that's going to come from jobs. So it's a question around what are the future-proof skills? What are the future-proof jobs? How do we deal with that transition period from like so many people just being displaced? I think learning has a lot to do with it. So it's like, what should we be learning? And how do we become exponential learners and individuals

• 18:20Speaker 11

  in this new exponential age?

• 18:22Peter Diamandis?

  Thank you, Julian. All right, Sal, do you want to take that on?

• 18:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's something I've been struggling with. You know, I think a lot of us try to run optimistic about, you know, inflection points in technology and new jobs that we can't imagine and we created. I know we, you know, we've all heard that. But it is amazing. I mean, just even over the last six months, when, you know, as soon as we had access to GPT-4 back in August, I started telling all of our team members, like, look, you got to figure out how this is changing your work. I mean, we've done as a not-for-profit, we've done things like an email exchange with a donor. We just take those 10 emails, throw it to GPT-4 and it wrote the proposal for us. And then we tweaked it for like, you know, 20 minutes, but then it got that done. I was originally I was like, oh, maybe this is the skill of the future, being able to, you know, be a prompt engineer and tweak the AI.

• 19:10Speaker 05

  But then, as we were working with OpenAI, it got more steerable. So we had to do a little bit less of the the dark art of how do you get the AI to do exactly what you want. So, you know, if I were to guess in, you know, two or three generations, even that is going to, that's not Go raise me money. Yeah, raising money might always be a AI-proofed skill. But, but, uh, yeah, I, it's a, um, I, I think it'll be the human, the ability. I think the critical thinking plus the human connection. If you can form bonds with other human beings, I think you're always going to have a, a, a strong. And I'll say one last thing, you know, my college roommate,

• 19:51Speaker 05

  he's this guy that none of us thought were gonna, he was not like the Wheeler, Dealer, stereotypical VC guy. But he's always a guy that he's super vulnerable. He becomes best friends with anyone wherever he is. And he's become an incredibly successful investor, essentially based on that skill. And the more I think about it, I think his skill is probably the most Fascinating.

• 20:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:12Speaker 05

  Zillion.

• 20:12Speaker 04

  I, I think the caring economy really matters here, that we're becoming lonely as a society. And so whether it's an accompaniment model that we're, we saw first in Africa and now we're seeing in the United States, where people will call people with chronic diseases

• 20:32Speaker 04

  to see if, not only if they've taken their meds, but are they exercising, helping them learn how to grocery shop, et cetera, et cetera. What we didn't expect was the bonds that would be created within community. What we did expect is that people would stay healthy and not get sick, and that would save a lot of money. And you could build a revenue model around it. So I actually think that those individuals who can show up, can care, can build community, will also be something that we not only value, but longer term monetize.

• 21:01Peter Diamandis?

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• 22:26Speaker 12

  It's an honor to speak to you guys. Jaclyn, I serve on the board of a nonprofit in southwestern Kenya that provides education to children in the Masai land, in the bush. We've seen great progress by providing additional healthcare and nutrition for our children, accelerated learning. And I was curious, do any of your entrepreneurs invest in nutrition and healthcare to facilitate education? And in the spirit of the conference, how might we use AI to benefit us in those places?

• 23:05Speaker 04

  That's a great question.

• 23:08Speaker 04

  We don't invest directly in nutrition, but we do invest in education. And a lot of the best education models either will partner with Lancelot or the state because of the power of, as you know, a single healthy meal every day. In countries like India, with a 45% child malnutrition rate, or across Africa where you've got stunting pretty much across the continent, that really matters. I don't have off the top of my mind for you a particular company that is focused specifically on the school feeding, but I'll give that some thought.

• 23:49Speaker 12

  Perhaps there's an opportunity there.

• 23:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, we lose 40% of our agricultural production before it gets to the plate. In the developing world, it's all food rots on the side of the road, it's never sold at market, you could actually see AI doing a much better job locating and finding ways to move that food more effectively to the people who really need it. It would be one thing that would come to mind. And then, of course, in the wealthy world, we lose 40% of the food after it gets to our plate and we just waste it. And so there's, I would think there's a huge opportunity there.

• 24:33Peter Diamandis?

  We've got something like 15 questions and 12 minutes left, so I'm going to speed round a little bit.

• 24:39Speaker 04

  As a young Kenyan guy said to me, so please be short.

• 24:41Peter Diamandis?

  So this is from Slido. This is for Sal from one of your former students. What do you need or looking for in a partner to help reach sultanas in the world?

• 24:52Speaker 05

  I'll say two things really fast. One, we have 50-plus localization efforts, including in, you know, Pashto, Dari, Farsi, and all of these, and, you know, and there's other parts like Afghanistan if we're talking about the Middle East, et cetera. So folks can actually volunteer and localize. We have different degrees of efforts in every geography, so that's one, I think, thing that anyone can do if they have language skills. The second one is, you know, I hate to say it, but resources do matter here. I was telling Peter earlier that, you know... For domestic English, like our budget's a budget of about a large high school. It's about 60 million a year. Global education spends 5 trillion a year. So we're a vapor of a vapor of that.

• 25:36Speaker 05

  But like, we think, you know, for, like, if we were able to put about a million or two behind supporting our platform to go right to left, that would be a huge thing.

• 25:45Peter Diamandis?

  That million we're trying to raise. I was having dinner with Will I Am and the patrons on Sunday night, and he said something that was amazing. He said, you know, raising money to educate AIs is easy. Raising money to educate our kids is hard.

• 25:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:58Peter Diamandis?

  Crazy.

• 25:59Speaker 05

  He's right.

• 26:01Speaker 04

  Raising money is hard.

• 26:02Peter Diamandis?

  Period. Let's go to Harsha on mic three. Please.

• 26:07Speaker 13

  Hi. Thanks a lot for organizing this. Like, one, we have two questions, actually, but let me just give you a.

• 26:14Peter Diamandis?

  Let's pick one, because we have a lot of people waiting.

• 26:16Speaker 13

  Sure. So, basically, the question we have is, I actually went to India and we used, tried to use Khan Academy's thing, and I also tried to use robots, right? And one thing which we found out was, kids actually were building robots. They got, they got to learn a lot more, and it was very hard for them to learn directly from Khan Academy. So what we did was, we actually created something called HoloWorld, where holographically, now they were able to combine Minecraft-type of things, Roblox Minecraft, with Lego-type of things, and that has actually done very well. So, and there is, in India, there is something called co-profit, right?

• 26:56Speaker 13

  So can I have CSR where people can actually take money from profits and put it into nonprofit? So why, in your case, these two have not happened? And the second question is, is there an API with Khan Academy which I can use for this holographic universe I'm building, which can be integrated, so that I can present this Alexander, all these things are there in the holographic world?

• 27:17Peter Diamandis?

  Great, great question.

• 27:18Speaker 13

  But we need an API.

• 27:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, unfortunately, we don't have API today. It might be coming back in the next year or two. In terms of, I agree with you. You know, if you can embody it and all of that, I mean, I think that's, you know, we talked about the Sultanas. There are certain students who can just power through in the current form factor. But the more that we can make it engaging, we can make it embodied, whatever, I think it is going to help a ton.

• 27:41Peter Diamandis?

  Let's go to Carl on mic two. Carl.

• 27:43Speaker 14

  Thank you both for the impact you're making, first of all. But Sal, my question's for you is, I'm curious what your predictions are related to avatars and kind of how that either replaces teachers or kind of acts as that tutor to teachers. And interestingly, yesterday, we heard a stat on how children actually are more likely to tell the truth to an avatar psychologist versus a physical person there. So I'm curious how you think that plays in education.

• 28:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'll say a couple of real quick things is, you know, what we've always said is we want to raise the floor for so many kids because they don't have access to school. So there, and we think now with the AI, the floor can be raised pretty significantly. So it's even better than your average well-resourced experience at some point. But we also want to raise the ceiling. If you have an amazing teacher, we're going to be able to make that teacher even, even more, more empowered. In terms of, you know, avatars themselves, yeah, it's funny, when I watched the Harry Potter series, I always thought the craziest, most unrealistic part of Harry Potter were those picture frames that could like represent dead people and that could talk. And now I realize that's actually the most realistic

• 28:53Speaker 05

  part of, of Harry Potter. And, and so I think there's something very interesting. I think there's even a couple of startups that are already like you can like download someone's personality and it's about to get a lot better.

• 29:04Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, we got in the tech hub over here. Go and check it out.

• 29:07Speaker 05

  So, so, yeah, I, I, I think you're going to have a way to kind of persist and create people. I mean, we, we have a fun little project of like, can we create a embodied Sal scaled tutor? You know, maybe in six months, you'll have something like that. I don't know. But it is a little bit wild what's about to happen.

• 29:24Peter Diamandis?

  Hey, everybody. This is Peter. A quick break from the episode. I'm a firm believer that science and technology and how entrepreneurs can change the world is the only real news out there worth consuming. I don't watch the crisis news network. I call CNN or Fox and hear every devastating piece of news on the planet. I spend my time training my neural net, the way I see the world, by looking at the incredible breakthroughs in science and technology, how entrepreneurs are solving the world's grand challenges, what the breakthroughs are in longevity, how exponential technologies are transforming our world. So twice a week, I put out a blog. One blog is looking at the future of longevity, age reversal, biotech.

• 30:09Peter Diamandis?

  Increasing your health span. The other blog looks at exponential technologies, AI, 3D printing, synthetic biology, AR, VR, blockchain. These technologies are transforming what you as an entrepreneur can do. If this is the kind of news you want to learn about and shape your neural nets with, go to diamandis.com backslash blog and learn more. Now, back to the episode. We're gonna be going to zoom in a moment, but Zaya, what's your question?

• 30:35Speaker 15

  Yeah, so I'm drawn towards Sultana, right? And these other Sultanas that didn't believe that they could actually transcend this paradigm. So I'm thinking of systems thinking and Meadows, and one of the biggest levers is helping people realize that they're in a paradigm, right? And are you doing anything utilizing exponential technologies to help people realize that they're fit within this box and inspiring that desire to learn? And the same thing to you, Jack, when with, you know, this coffee company that you're working with, those sorts of things. How do you inspire these people to take charge and take that first step to utilize these amazing tools?

• 31:17Speaker 05

  You know, I think the first step is just giving them a place where they can realize that they are interested in discovering these academic abilities. And when they can see, oh, compared to my brothers in the local school, I'm actually learning more. And wow, there's all this interesting stuff. I think the AI is wanting to access that more. I think we've all, many of us, when you're reading a book and you're like, wow, I really connect with Voltaire, or I really connect with Mark Twain. But that's a one-way situation. I think the artificial intelligence turns this into a two-way conversation. So I think we're going to be able to unlock even more there. But I think the number one thing is as soon as people can start to say, wow, I'm exercising, just as it feels good to exercise your body, as soon as you exercise your mind and you realize what you're capable of, it starts to put you on a path.

• 32:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, I also think that storytelling and finding more people who look like the people that we're also looking to empower really matters. We have a company that is essentially a woman doctor in Pakistan. Thirty percent of all women doctors stop practicing when they get married. So first you have to change that. Has put all these women doctors on a tech platform so that they can actually provide healthcare to rural women often for the first time in their lives. So you've got to get rural women in places like northern Pakistan where the education rate or literacy rate is four percent for women to trust that they can talk to a doctor who might be sitting in New York and use that. But the fact that

• 32:44Speaker 04

  they look like them, they can speak the language, and that there are local agents, and Sal and I were talking about this before, including with education, that local teacher, she might be illiterate, but she'll be learning at the same time as the students learn. That role modeling is really, really important. And then the second way through storytelling would be things like for farmers in India, you can tell me if I'm wrong, but Bollywood actors actually really matter for that kind of endorsement. And so things we might not really, things we might take for granted are often wrong. And so I think that we need more creativity, and that's also where AI can help us.

• 33:26Peter Diamandis?

  I'm going to try and power through three more questions. We're going to Robert on Zoom. Keep it short, if you would. Robert, where are you and what's your question?

• 33:33Speaker 16

  Hi, calling from Phoenix, Arizona.

• 33:37Peter Diamandis?

  I've heard of it.

• 33:38Speaker 16

  So my question is, Prasal, is there a way for the Khan Academy to partner with the industry to bring courses that don't exist in colleges for vocational specific learning, such as in soil engineering, which is a practice that has done virtually beyond what they teach in college?

• 34:02Peter Diamandis?

  Great question.

• 34:03Speaker 05

  Simple answer is yes, and what I've been, you know, and some people think vocational, they think it's only a certain category and not the kind of the career track, white collar jobs. One of the things I'm fascinated in is can we crib people this core set of skills that you don't need to sit in a chair for four years, but are put you even in the same category as a college graduate, but also obviously can work on these things that we don't normally associate with a college degree. So the simple answer is yes, and we're working on it. We're starting to talk to several companies about, hey, if someone just did this on Khan Academy, why don't you put them in the same category as someone with a 3.5 GPA from Stanford? And the companies are serious about it now.

• 34:37Peter Diamandis?

  Fantastic. Jeff Peoples, what's your question, pal?

• 34:41Speaker 17

  Jaclyn, what is, what are the, what access do we have to your teaching about character development? What, is there something that we could bring on to our teams, especially our, you know, young people?

• 34:56Peter Diamandis?

  Here in the United States, you're saying?

• 34:57Speaker 04

  Well, anywhere.

• 34:58Speaker 17

  Around the world. I'm just, you know, I'm just like, okay. And it's actually especially more important for around the world because it's like, no, anyway, do you have something that we can access now?

• 35:08Speaker 04

  So, um, I don't, so I have, I have a couple of books, but my last book is called Manifesto for a Moral Revolution, and it's 12 practices that we have found in our most successful entrepreneurs to be very effective in building companies that put our humanity at the center. It's all about character. And then Acumen Academy is the start. There are about 40 different courses already that are very much about that. And we're starting to partner with corporations that are having their teams take the courses together. And so would love to talk to you about, about both of those.

• 35:44Peter Diamandis?

  And Jaclyn, you're going to be staying here through Thursday?

• 35:47Speaker 04

  No, only through this evening, unfortunately.

• 35:49Peter Diamandis?

  Okay, so Jaclyn's here at lunch and in the evening, so.

• 35:52Speaker 04

  But this is a crowd that wears a lot of blacks, so you should be able to find me.

• 35:57Peter Diamandis?

  Carla, you're our final question here, sorry guys. Yes.

• 36:01Speaker 18

  Sal, thank you. I'm going to become a donor and you're my hero. I'm a pioneer in advancing education for dyslexic learners. I founded Athena Academy in the Bay Area. And so my question is, how can we work with Khan Academy so it works better for dyslexic kids? We love what you do, but our dyslexics don't work as well as non-dyslexics with your materials and platform.

• 36:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, first of all, thank you. You know, honestly, I think it's just a bandwidth and serialization issue. You know, we've gotten some feedback that it does work for certain students with dyslexia and other, you know, learning differences, but we haven't honestly been able to focus on that problem in particular. You probably have good insights there. So, you know, if there's low-hanging fruit, that if we did X, Y, and Z, it could dramatic, like, we want to hear that. And then, you know, I'm hoping in the next several years, we can start to have more capacity to start, you know, focusing on some of these situations.

• 37:01Speaker 18

  I hope we can talk.

• 37:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 37:03Peter Diamandis?

  Wonderful. All right, ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Sal Khan and Jacqueline Novogratz. Hey.

• 37:19Speaker 19

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