Why AI is an even bigger deal than you think | Reed Hastings

**Elise Hu** (0:04)
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu.
Entrepreneur and philanthropist Reed Hastings is probably best known as the co-founder of Netflix. But a big part of his life's work has actually been in education. For decades, he's funded schools, supported education nonprofits, and served on the board of Khan Academy. Even after all that, he thinks we're still up against the same fundamental problems in education.

**Reed Hastings** (0:33)
I've been working for the last 25 years to try to find ways to make schools work better and have better outcomes for kids. And I would say after a billion dollars in 25 years, we're down below where I started. So it's a hard problem.

**Elise Hu** (0:49)
In this conversation with Sal Khan, TED's vision steward and the CEO of Khan Academy, the two discuss why the classroom model itself may be part of the challenge, especially when one teacher is trying to reach a whole room of kids who are all learning at different speeds. For Reed, this led him to AI, which opens up the possibility of something more individualized and not as a tool to replace teachers, but to change what they're able to focus on and what kind of support students might be able to get.

**Reed Hastings** (1:18)
I would say the biggest uncertainty for everybody is how fast is the AI getting better and how fast will it be getting better going forward. And then that changes your views and assumptions.

**Elise Hu** (1:30)
Reed, who recently joined the board of Anthropic, talks about what AI could mean not just for education, but for work, jobs, and the future we're preparing kids to enter. It's coming up right after a short break.
And now, our TED Conversation of the day.

**Sal Khan** (1:55)
So Reed, education, which a lot of people, I don't know how many know how active you are in education, education philanthropy, charter schools, et cetera. What are you doing in that space?

**Reed Hastings** (2:06)
Well, I'm on board with Khan Academy, and generally I've been working for the last 25 years to try to find ways to make, in particular, US schools, but some international work better, and have better outcomes for kids. And I would say, after a billion dollars in 25 years, we're down below where I started. So it's a hard problem.

**Sal Khan** (2:29)
And what do you, you know, we heard about the risks of EdTech, but you are investing in EdTech, you're giving to EdTech. What are your thoughts? What's the trade-off there? Why do you continue to potentially believe there?

**Reed Hastings** (2:42)
You know, in the 18th century, most factories were steam engine driven. They have a big steam engine, rotating rods and pulleys and belts, and drove the factory, very efficient. And then electricity came in and they replaced the steam engine with an electric engine, thinking that it was going to help a lot, and productivity didn't increase at all, and they were puzzled. And then they realized the limiting factor is the power distribution system, all these spinning rods and mechanical power. And they ripped that out and just put in small electric motors for each device, then they could move things around, fit them in better, because it wasn't aligned to the spinning. They could have variable speed, turn different motors on and off, and then productivity increased dramatically. So that's a classic kind of economic surprise lesson. And it's always stuck with me because I think that's what we're seeing, which is we keep doing things to improve classroom education, but the fundamental power distribution is 25 kids stuck at the same level. And that the friction that that creates, which is roughly a third of the kids are behind, a third of the kids are bored and above, and a third you're teaching to, is the fundamental friction in our mass education system.
And the theory is if each of us had an individual human tutor, so imagine you go to school, you have your normal social activities, but when it comes to learning, you get an individual who's going to sit down with you, and then they could do Khan Academy or they could do Color Book or whatever is appropriate, that learning would be massively increased. And there was a famous study 40 years ago, Bloom, that documented this.
And now a friend of mine, Ben Summers, is redoing that study, but at much bigger scale. And I think what we're going to see is the key to much more learning, where middle school kids know all of the high school curriculum, high school knows all of the college, much better outcomes will be individualized education.