Why Khanmigo (and Other Learning Chatbots) Will Fail

The boys wanted to be politicians or police officers. The girls unanimously chose teaching. I was tutoring children in an after-school program in a basti in Hyderabad, more than a decade ago, and these were the career aspirations of the kids who must have been around 10 years old at that time. Not a single child mentioned becoming an engineer or programmer, despite nearly every adult mentor in their program working in IT – the surest path to middle-class comfort in India then and now. These children weren't making uninformed choices. They were making deeply rational ones based on their lived reality. In their chaotic world, success and influence came through gaming the law or being the law. Why would they need to master algebra when none of the successful adults in their community had any use for it?

This memory surfaced recently as I explored Khanmigo, the AI-powered tutor from Khan Academy that promises (yet again) to revolutionize education. Running a microschool ourselves, we're constantly exploring how technology and AI can support real learning – the kind that sticks and transforms. I was naturally curious about Khanmigo's approach. Khan Academy is well-intentioned, and I love what they’ve built and offered over the last decade. But the problem that'll make Khanmigo fail isn't flawed execution – it's something far more fundamental.

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