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LearnVector – Andrew Ng's AI company building one‑to‑one learning experiences

133 pointsby ajhaitoday at 1:49 AM69 commentsview on HN

Comments

EagnaIonattoday at 4:36 AM

> 01 Plans a path with you

> 02 Adapts to how you learn

> 03 Patiently stays with you until you've mastered new skills

1 and 2 any of the big AI companies will do that for you. I have Claude doing this for me for a few learning areas.

3 to me feels like the Duolingo bird.

IMHO, they are trying to solve the wrong thing. People who want to learn will gravitate to learning systems.

If you can find a way to pull in people who don't want to learn, that has value.

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genghisjahntoday at 2:24 AM

Somebody here posted about a Socratic method skill for Claude (or whatever your LLM of choice is). I’ve found this to be fantastic. Dropped in a dense PDF about Linear Algebra, Postgres (those are the two I’ve gotten into so far). It’s basically just a skill.md that reads, “Here’s a document, give me an opening statement about the material and ask me a question. As I provide answers, guide me to simpler or more complex areas of the topic. Something something Socratic method.” Works great.

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sv123today at 3:49 AM

"Conventional wisdom says AI will replace people. I believe the opposite."

So people will replace AI?

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ashu1461today at 3:33 AM

Is it only me or the website looks vibe coded ? the output feels like a standard claude template.

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ilya_ltoday at 6:00 AM

Reminds me of Karpathy's education startup. I think it had a similar premise. What happened to it?

hmokiguesstoday at 2:05 AM

Wait, when you say one-to-one you mean AI to Human? That’s not the same, I’m sorry.

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isubkhankulovtoday at 2:03 AM

Edtech has historically not had amazing venture outcomes compared to saas, ads, rockets, etc.

Given how much people spend on education, there’s no reason AI education software wont be a huge market.

And there’s few people better suited than Andrew Ng to execute this

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yuanBuildstoday at 2:37 AM

I do think Andrew is the right person doing this. Someone mentioned that the return of financial outcome is not good in edTech, and this is exactly why backing by Coursera is a huge advantage. Education-related product is slow, and it needs patience.

The concern, though, is that how to achieve those 3 thesis. Do they train/fine-turn their own model? according to my own experience, the current models are not well trained in personal education context, and it is either too textbook-like or too task-driven.

wxwtoday at 3:36 AM

I feel like this website would have been better off as just Andrew's letter (halfway down the page) in system default <p> tags.

The AI sloppification is palpable.

Anywho, curious to see what comes out of this! EdTech & AI is a really promising space.

madhu_ghalametoday at 5:47 AM

A roadmap showing how learners can progress from beginner to advanced level would add more structure to the learning experience.

ryanchantstoday at 2:10 AM

I'm working on a much smaller idea, but so far it's just me using it for grad school, and a friend using it for his master ciccerone prep. It has been really useful in the class I used it for while building it. Looking forward to playing with more as I start my fall semester(UIUC CS 425, Distributed Systems).

I need to get some model pricing evals in place to see if I can use open weight models to get it cheap enough, since it's just me and not VC money. The real product potential seems to be getting reusable materials like cert prep, continuing education for careers that require it, and the like. But then you're fighting incumbents that fiercely control their moats.

https://studyengine.app/

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Ozzie_osmantoday at 4:06 AM

This looks awesome. I'm very excited about how learning will evolve harnessing AI. I'm also a huge fan of Andrew Ng.

I wish they hadn't raised so much money. I'm not sure "large funding round" sets up the right dynamic for what he's trying to do.

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BobbyTables2today at 3:20 AM

$100M funding is a hell of a lot of money.

Yeah, prominent thing run by famous guy … but why so much funding so early?

What does $100M enable in the next 5-10 years that $25M doesn’t?

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senor_digimontoday at 4:40 AM

I think this is a great space because almost any AI educational product can be measured and evaluated by the end user. For example, does the user improve from using your product and do they also believe they do, and do they also LIKE your product? If not, then they have every right to seek out the perfect AI educational product, of which, I expect a variety of.

Personally, I believe the last 40 years or so of academia has failed at creating the proper reactive curriculum for students, so I'm nearly positive anyone that enters the AI education space has a very good chance of proving to their end users that they can out-teach ... I don't know, the entire NY Board of Education, for example.

It is not bold at at all to say K-12 will be eradicated. Higher Ed not so much because many were always buying the status of higher education anyway, so the status in itself still has value as a product.

benji8000today at 5:05 AM

I wonder what they will do different compared to Khanmigo, which wasn‘t particularily successful wirh full-on AI learning assistance. Support for traditional human learning systems?

starlineventuretoday at 2:23 AM

Ive actually started trying to build games, starting with Roblox, to eventually build a catalog for this same problem. 1:1 learning in the future is probably going to be 80 - 90% gamified because people like playing games. Spent the last 6 months traveling Asia and everybody was playing games on their phones...everywhere. The first game I released is Math Cadet, basically an adventure game to build up math skills for kids elementary and middle school. I have another one in the chamber thats more science related. Any feedback would be great: https://www.roblox.com/games/129132556457079/Math-Cadet-Adve...

gffrdtoday at 5:27 AM

Man, that's a dog of a website.

aphroztoday at 3:04 AM

So the founder of Coursera is starting a new venture backed by Coursera ? That sounds like the Musk playbook.

I don't really get how this is new or even "AI". Can't you already ask Claude to teach you something ?

"Patiently stays with you until you've mastered new skills", that's so nice. Maybe in the future it will be the other way around, your computer will complain about how slow the user is :)

esttoday at 5:07 AM

sounds like mathacademy and many other alike services

real-hackertoday at 4:55 AM

deeplearning.ai context hub codream.ai OpenWorker LearnVector

This guy never stops.

latenightcodingtoday at 3:50 AM

he has like 20 AI companies now.

k2xltoday at 3:17 AM

100M investment from Coursera? Isn't Andrew Ng a cofounder and still chairman?

rramadasstoday at 3:57 AM

The Digital Maieutic: Socrates and the Art of Prompting - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48342887

westurnertoday at 3:01 AM

Andrew Ng's Coursera courses: https://www.coursera.org/instructor/andrewng

ks2048today at 4:12 AM

“Just one more AI company, I swear…” - last words of an AI-company-junkie.

luciana1utoday at 4:17 AM

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