How does Khan Academy use AI in our content development process?

Since Sal Khan began making tutoring videos for his cousins from his closet in 2008, Khan Academy has come a long way. What was then a handful of YouTube playlists has grown into an extensive library of hundreds of courses featuring tens of thousands of articles, videos, quizzes, and over 100,000 questions—all created by Khan Academy’s team of subject matter experts and our talented partners, which include hundreds of world-class educators from such organizations as NASA, the American Museum of Natural History, and the National Constitution Center. Many of our own subject matter experts have advanced degrees in their fields, and they are committed to sharing their passion for the subjects they teach with you—through the creation of courses crammed with engaging and delightful exercises, videos, and articles.   

Humans in the loop

As we enter an age when large language models and generative AI are becoming more powerful and efficient at creating content, we are exploring how to use them to work more productively and efficiently in service of our mission to provide a free world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

Back in late 2022, our small but mighty content creation team started experimenting with generative AI-powered tools. With them, we hope to amplify our voice and increase our impact. For instance, when drafting an article, we sometimes share our outline with an LLM and ask it to make a first draft of the paragraphs. When we’re developing questions for exercises, we might create the first question of each question type and ask the LLM to create first drafts of additional similar examples that assess the same skill.  

We remain committed to crafting our course content with our uniquely human judgment, insight, and intuition. Our 20-person content team has 186 years of classroom experience. Our team is learning to leverage AI, and ensures that every output is carefully reviewed—for accuracy, engagement, and efficacy. 

Two of our company values are “Bring the joy” and “Live and breathe learners”. With the help of generative AI tools in the coming years, we hope to maximize both the amount of joy we bring, and the number of learners whose hearts we inspire with a love of knowledge.