This week we celebrate ChatGPT’s first birthday, and don’t birthday parties always bring out the family drama?!?
It sounds like Sam will be attending with his new boyfriend Satya. We’re not sure about Uncle Ilya yet, but Auntie Helen and Aunt Tasha are definitely not coming to the party. Fifth-cousin Adam will stand uncomfortably in the back, while Grandpa Larry and Papaw Brett fly in from way out of town. And all the siblings – Dall-E, Whisper, and some baby GPTs – will all be there too.
When we look at snapshots from ChatGPT’s first year, a few edtech milestones stand out amidst the AI drumbeat of the last twelve months. Here’s the Edtech Insiders recap of the first year of ChatGPT in education!
A Year of ChatGPT in Edtech
November 30, 2022: ChatGPT Launches
I’m sure many people remember their first ChatGPT moment. I was at the California School Board Association meeting in San Diego. A friend had sent me the signup link, and within a few hours I was sitting at a dinner table next to my school board colleagues asking ChatGPT to write the opening statement for our next board meeting. Our jaws dropped as it ticked away a great speech that effortlessly employed all the conventions of a formal school board! As so many have shared, that first experience was one of those rare moments where technology instantly captured our human imaginations.
November 30, 2022 represents a turning point in the collective consciousness around AI and how it might transform our lives and our world. Before GPT, tech firms kept AI firmly behind the curtain and away from the spotlight, while consumers abstractly understood that “algorithms” were the data engines driving recommendations and insights. Even in-home voice-assistants and pronouncements around self-driving cars did not fully pierce the veil in the way that ChatGPT did for me that Wednesday in San Diego.
January 6, 2023: New York City Bans ChatGPT
Amidst fears of cheating, NYC bans ChatGPT. For education institutions, ChatGPT’s early days were defined by chaos and fear. The world’s greatest cheating machine, ChatGPT felt like another blow after COVID and teacher shortages. This sparked a wave of ChatGPT detectors that died just as quickly due to inaccuracy. Schools and universities are now in a neutral zone where both bans and widespread adoption of AI both seem untenable.
March 28: Khan Academy Launches Khanmigo
Rallying AI optimists, Sal Khan triumphantly announces Khanmigo: a partnership with OpenAI that will unleash AI co-pilots for kids. Khan subsequently raises $100M (unconfirmed). Today, the product is still in beta with only ~18,000 students on the platform. AI optimists rallied around assessment, teacher co-pilot, and student co-pilot use-cases, but few have yet to deliver results at scale.
April 18: Sam Altman Addresses ASU+GSV From His Car
Nothing quite captures the AI edtech frenzy like Sam Altman in his Tesla addressing 30,000 edtech investors and entrepreneurs on his way for an afternoon coffee (I’m embellishing a bit). The seminal conference was abuzz with all things AI, so much so that GSV has announced a separate PRE-conference next year focused solely on AI. Every edtech company instantly pivoted attention to AI, giving some hope despite an ongoing edtech funding winter.
May 2: Chegg’s Stock Crashes
With just a sentence, Dan Rosensweig seemed to bring the wrath of Wall Street to edtech, where ChatGPT threatened to kill all existing education incumbents. Why would kids need textbooks, curriculum, and even teachers? Or so the thinking went. It has been a very rough year for publicly traded education companies, and each week new ChatGPT products threaten to eat their lunch.
October 30: Biden Announces Executive Order on AI
Some of the greatest bedtime reading of all-time, the Executive Order was such a hodge podge that any hope of clear, coherent AI regulation in the U.S. died. It was also a blow to some who had hoped that open-sourced models (like Llama) would reign supreme. On policy, the EU will be leading the regulatory charge, and in the meantime we can count on the U.S. Department of Education for some well-intentioned but likely misguided regulations. But at least they will have a playbook for educators… in 2025.
November 17: The OpenAI Board fires Sam Altman
And then reinstates him a week later. This snapshot is just from last week, but it has to shake the confidence of those concerned about AI safety. The governance mishap (or was it?) shines a spotlight on how much power is centralized around the major tech firms that own the AI future: OpenAI+MSFT, Google, NVIDIA. Edtech companies big and small will have to fight for their tiny fraction of compute, while the heavyweights loom over every industry including education.
What’s Next for ChatGPT in Edtech?
What’s next for edtech as ChatGPT becomes a toddler? You’ll have to listen to our year-end podcast which will be released in December where we will share our predictions. One thing is clear: it will certainly be another memorable year for our favorite AI pal!
We would love to hear your thoughts and favorite moments from the past year in the comments!
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I'd be really excited if someone would track down the predictions different people made about GAI in education one year ago and get their take on whether GAI is measuring above or below their expectations.
I'd be really excited if someone would track down the predictions different people made about GAI in education one year ago and get their take on whether GAI is measuring above or below their expectations.