Book Review: Brave New Words - How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing)
A Promising Vision for AI in Education That Still Leaves Important Questions Unanswered"
Have you ever watched a student struggle with a concept and wished you could clone yourself to give them the one-on-one attention they need? Or perhaps you've wondered if AI tools like ChatGPT spell the end of meaningful assignments in your classroom? As educators living through this technological revolution, these questions keep many of us up at night. Sal Khan, founder of the educational non-profit Khan Academy, addresses these concerns head-on in his new book, Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing).
The Promise of AI as the Ultimate Tutor
Khan's central premise is straightforward: AI has the potential to serve as a personalized tutor for every student. But not just any tutor—a good one. Throughout the book, Khan repeatedly returns to the evidence that one-on-one tutoring remains one of the most effective educational approaches. It's an approach we still see employed for developing elite talents in music and athletics, but one that has seemed economically impossible to scale across education broadly.
Until now, perhaps.
Khan shares his own journey with AI, from his first experimental prompts to the development of Khanmigo, Khan Academy's AI-powered tutoring tool. One of the book's most compelling anecdotes describes how Bill Gates challenged OpenAI's Sam Altman to get GPT to correctly answer AP Biology test questions—a telling indicator that education was identified early as a proving ground for this technology.
What Makes This Book Work
Brave New Words presents an optimistic and pragmatic view of generative AI, by mapping a path forward that addresses real problems in education.
The book provides creative examples of how AI tutors might work, emphasizing that they should provide scaffolding rather than answers. A good AI tutor, Khan argues, doesn't just tell students what to think—it helps them discover how to think through problems themselves. It identifies knowledge gaps and provides personalized guidance to fill them. It offers immediate feedback without judgment, allowing students to learn at their own pace without shame or embarrassment.
Khan's vision extends beyond just tutoring. He outlines how AI might transform assessments, making them more continuous and meaningful than traditional standardized tests. He explores how teachers might be empowered to focus on deeper human connections while AI handles routine tasks. And he presents concrete examples of how education might evolve—not replacing teachers, but augmenting their capabilities.
The Questions That Linger
While reading Brave New Words, several concerns kept resurfacing in my mind. What are the social implications of excessively relying on a computer for every aspect of education? The average American adult already spends hours each day on their phone—wouldn't increased reliance on AI potentially worsen our dependency on screens?
I also wonder about diversity and representation. When I ask ChatGPT to produce text in Spanish, the result often feels like a translation of something originally written in English rather than authentic Spanish communication. If our AI tutors primarily reflect Anglo content and perspectives, what does this mean for cultural diversity in education?
Finally, Khan's examples seem to feature idealized student interactions—conversations that remind me more of what Khan's own children might have with AI rather than what I observe in my college classroom. What happens when a student with low literacy skills asks ungrammatical or difficult-to-understand questions? While Khan focuses on K-12 education, many of my college students struggle with basic literacy. Will AI tutors truly serve all students equitably?
The Bottom Line
Despite these lingering questions, Brave New Words offers a thought-provoking roadmap for how AI might address persistent challenges in education. Khan's approach—using AI to solve actual problems rather than deploying it simply because it's novel—provides a valuable framework for educators and administrators.
Perhaps most importantly, Khan acknowledges that implementing AI will inevitably create new problems even as it solves existing ones. This clear-eyed view, neither overly optimistic nor needlessly alarmist, makes the book a valuable contribution to our ongoing conversation about education's future.
For educators feeling either threatened by or dismissive of AI's potential impact on our profession, Brave New Words offers a middle path: thoughtful integration guided by educational principles rather than technological determinism. We may not all share Khan's vision for AI in education, but engaging with his ideas helps us shape a future where technology serves our pedagogical goals rather than dictates them.
And in a world where AI tools are already in our students' hands—whether we like it or not—that conversation couldn't be more timely.