Interview with Priten Shah

[Music] hey everybody this is the coffee of the geek program it is July of 2024 summer is in full swing we're getting ready for holidays here in the United States with me today is a special guest and I'm going to ask you to pronounce your name so I don't uh mess it up yeah uh pretin okay CH okay thank you pron for joining me uh really excited to talk with you I know you've done a lot of work uh with artificial intelligence and the education and that's really what we want to I think spend uh most of our time chitchatting about because I'm really interested you have a new uh book out and uh I'm going to let you you kind of introduce all of that including yourself and I'm GNA just really kind of be a learner today and uh tap into all your expertise and talk to you about Ai and education but first if you would um could you please uh just let's start with uh where it's coffee with the geek so any coffee choice that you like any coffee I am a cold coffee person and that's probably my New England education showing up no matter of the Season it will be a cold brew bre and a Nitro cold brew if I can find one with that creamy foamy top on wow okay that sounds good and I did see in your background you've been to Harvard so that's where your New England experience where uh yes the Duncan um Extravaganza is very very strong in Massachusetts and so um that got me through college all right so just a little bit from the reading that I did it seems like you've been kind of a world traveler and worked on a lot of different things in education which I want you to dig into for me um and then we'll kind of work through our book but if you could uh can you talk to me about what I like to call this question your educational Journey like where did it start where did it where did your love for Education come into play can you kind of walk through your background yeah of course um and this is a fun question for me because I think my own education and my journey through um like work in education has kind of been intertwined um from an early age um I started my first nonprofit in high school um and that we were an ettech I'm nonprofit doing online peer tutoring that was peer-to-peer um across the world um and that one um kind of allowed me to start seeing what it meant to try innovative solutions to um problems online tutoring wasn't as popular as it is now when I was in high school um and so it was still something Innovative and we were able to kind of um do tutoring with students from um 25 different countries and so um that was a cool project that really got me started in trying to explore what different Avenues there are to solving some problems in education um I took a gap year between high school and college um and I spent that year uh teaching ESL in South Korea um teaching debate in South Korea um but also working more on the nonprofits starting some chapters in a couple of different states um and using that to kind of get more students involved in um basically change making using the nonprofit peer twittering model um and so that was a great year because I kind of got do some classroom experience but also keep working on ventures of my own um then um I started my underg grade years um and I I had a focus on philosophy um that included education philosophy um questions about what makes our Educational Systems uh what would make our Educational Systems more just what the purpose of schooling is um couple of computer science classes um a lot of my computer science is selftaught but I did get a chance to take a couple of classes there and kind of explore um some theoretical backgrounds in computer science um but also lots of poetry and rhetoric and some of that will come up when we talk about some of the bigger questions that AI kind of opens up um and at the same time I was building my Civics nonprofit and so um we were trying to bring the liberal arts education model to the K to2 level um the quick like our quick uh pitch for um why that's important is because uh we like the foundations of liberal arts education kind of talk about how important it is for a vibrant democracy um and the price tag on liberal arts education is really high right now and so the easiest way in our opinion is to kind of integrate some of those materials at the K2 level where we have fully funded public education in most parts of the country um that Journey kind of got me more involved with figuring out Technology Solutions um and so as a funding model for the nonprofit I actually started doing some Consulting work um with other nonprofits with schools universities um and Building Solutions for them whether it be custom lmss um standards based learning and master learning platforms um during the pandemic I got the opportunity to work with uh all sorts of Institutions on helping Preserve online learning online activities um we hosted some of the largest uh competitions and during the pandemic um for students and so we hosted debate tournaments and model un conferences and kind of provided digital tools to make all that possible while folks were all at home um that brings me to present day uh all of that kind of uh built up the relationships um kind of got me the opportunity to start thinking about what the biggest problems were that folks were looking for technology to solve um and when the when chat gpt's um gpt3 at that point became public um and it caused an uproar um I was sitting there very excited I was like oh I can like add this to my platform and this future to my platform and we could do this for this client and oh my gosh so many things that were dreams um for all of us trying to figure out how to you know do cool things in education became possible um and I got clients coming out back to me and saying wait this is the worst thing that's ever happened um we need to like we what are your solutions for this do you have ai detection systems um how do we deal with plagiarism and that was kind of the focus and so um I had to Pivot from being this happy um excited person to kind of doing some more of a quelling helping folks navigate it so that brings to present day but I'll um yeah so definitely a windy path um through education I I love that question first of all it kind of helps the guests introduce themselves and walk through their background uh the fascinating piece that I found from that as you said you took a gap year uh just from describing you know what you your journey there was you were seemed really passionate about it and really energetic in in that so it's seems like you're passionate about education in general um and it also seems like you've done a lot in really a short period of time it seems like you really like to take on new challenges the Gap year seems like anti anticlimactic compared to what you were you know the rest of your journey was the Gap you're really just to give yourself a focus you know I know there's a lot of students here that you know again sometimes you think the Gap year can kind of be a an obstacle and maybe kind of put you into a you know a downturn but can you tell me about that and maybe did you go into the Gap year with a focus to just learn and know that this was truly you had other plans Can You Dig a Little Deeper in that that fascinated me yeah for sure um and here here's here's an extra piece of information there were three Gap years in total actually so I only told you about the first one for the sake of brevity but I took one before freshman year of college one after freshman year of college um and then two between um my college and Masters um and so lots of I can Rave about why Gap years are important especially that first Gap year was extremely important in terms of helping me kind of um you know get a break from high school high school is a very different time um there's a lot of like identity um form that happens in those crucial years um but high school isn't the most conducive especially when you're like gearing towards a competitive admissions process um and so having that year to kind of figure out what my intellectual interests were um figure out where what my strengths were and what excited me was definitely um very useful I did go into the year with the intention to mainly work on the nonprofit um I wasn't there wasn't a real good transition plan in my head um for what would happen if I started school right away I was nervous about freshman fall and running a company um and so the gap to give me some time to transition it over to other folks um kind of build a sustainable strategy for it um but travel do some teaching um do some reading and so that was there was a lot of um different motivations for it spent some more time with my family after you know being buried in my books um during High School um so that was definitely one of the most formative years of my life and so when anybody asks um you know and I was very privileged to be able to do all those things during that year um and take that year and I'm thankful for that um but when folks have the option I do highly encourage them to take take some time to be outside of the formal education system system before going back um because they both played very crucial roles um in my leury for sure so it does sound like you had kind of a focus going into it it wasn't justy I'm gonna you know sit on the couch and play video games kind of thing yeah and there's there's utility to that too so but no that wasn't that wasn't my there wasn't that was my plan going in okay so let's dig into the book so the book is titled let me Ai and the future of education is that I get that right it is right it is it's nice and simple yeah so you know I've I've interviewed a couple people doing Ai and each one has a different spin to it a good spin um but let's talk about the book and maybe actually first because I like to kind of gear this towards people that you know teachers mostly are the people that listen to this so maybe talk about what was the um I guess that process that happens like what made you decide to write it who was your audience in mind I'm assuming you know educators of some and what are the what are the takeaways and you don't have to give give up the goods in this but uh you can leave some teasers in there no for sure um so I think that I kind of like set the stage for this earlier when I was talking about the journey and how um folks are responding to my excitement initially about AI um and that is really what drove me to write the book was kind of an opportunity to formalize some um of the advice that I was giving to other folks some of the thoughts that I was having gave me the opportunity to think through things in a coherent manner um writing for me is a great way to you know spend some time thinking um which you know um I know our English teachers are talking a lot about these days the importance of writing and so um but yeah so that was it was a great opportunity to kind of sit down and think through um some of the larger questions in education um but you know while there's a little bit of that in the beginning and the end and I do you know try to leave folks with some questions about what this mean for us in the next five years some say three years some say 15 years but in the future um and near future by most definitions um but also kind of give a very practical introduction to you know what the utility of it is in the classroom um what might be coming up in the next few years what are what are likely um you know Tech platforms we'll see tools we'll see that will pop up um to kind of start jar getting people to think about um what role will they play in their own pedagogical Styles um how will they approach the technology themselves and how might they use it um productively rather than just see it as as plagiarism and cheating tool um there's it's meant to be tool agnostic and so um that it you know whatever tool of choice folks have at any time when they're reading it um the book was supposed to be more um inspirational in terms of okay like how might I use CLA to do this or chat TPT to do this rather than here's how to use chat TPT um and so that hopefully that allows it to kind of be a bit more Timeless and I think a lot of things end up being in this era when things are moving so fast and so that was of course a concern with a um you know publish or published book where I can't just put out a new addition um immediately um yeah uh so this may sound like a silly question but one of my other uh guests had done this um did you use AI to write the book yeah so um their preface covers this um my contract with Wy was very clear that I was not to like write the book with AI um and so uh there were AI did not write the book um but AI was was definitely a helpful partner in in the writing process and so I have some of those prompts in there that I use and so um my favorite example where especially at that stage that the technology was wasn't um it is nowhere wasn't nowhere as capable as it even is now um in its writing capabilities but one of my favorite uses of it during the book were um you'll see like if you look through all the examples you'll see To Kill a Mocking Bird a lot um and that's because that's like that my go-to example is To Kill a Mocking Bird for most uh just like that's where my brain goes that and like um different types of rocks um when I'm coming up with quick examples um ch helped me come up with some more creative examples and so when I was spitting out um 10 different prompts and I ended up using two kilo mocking work for all of them it was nice to brainstorm and say oh like maybe this what in a science classroom how might I think about this or in a English classroom that's not using To Kill a Mocking Bird what kind of um prompts might this looked like um to really help push the boundaries of the creativity there I think that was that was U it was definitely useful for that um and then grammar Rel a lifesaver um I think just in terms of making sure that some of my um verbo sentences kind of got cut down so definitely a great partner just in getting syntax down making sure that something that made a lot of sense to me maybe was not the the cleanest way to say it um all those kinds of uses of the AI tools were definitely um super productive and helpful in the process I I like I loved your answer there because you kind of I think gave a a nice overview of how teachers should kind of approach AI because you said you know I I wrote this book and I used AI to help me with a lot of the pieces uh to actually push my creativity rather than hinder the creativity I think that's what we want to blend into as as Educators to make sure that you know kids aren't just using it for cheating and having AI write things for them but actually use it as a tool to to hopefully push push their creativity and their boundaries and and do some of the uh maybe lesser fun things of the writing process to to to guide us so do you think that's kind of the a takeaway maybe yeah um definitely for our older students I think when we start thinking about how they might use these tools productively um to augment their own writing voices um to kind of you know streamline have their writing process and get a second pair of eyes on things because whenever we write that's always a good idea whether it be a human or you know maybe I a iBot um and so definitely a great example of being able to use it in a collaborative way where it's not um wholesale replacing my work or my experience in the in the the area um but is definitely helping me make that more polished and make it more accessible for more folks and that's I think maybe you know again there's always the dark side I mean I watch Terminator you know you start putting AI into a weapon then you know things might get scary fast but also just from an from an education standpoint and something I've thought a lot about with this whole uh AI Kind of Revolution happening before us is you know the creative process is hard you know and it's hard I think part of being a creative person is kind of pushing through some hard stuff um and and My worry is that sometimes AI can become too much of a maybe a crutch yeah and it may not push our boundaries intellectually it we may you know I don't want us to become soft and our writing I guess and our creative and I think when I when I asked this question I'm thinking of you know a lot of the art AI things you know like you'll say you know create a dog you know riding a bicycle it'll do it but there's always something a little quirky a little odd a little weird and it kind of like ah you know there there is still a human keie that sometimes you know falls into the the another world I guess for lack of a better term does that make sense yeah yeah and you know I think that there's there right now it does seem to be that there's these like um actual deficiencies in the final work product and so um when chat GPT writes something um especially with a very like simple prompt with um not too much um you know guidance um it's it's very clearly written by AI for most folks um even if you're not used to like using tools that sounds like chat GPT and folks kind of have this intuitive response to the fin but images you're right most image generators are still not to the point where they're completely um like indistinguishable from real images or human generated images um and they will get things wrong that like a human would never get wrong for example like it might add an extra leg to a dog um depending on the generator you're using and these things are all getting better um but we also need to start like you know that those are temporary deficiencies and so these tools are going to get better um claude's newest model does a great job of sounding a little bit more human um than chat GPT did especially than it did two years ago um these models will continue to kind of reduce those deficiencies and be more humanlike um and mimic that human those human qualities in the final work product pretty well um the thing that we like to talk about and this is where my philosophy background maybe is coming through um is that no matter what the that process does actually like get is part of the actual final work product as well for us especially when it comes to Art and creativity um and so when we're talking about something like a p um even if it can indistinguishably create a poem um you know about grief when you read a poem written about grief from a holocaust Survivor is one of the examples I talk about um you have a particular emotive response because you know that there's there's a human behind that that felt those emotions that went through a particular particular um turmoil that caused those emotions um and so no matter what if like the final work product looks exactly the same um just the fact that there's a human behind one and not a human behind the other does you know change our perception of it um let alone what writing the Poetry does for the human themselves um and so we can we can definitely talk about why in the Creative World um AI is still very you know there are there shortcomings um but I think there's some permanent shortcomings no matter how great the technology gets and I think that's also important to talk about especially as the technology moves um as quickly as it has been you know it kind of reminds me at this stage and um you may not remember this depending on your age but I remember when really the internet was new uh Google was new and there were all these you know websites out there all these you know different things and it was it would kind of exploded you know there's just so much out there and then slowly things just started you know falling off like this website you know let's just you know what was it uh it wasn't Yahoo it was one of the original internet net net something net remember what it was like something net you know um and slowly these big companies just started one by one kind of falling like um do you sense that's kind of where this is headed is we're going to start getting some really tried and true I know chat GPT is kind of the big uh fish in the pond right now but you think they're gonna kind of funnel because I know in education every time I turn around there's a new AI you know website or tool or something that's designed for education and it be it's becoming overwhelming right now so do you think it's gonna funnel down yeah I mean that's the major of most of the tech booms and there will be um you know there'll be some tools that will be the players in in the space um and so they it'll eventually narrow down to like the equalent and search engines will be like our Bing chats and our Googles um and then there will always be these like these mid-level tools that there's like this quirky population that likes to use and so there always somebody who still likes to use yaho search and there's somebody who likes to use um you know there like more privacy forward uh search engines like there's lots of there is still a lot of variability within the even like the search engine space um even though like when we all think search engine we immediately think Google um and something similar will continue to happen I think in the AI space um what stays and what leaves I think would be if I could answer those questions we would be having yeah a very different um life um but I think just in terms of thinking about like I think there'll be a lot of educ educator um like the educators will start controlling the process a bit more I think right now um there is a bit more of a passive role because they're they are being inundated with so many different tools um a lot of the tools they're already using are starting to incorporate AI so they're now not only you know learning new tools um grasping New Concepts learning how to use like you know trpt itself organically um and then suddenly like the tool that you were using for the last 10 years now has all these new AI features that's that are in your face uh and even non-educational tools are doing that and so that's not unique um but I think as teachers become more you know careful about um oh I've kind of learned that I don't really like it when it generates the funny questions on Cahoots for me but I like it when it generates the content ones after I upload my right like they'll start to have natural um inclinations towards what kinds of these tools they'll like and I think the market will kind of start speaking um more clearly with the um the target population of Educators okay um so let's put AI aside are there any other educational trends that you're following yeah so the one that I am really um with my popcorn because I'm a bit more of a passive player in this one um is figuring out this like Banning of cell phones in schools and I think that it's a great um you know it it justos so well with the the integration of AI within our education system because I think they're almost Polar Opposites in some ways and they really Force us to ask about the role of Technology um the role of human interaction um and so I'm really curious to see uh large scale implementations of cell phone bands um I'm curious to see what that does for student mental health um I'm curious to see what that does for AI integration projects um I and yeah just in general like I think I'm I'm sitting there um I am rooting for the cell phone Banner um but you know I'm trying to see what the most sustainable strategy that folks come up with um are because I think our our students are distracted so um definitely one where um that seems like a very easy solution to dramatically change educational outcomes and so um I'm excited to see where it goes yeah the school that I'm in is we're considering that for this coming year so we'll have some data there probably okay so here are some three fun questions for you um let's start with um are you a gamer and what's your game I am not a gamer um so maybe Angry Angry Birds or with friends anything is my goto if I really need something to kind of t uh tune everything out um but that's a very basic answer so okay that's no problem yeah um do you have a favorite tablet uh iPad you know anything like that yeah so um I I my iPad Pro is I like to handw write and that seems to be a middle ground most of the time I'm trying to annotate something and so my iPad Pro is definitely up there um I'm really interested in checking out the remarkable tablet I don't know if you've seen that um but that's that's it keeps popping up on my news feed um they it's basically like uh the size of an iPad um but they have no colors so though it's it's very much meant to mimic like the the paper the way the initial Kindle did um and so but it like no taking abilities apparently the feel of a pen um and so for you know those of us who still like some analog note taking that might be an even better Middle Ground so I'll keep my interesting yeah all right and uh favorite social network um Instagram is my favorite social network um those yeah just like you know lots lots of lots of fun things on there and a good mind lless of some time sometimes um but sometimes cool things pop up too like the remarkable tablet and so this might be an ad for remark this point yeah no I agree I I find you know first of all yeah I do probably waste more time on it than others but I do see there's a lot of like self-help stuff really good recipes TCH there's uh I get I think some learning from it and some inspiration so I'm not gonna knock that one um I think we've answered most of them but let's just do what is your favorite way to unplug from technology we'll end on that one yeah um speaking of the recipes and um like cooking cooking is my go-to I love to try different Cuisines from all over the world um and try to figure out how to uh make them and then try to remake them the same way the second time which is more challenging than making it um at all in the first place so definitely a very U mindful thing because you're very aware of all your senses um you have to focus can't kind of like doing anything else or L you burn um whatever you're cooking um and so that's my that's my go-to way to unplug that's a great one I think that's a cof through with the geek first to be honest with you so good job something new so Pon thank you so much for joining me today your answers and your book I'm looking forward to it I'm gonna get my copy of it and um can't wait to kind of follow you and see where you're going with this because it seems like you're on the move and uh your energy is uh really contagious so keep up the great work thank you I'm happy to share that with everybody today [Music]