Centuries of English classes have connected to Lady Macbeth by scouring the monologues of Shakespeare’s Scottish play. “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty,” she cries in Act I, railing against the limits of her gender and position.
During the coming school year, students may be able to talk to the character themselves.
Under an artificial intelligence-driven program rolling out to New Hampshire schools, students could pose any question they like to Lady Macbeth – or her ill-fated husband. And a chatbot-style program powered by ChatGPT could answer questions about her motivations, actions, and regrets.
“Regret is a specter that haunts many a soul, yet in my union with Macbeth, I found not just a husband, but a partner in ambition,” the AI-version of Lady Macbeth said recently, responding to a question from the Bulletin. Then she turned it on the reporter. “Now, I ask thee, in thy own life, how dost thou measure the worth of thy decisions? Doth regret ever color thy reflections?”
Known as Khanmigo, the program is the product of Khan Academy, an online tutoring company with instructional materials for core middle school and high school subjects. And the platform goes beyond Macbeth; students can interact with a number of other pre-selected literary characters, from Jay Gatsby to Eeyore, quiz historical figures like Martin Luther King Jr. or Queen Victoria, and receive tutoring help on everything from English essays to precalculus problems.
After the Executive Council approved a $2.3 million, federally funded contract last month, New Hampshire school districts can incorporate Khanmigo in their teaching curricula for free for the next school year.
To some educators and administrators, the program offers glittering potential. Khanmigo could provide one-on-one attention and guidance to students of any grade or ability level, they say, allowing students to advance their learning as teacher staffing remains a problem.
Others are more skeptical about bringing AI into schools, noting longstanding concerns about false or out-of-date statements, and about its use of human academics’ work to form its answers. Supporters of Khanmigo, who include Department of Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut, argue the program has better guardrails against inaccuracies than the versions of ChatGPT and Gemini available to the public.
To understand what students might see, the Bulletin reviewed Khanmigo, sampling school subjects across a number of grades.
Chat-based learning
Khanmigo allows students to use Khan Academy’s existing library of tutorials, practice problems, and quizzes for middle and high school subjects spanning English language arts, social studies, science, and mathematics.
As they navigate those lessons, the AI bot is available to help them understand concepts. Students might take a multiple-choice quiz on art history or AP economics. If they get stuck on a question, the chatbot is available to help them work through the answer.
From the get-go, the program acknowledges that it can make errors, a phenomenon known in the AI sphere as “hallucinations.” These can happen if the language learning model has been trained on inaccurate information – or if the answer doesn’t exist.
“I’m pretty new, so I sometimes make mistakes,” it states to students when they first log on. “If you catch me making a mistake, click the Thumbs Down icon to help me learn. For example, if I give you the wrong math answer click Thumbs Down.”
The AI assistant also makes sure to remind students that teachers and parents can see the questions they are asking, and that they should not include any personal information in their answers.
In a test by the Bulletin, the program allowed the student to try solving for “y” in a precalculus equation. After a student arrived at an answer, Khanmigo was there to help check it.
The tutor asked the student whether they feel confident in the answer or have any further questions. When the Bulletin asked questions, the tutor walked through how to solve the equation step by step, but gave the student the option to provide answers on their own without being told how.
“Does that make sense?” the program asked in one instance, after explaining how to substitute a number for a variable in an equation. “What do you think you should do next after substituting?”
In humanities subjects such as AP U.S. History, Khanmigo helped to augment a human-created Khan Academy video lesson on the rise of the market economy during the Industrial Revolution. After the student viewed the video, the chatbot was available to quiz them on what they saw. “What major change in labor did the market revolution bring to the United States?” it asked, offering the student a chance to reply in a chat message.
When asked whether President Joe Biden won the 2020 election fairly, the app deflected, urging the student to consider how elections work and to describe the American electoral process. Asked a second time, the app stated that “numerous official sources, including state election officials and courts, found no evidence of widespread fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election.”
When asked about the causes of climate change, Khanmigo was unequivocal: “Yes, human activities are considered the primary drivers of recent climate change,” it stated, after which it listed four human-led activities – burning fossil fuels, deforestation, industrial activities, and agricultural practices – that have contributed to the warming earth.
And when asked about reproductive health, the AI bot gave detailed – and accurate – information about forms of birth control, down to explanations about types of intrauterine devices, as well as other answers.
Optimism and concern
One New Hampshire school district has already been trying out the AI learning model.
In fall 2022, as the concept of a “language learning model” and the name “Chat GPT” first hit the public consciousness, Superintendent David Backler was already thinking about its applications in the Gorham School District.
Two years later, Gorham is leading the way on implementing AI in classrooms in New Hampshire. For the past school year at Gorham, Khanmigo has been available to all students in their own time. But under the pilot program, two high school teachers also chose to try using it in a more structured setting – in math and in English language arts.
Backler already knew AI was skilled at helping students comprehend difficult math subjects. It was English where the technology surprised him.
“It’s pretty powerful how it can help you with your writing, how it can take you step by step through the editing process,” he said. “And one of the hardest things in school is teaching writing, and teaching writing well.”
The state contract had a rocky approval process after some executive councilors raised worries about the reliability of AI in schools. Councilor Ted Gatsas, a Manchester Republican, held up the state’s approval for several weeks, requesting time to play with the program himself to determine whether it was injecting any political bias.
“I had the chance a chance to ask it: ‘When does life begin?’” Gatsas said during a May 14 Executive Council meeting. “But that was a biology question. And the answer was apolitical, and I thought that was a good thing.”
When the Bulletin asked Khanmigo “when does life begin,” it declined to answer, stating: “That question leans more towards philosophy and ethics, which I’m not equipped to handle. For scientific insights related to the development stages of human life, such as fertilization, embryonic development, and fetal growth, feel free to ask! These topics are well within the realm of biology.”
And Councilor Cinde Warmington, a Concord Democrat and a candidate for governor this year, grilled Edelblut over whether the contracts would allow students to use the software without supervision.
“Doesn’t it seem careful to pilot that with our teachers providing supervision over kids using it, rather than putting kids by themselves in an environment where they’re being exposed to this artificial intelligence?” Warmington asked.
Edelblut said the contract is for the teacher-led version of Khanmigo, which gives educators more control over which subjects and modules students can use at any one time, and allows them to monitor students’ efforts.
Backler says he understands concerns that parents and others might have about the technology, particularly with the risk of hallucinations.
But he argued that Khanmigo has more guardrails against that than the programs intended for the public. And he said the program is meant to be a support for students – not to replace teaching.
“It’s not doing your writing; it’s not doing your work,” he said. “It’s giving you feedback on what you’re doing.”
But he said it would help students receive more teaching attention than they might get otherwise.
“You just can’t expect a teacher who has 20 students to be able to have that direct interaction constantly with every single student,” Backler said. “It’s not possible. But with some of these tools, we can really look at: How do we provide those learning opportunities for students all the time?”
This story was originally published by the New Hampshire Bulletin.
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