One of my go-to podcasts on my daily walks with Axl is “Work Lab” by Microsoft—a show that interviews various players in different organizations about AI adoption in their respective workplace. On one such walk, while listening to an episode, I heard host Molly Wood announce her guest for the day: Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy. At first, I was a little baffled. I’d heard of Khan Academy the online learning site, but what was its founder doing on a Microsoft podcast all about AI? As the conversation unfolded, my questions were answered and I found myself increasingly drawn in by Sal’s engaging thoughts on AI. The 25-minute episode flew by, leaving me eager to hear more about the man and his mission. Almost as soon as I got home, I looked up his new book on Audible and began delving into what the mastermind behind Khan Academy had to say about Generative AI and its potential to transform the education sector.

Today’s blog post explores that transformation through the lens of Sal Khan’s groundbreaking book, Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing). Khan’s visionary perspective reimagines education’s not as a rigid, one-size-fits-all model, but as a dynamic, individualized journey where every student can learn at their own pace. By cutting through the fears and controversies surrounding AI, Khan shows us how technology can empower both learners and educators, turning potential disruption into an opportunity for profound change.

As Sal’s humble but thoughtful narrative accompanied Axl and I on our daily routine, I recognized the parallels between how Generative AI was impacting the education sector and my own Software Development Industry. Was AI destined to replace educators the way so many say it will replace Software Developers? Sal Khan leads his audience away from the fear of the unknown and closer to the idea that AI is a gift which if used correctly will give us the opportunity to solve some of the greatest challenges in democratizing education across geographical, economic and social barriers.

As I thought more of some of those challenges Sal describes, my mind drifted to the message in Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall, which, as you well guessed, is what I reference in the title of this post.

Introduction: A Call for Individuality

Roger Waters’ classic “Another Brick in the Wall” resonated deeply with generations because it captured the stifling nature of an education system that prized conformity over individuality. The song’s imagery—the oppressive classroom, the relentless marching hammer, and the metaphorical “brick” that each diminishing experience felt by a student in a classroom added to a wall of isolation—reflected a time when students were molded into uniformity. Those who deviated, who thought differently, or simply didn’t fit the conventional mold, often found themselves on the fringes.

Modern Education: Challenges Across Continents

Fast forward to today, and while the education landscape has evolved, many challenges remain. Having a spouse who is a teacher, I’ve witnessed this firsthand through two very different lenses. In South Africa where we were born and where she first became a teacher, public schools are often underfunded and educators wrestle with limited resources, overcrowded classrooms, and outdated materials. These hurdles make it incredibly tough to address each student’s unique needs. On the flip side, in Canada’s well-funded, modern schools (where she now teaches), the challenges are less about resources and more about numbers. Even with state-of-the-art infrastructure, a single teacher is hard-pressed to tailor instruction to the diverse needs of every student.

Despite these differences, a common thread runs through both systems: the struggle to provide truly individualized learning.

Who is Sal Khan?

Sal Khan is the founder of Khan Academy, a nonprofit educational platform that has democratized learning for millions worldwide. His journey began with a simple goal: to provide free, high-quality education to anyone, anywhere. The seed of that journey, though lay elsewhere, when he began helping his cousins with their math homework over the telephone. Because of the distance between each other, he began lessons over the phone, then via Skype video calls and finally, by uploading some videos on a YouTube channel and linking them to a website he made. He needed a name for the channel and his site and more in a tongue in cheek manner, Sal chose the name Khan Academy. He soon added quizzes to measure students progress and after more people started using his site, Mr. Khan made a decision one day to turn Khan Academy into a nonprofit organization. It wasn’t long before he took the plunge by leaving a comfortable hedge fund position to run Khan Academy full time.

While video-based learning sites are a common place in 2025, when Khan academy was founded in 2008, just 2 years after the launch of YouTube, Khan’s idea of an online learning platform was groundbreaking. Khan’s ability to predict where the tech world was heading did not even begin there. In 1999 at the age of 22, when asked by the magazine Computer World on what the tech world could expect in the near future, Sal’s response almost pinpoints the moment we are in today. His thoughts on online advertising and personalized data were as follows:

…That would allow for perfect marketing. “You wouldn’t mind seeing ads, because they would be ads for things you were [already] thinking about buying and would probably [anticipate and answer] all the questions you have about the product.”

Along the same line of reasoning, the data could be used to dynamically produce personalized text or video. “Imagine, for example, news that fills in any background information that you don’t know, or a science text that is written at exactly your level of understanding.”

“This concept of data representation can be extended even further to active data (or a software-based proxy) that could act on your behalf.”

In 10 years, you may have agents that roam the Web and perform transactions as you would have performed them yourself.

The last sentence give’s me chills each time I read it, knowing how Agentic systems have gained in popularity over the last few months.

AI: The Great Equalizer in Education

In Brave New Words, Sal tells how the breakthrough moment for Khan Academy —and indeed for all of us watching the AI revolution unfold—came in October 2022, when he was invited by Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI to try the first version of the GPT-4 model. This was around the time Chat GPT (using the GPT-3.5 model) was about to be released to world and Sal was some of the few chosen by Open AI as a means to lessen the public’s initial fears about AI. In the process he became one of the first 20 people in the world to experiment with GPT-4.

Despite its limitations, GPT-4 fired up Khan’s imagination on the many possibilities that generative AI could drive forward education in a way our current platforms simply could not. Sal talks in depth about what was first described by Educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom in 1984 as the 2 Sigma problem in education. In other words children would improve their levels of learning by 2 standard deviation measurements if they had access to one-on-one tutoring . This early access GPT-4 paved the way for Khan Academy to develop KhanMigo, an innovative chat system that redefines how students interact with technology in the following key ways:

• Socratic Interactivity: KhanMigo is designed to simulate a Socratic dialogue, prompting students with questions that encourage deeper understanding rather than spoon-feeding answers.

• Long-Term, Adaptive Learning: By leveraging GPT models, KhanMigo adapts to each student’s learning journey, tracking their progress over time. This not only supports self-paced and individualized learning but also helps educators distinguish between genuine research efforts and mere plagiarism.

As the world reacted to the release of ChatGPT, with students globally embracing it and teachers beginning to find the lines between plagiarism and AI generated content more and more difficult to discern, ChatGPT and AI in general became infamous in school districts and universities. This notion lead to the technology being banned in many of these settings. Khan acknowledges the plagiarism issues exist but invites us to consider some fantastic ideas that Khan Academy has implemented in KhanMigo to solve this problem. Driven by AI’s ultimate potential, Khan comes to believe that these initial concerns and limitations are temporary and can ultimately be overcome. I’ll leave you to enjoy the book and find out more about his ideas.

While the book covered individualized learning in general, it did not delve deeply into how Generative AI can support students with learning difficulties. Many of these students go years without a formal diagnosis, and even those who are diagnosed often struggle within inclusive school systems. This is sometimes due to the selection and application of key classroom adaptations being left to the discretion of educators. At other times, determining the best circumstances in which to apply these adaptations can be challenging.

Generative AI stands as our best hope for applying learning adaptations in the classroom, dynamically adjusting them based on the content of the learning material. It stands to reason that these AI systems could also help identify different learning challenges early on, providing valuable feedback to experts in formulating a diagnosis.

In the coming years, it would be great to see KhanMigo and other Generative AI tools play a greater role in improving learning in these specialized areas. Even in its current state, this technology has the potential to offer incremental value in supporting students with learning difficulties.

A Message of hope to Software Developers

For those of us in the software industry, Sal Khan’s open-minded and optimistic approach to AI offers a valuable lesson: by ignoring the noise about what AI can and cannot do, we can perhaps find AI’s value in unlocking limitations we currently have in our day to day approaches to building systems.

Brave New Words is a must-read, as it cuts through controversy and fear, offering a vision where AI is not a threat but a transformative ally in education and beyond.

And before I say goodbye, it’s time to cue up Another Brick in the Wall:

“Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” marked a turning point in rock music with its unprecedented chart success and equally fervent controversy. Topping charts around the globe, this track became one of the best-selling singles of its time, capturing the attention of millions with its catchy yet defiant chorus. However, its anti-establishment message—especially its scathing take on rigid educational systems—sparked debates and even censorship in some regions, as authorities grappled with its bold criticism of conventional schooling. The blend of massive commercial triumph and contentious public discourse solidified the song’s legacy as both a chart-topping hit and a cultural flashpoint, embodying Pink Floyd’s unapologetic stance against conformity. – Source: Chat GPT