How AI Could Lead to a Massive Productivity Boost in Education

In this episode of Class Disrupted, Diane Tavenner and I chat with Siya Raj Purohit, who works on education initiatives at OpenAI, about the transformative potential of AI in education. Siya shares her career journey and how it led her to focus on bridging the gap between education and workforce development. Highlighting the immense value of AI tools like ChatGPT, particularly in university settings, she underscores its potential to personalize learning, reduce teacher burnout, and enhance classroom interactions. Siya also addresses concerns around AI by emphasizing that while AI can elevate thinking and productivity, the irreplaceable human element in teaching—such as mentorship and personal inspiration—remains vital.

Michael Horn:

Hi there, Michael Horn here. What you are about to hear is a conversation that Diane and I recorded with Siya Raj Purohit from OpenAI as part of our series exploring the potential impact of AI on education from the good to the bad.

Now, here are two things that grabbed me about this episode.

First, I was struck by how much Siya uses ChatGPT in her daily workflow already. Yes, she works at OpenAI, but it has seemingly revolutionized her life. As she said, it's a massive productivity tool. From using it as a tutor to helping her figure out what projects to prioritize, what to learn, this is just part of how she works now.

Second, I was struck by how much she's really on the ground level with universities, particularly professors, helping them figure out how to make it part of their workflow as well for teaching and learning, and how deep she is in specific use cases as a result, and how she sees this, frankly, as an important tool to free up teacher time, elevate student thinking, and the like.

As the conversation wrapped up, I've also been reflecting on a couple things.

First, what would it take for ChatGPT to be a massive productivity tool for me personally? And if that's the framing, what does it mean this technology can and can't be used for in education?

I was also struck by how OpenAI has decided to go deep on supporting those in college and beyond with their tool, but they haven't yet created their own products or services for students who are under 18. Candidly, that's not something I had really realized or reflected on before this conversation. So I'm excited to reflect a lot more with Diane after we talk to a number of people about this topic. But for now, we'd love to hear your thoughts about this conversation. Please share it with us over social media or through my website, michaelbhorn.com. And with that as prelude, I hope you enjoy this conversation on Class Disrupted.

Diane Tavenner:

Hey, Michael.

Michael Horn:

Hey, Diane. Good to see you.

Diane Tavenner:

I confess I am really excited about today's conversation because the first two we've had about AI have been super interesting and have been raising some big questions for me around the assumptions that I had coming into these conversations and AI and schools, and in particular how we organize schools themselves around new technologies. But it's made me even more curious to talk to other people and get other perspectives. So I'm really, really looking forward to talking today.

Michael Horn:

As am I, Diane. And I. I agree that the first two episodes have piqued my attention on different things, and I'm looking forward to digging in on more at some point. But whereas our last episode featured someone who is, I think it's fair to say, largely skeptical about AI, I suspect we will get a very different take today, given our guest actually works on Education at OpenAI, the company that of course developed and operates ChatGPT. Her name is Siya Raj Parohit, and she has been focused on supporting ed tech and workforce development in the startup community and at AWS over the past decade before she more recently joined OpenAI to work specifically on education. We're going to get to hear about all that up front. But first, Siya, welcome. It is so good to have you.

Siya Raj Purohit:

Thank you so much for having me.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, you bet. So before we get into a series of questions, questions starting to dissect AI and its impact, or not on education, I would just love you to share with the audience a little bit about how you got so deep into AI around the question of education, perhaps specifically, and maybe you'll also humor me as you do so, because I'm curious OpenAI's interest in all this because it seems like more than maybe any product launch other than the iPad that I can remember anyway, I can't think of any other consumer tech product or service that has made education such a cornerstone of all of its announcements and sort of promise and potential for the new technology. So maybe you can tell us a little bit both about your journey, but also how OpenAI sees education.

Siya Raj Purohit:

Absolutely. So I've spent my career at the intersection of education, technology and workforce development. This all started when I was 18. During college, I published a book about America's job skills gap, talking about how American universities weren't teaching the skills that students needed to land jobs in industry. This stemmed from my own experiences and the fear that I may not be able to land the jobs that I aspire to. And that's something that I think a lot of young adults relate to. But I've spent the next 10 years from that just trying to help bridge that gap. I worked at early stage startups, venture capital funds, and most recently Amazon, trying to bridge that gap between learning and opportunity, helping make economic mobility more possible for different types of learners.

I joined OpenAI about 8 months ago to help build up our education vertical. As you all might remember. November 2022, ChatGPT launched and suddenly became like such a used product around the world. And what was interesting for OpenAI is that learning and teaching was one of the most common use cases on why people were engaging with ChatGPT. So this year we launched a product called ChatGPT EDU is designed for universities and school districts to be able to use an enterprise grade version of ChatGPT. With that, it brings all sorts of different types of benefits. There are all sorts of network effects that can exist on a campus once all students, faculty and staff have licenses.

I will share a couple of examples of what that looks like. But a big part of my job is to help education leaders, educators and students start using AI more effectively on different types of campuses.

Michael Horn:

Perfect. Perfect. Go ahead, Diane.

Diane Tavenner:

Yeah, I mean, I think it sounds like, rightfully so, Michael and I are both operating under the assumption that you're probably biased towards seeing AI as something that offers real opportunity to improve and transform education. And clearly your personal pathway and journey is leading you to that impact. And so one of the things we're interested in is having you sort of make the best case for how AI will impact education in a positive way. And we have a lot of things in our minds that we've thought about, but we're really curious to be expansive in our thinking and have you make that very best case for us.

ChatGPT: Revolutionizing Personalized Learning