Why Sal Khan's AI revolution hasn't happened yet, according to Sal Khan

The promise

In 2022, OpenAI reportedly reached out to Khan Academy as ChatGPT loomed, giving the nonprofit early access to GPT-4 and helping spawn Khanmigo — a tutoring chatbot that Sal Khan hailed as a potential game-changer. He went big: TED-stage predictions, a 60 Minutes spotlight, even a book arguing AI could give every student an “artificially intelligent but amazing personal tutor.” It has been reported that expectations soared; the dream was individualized tutoring at scale. Bold stuff. Did reality keep up? Not exactly.

Classroom reality

Khan now admits the revolution hasn’t arrived. “For a lot of students, it was a non-event,” he told Chalkbeat. It has been reported that many students simply didn’t use Khanmigo much. Teachers’ experiences tell a blunt story: Hobart High geometry teacher Kristen Musall liked the bot’s encouraging tone but found students frustrated by mistakes and by a tool that wouldn’t just hand over answers. It has been reported that Musall no longer uses Khanmigo; advanced learners sometimes benefit, but many students use AI to fetch answers, creating headaches rather than breakthroughs.

The next act

Khan hasn’t thrown in the towel — far from it. He says AI is “part of the solution; I don’t view it as the end-all and be-all,” signaling a shift from evangelism to pragmatic testing. The emotional pivot is clear: hope tempered by classroom friction. So what now? Expect quieter, iterative work — better integration, incentives to engage, and designs that meet students where they are. Revolution? Not yet. A useful tool with limits? Definitely.

Sources: chalkbeat.org, Hacker News