How classroom AI Khanmigo can help students in emotional distress
On an early morning in Hobart, Indiana, Abigail, a high school student studying chemistry, sat across from what could be the next big tech innovation in education.
Khanmigo, an AI platform designed by the educational nonprofit Khan Academy, is like Socrates in a laptop: it responds to questions with questions, imploring students to use their own knowledge to lead them to a fully understood, contextualized answer.
"I asked it… what are three examples of acids?" Abigail explained to 60 Minutes correspondent Anderson Cooper.
After providing more examples, Khanmigo listed different types of acid found in common, everyday beverages.
Then it asked, "Can you think of any household items that might contain acid?"
"Khanmigo leads you toward an answer, and it asks you a question in return to help you think it out," Cooper told 60 Minutes Overtime.
Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, got an early look at the underlying technology behind OpenAI's Chat GPT in 2022.
He told Cooper he had immediate concerns that it could be used to cheat, like writing essays for students. But he also saw incredible potential: an artificially intelligent tutor with "guardrails."
"To support students, to give them more feedback… to support teachers for all this lesson planning and progress report writing that they spend hours a week doing," Khan said.
Now, Khanmigo is being piloted in 266 school districts across the U.S., in grades three through 12.
Teachers use Khanmigo to create lesson plans, review essays, and plan classroom activities. Students use it to get help when they're stumped on homework, fine tune their writing, or work on practice problems.
"I was interested in it from a journalistic standpoint, but also just from a personal standpoint," Cooper told 60 Minutes Overtime.
"I have a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old. My 4-year-old is going to be starting kindergarten next year."
Cooper told Khan an AI tutor that could help his son with math and science homework in higher grade levels would be a game changer.
"That's our hope. Although I will say… a lot of parents are embarrassed if they forgot things… learn it alongside your kids," Khan said.
One of Khanmigo's unique features for teachers is a usage tool that allows them to see students' dialogues with Khanmigo and an activity log.
When Khanmigo is asked a question in a chat or used to draft an essay in the "writing coach" application by a student, a teacher can see the actions they took, the time the actions occurred, and how long a student spent on a particular assignment.
"It does provide a window for adults to supervise children through their homework and through their workflow that hasn't really existed in this way before," Cooper told Overtime.
"And I think for some students, for some kids, that might feel intrusive."
In an interview with 60 Minutes, students from Hobart High School said they have heard that sentiment from some of their classmates.
"Everything you type in it, it sends it to your teacher… and I think that's something really scary for students," a student said.
Peggy Buffington, the superintendent of Hobart High School's district, believes that this kind of oversight can save lives.
"One of the pieces of feedback that we gave to Sal [Khan] was just that safety net. 'What if there are students out there that are struggling with some emotional things? Maybe suicide ideation?'" she told Cooper.
At the school's request, Khan Academy created a feature to detect if a student is talking about hurting themselves or others and then notify a teacher immediately. If necessary, a mental health counselor can intervene to provide help.
"Have you actually had instances where Khanmigo has sort of raised a red flag about a student's emotional health?" Cooper asked.
Buffington said she had.
"You see a lot of that in writing… and then, instantly, the teacher sees that," Buffington replied. "It's just another level of awareness that perhaps we didn't know a student was internalizing… it can save a life."
Cooper told Overtime he spoke with Khan regarding concerns about privacy around that data.
"Obviously, this kind of information is very sensitive," Cooper said.
Khan told 60 Minutes that Khan Academy will never sell data that is collected by Khanmigo, and they will only use it internally to make Khanmigo better.
"Anyone under 18… if someone's talking about self-harm, or harming others, or seems to not be in a good place, or… they're trying to write, say, an inappropriate story with the AI…. [we're] flagging that to teachers [and] administrators, so that they can take action if needed," Khan said.
Khanmigo is still a work in progress.
"There's kinks to be worked out," Cooper told Overtime.
Students at Hobart High School told 60 Minutes Khanmigo still makes mistakes, but Khan says it's continuing to get better.
"There's no putting the genie back in the bottle in this… I don't think there's any doubt that this is here already," Cooper told Overtime.
"I think that the onus is on, certainly, tech companies to have ethics and guardrails in place."
"But it's also on parents to just be involved and be aware of what your kids are doing to the extent you can."
Cooper said the potential benefits of the technology are obvious to him as a father of two young boys.
"An AI tutor that's with them in their home, that's with them in their school... that they can consult with and learn from… I mean, the potential of that is incredible."
The video above was produced by Will Croxton. It was edited by Sean Kelly.
