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Sep 4-5, 2018: Training
Sep 5-7, 2018: Tutorials & Conference
San Francisco, CA

AI for improving teaching and learning

Varun Arora (Baidu USA)
4:50pm-5:30pm Friday, September 7, 2018
AI Business Summit, Impact of AI on Business and Society
 Location: Continental 5
Secondary topics:  Reinforcement Learning
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Who is this presentation for?

  • Entrepreneurs, higher-ed execs, CIOs in companies where learning is a crucial element, and AI research scientists

Prerequisite knowledge

  • A basic understanding of machine learning and deep learning

What you'll learn

  • Understand the improvements in teaching and learning AI has made in the past six decades
  • Explore tried-and-tested AI techniques in speech, vision, robotics, and more for solving fundamental educational problems in K–12 and higher education

Description

AI has long been treated with disdain by the education community because of its potential to replace teachers with robots. This rhetoric is widely spread even while the country faces one of the most acute K–12 teacher shortages and largest inequalities in achievement in the history of time. Instead of a world where teachers are replaced with AI-powered intelligent tutor systems (ITSs) and MOOCs, Varun Arora presents an alternative future, one where teachers are the solution and AI is an important tool in their arsenal.

Varun shares some of the recent successes in deep learning, reinforcement learning, and knowledge representation and extraction in the context of the most complex teaching and learning challenges in K–12 and higher education today. Varun also dives into some of the more unique challenges faced when building models in the educational domain, particularly as they relate to significant training data, privacy, and lowering bias, and highlights applications of pattern recognition AI solutions in classrooms today, along with data on their effectiveness. Varun concludes by exploring open challenges in the teaching and learning domains, the state of current research, and areas for most impact in education and economy upskilling in America today.

Photo of Varun Arora

Varun Arora

Baidu USA

Varun Arora is a senior AI product engineer and manager at Baidu USA, where he works with AI researchers on productization of deep learning technologies. He is also involved in the development and adoption of Baidu’s deep learning platform, PaddlePaddle. Previously, Varun was the CEO of YC-backed education technology company OpenCurriculum, where he worked with thousands of teachers and hundreds of education administrators in improving curriculum in K–12 classrooms. He has also worked for Inkling, the UN, and a One Laptop Per Child deployment. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree from CMU.