Welcome to the podcast. I'm your host, Jayden Shafer. Today on the show, we are talking about a new feature that Google has been rolling out. They are officially going to be offering free SAT practice exams.
This is going to be powered by Gemini, but I think this is moving into AI and education, and we're going to see this in a lot of other industries, a lot of other testing. And this is something that Gemini and Google have really signaled in a big way that they want to get into. So we're going to talk about the future of AI and education and a lot more as we get into all of this. Before we do, I wanted to say if you want to get access to all of the top AI models without having to pay the $20 subscription plan to opening eye and to 11 labs and to cloud and to Gemini and to all of the other platforms, go check out my startup, which is AIbox.ai.
You get access to all of those and over 40 of the top AI models in one place for $20 a month. You get access to all of them and you can actually chat with them all in the same chat thread, which is really nice. So in the middle of a conversation, you can switch from open AI to Gemini to cloud. If you want to Claude's good tone to help you write a document or something, you can get it to do that.
And you also can get it to generate the same response side by side with two different models, and you can see which one you like better as far as answering different types of questions. So if you want to go check it out, it's AIbox.ai. I'll leave a link in the show notes. Let's talk about what Google is doing with the SATs.
So Google is helping out with SATs now. They announced that they're turning their education focus AI tools towards kind of standardized testing. This is the next area they're going to focus on. SAT is the first practice test that's going to be powered by Gemini, but we'll see more in the future.
Students can essentially just go and ask Gemini, you can say something like, you know, I want to take practice SAT tests. And the AI is going to generate a full practice exam at no cost. Now, if I remember when I was studying for the ACT and other college exams, I remember how much pain it was to go. And I would literally go to the library.
I had a textbook that had a bunch of practice exams in the back of it. I would take them. I would time myself. I would go flip to the back and I'd have to grade myself.
There was a whole process to it. And I think there was like this, you know, if I'm remembering correctly, but like my practice, ACT practice book that I purchased before I went to college was it had like, you know, it was like, we have three practice exams in the back of this book, right? Because the whole book is teaching how to take a test and everything you know for the test. And they had three practice tests you could take.
But once you took those three, like you basically would have to go and find a new book or a new source to buy new if you wanted to do more than three practices, which I never actually ended up doing, but I probably showed up as I believe that would have helped me out. In any case, it is incredible that today we're at a place where we're taking SATs at these other tests, you're going to be able to just automatically generate this, get a new one every single time. And this is going to be a huge help for that test, SAT, but I think for a lot of other things in education. And of course, all of this is completely free.
I think my book was back in the day, probably like 70 bucks or something like that because they like to gouge you on these ACT practice exam books. What's interesting though is that after you take this whole test with Gemini, they generate it, Gemini can actually go and review the results and they can call it different strengths. They can flag different weak spots. You know, back in the day when I was doing this, I would go and be like, oh, like I missed these different things and you try to figure out where you want it to study next.
It can make a full study plan. It can explain, you know, the questions that you missed will explain, you know, a thorough detailed explanation and explain why you missed it. And what's cool too is it's not just like, oh, you got this wrong, go study XYZ section. It's like, you got this wrong, but you got it wrong in this number.
So you probably were going down this line of reasoning to get there. And this is what it actually should have been. That is like so incredibly helpful and personalized. So that's actually quite amazing in order to make everything accurate and realistic.
Google said that they're partnering with a bunch of different education companies, the Princeton Review, which I believe is, I think I had the ACT Princeton Review book back in the day. And those are all essentially going to make sure that all of the questions really closely resemble what students are actually going to see on test day. I think right now this has kind of been framed as a potential, I mean, this is definitely a game changer for a lot of students who can't afford private SAT tutoring. But beyond that, I think, you know, by offering this for free, this is, you know, personalized practice.
It's beyond just, you know, free practices, but they're also personalized. I think Google's trying to really help with education and level playing field. But I think at the same time, it's also raising a really big question about how much influence AI should have over how students learn and how you prepare for some of these really high stakes exams. Now, personally, I think this is phenomenal in 101 different ways.
So I'm actually not concerned at all about it. It's interesting to me that Google is partnering with someone like the Princeton Review. I think the Princeton Review can see that this is a major, I mean, competition to their entire business model where they're the ones that have been selling these textbooks for all these years. So, you know, they come with a new one every year with new practice tests and stuff.
And so it's going to be interesting to see how that disrupts their business model. But at the same time, I think it's inevitable that the Princeton Review knows if they don't work with Google or Google or someone else or just go hire people that can kind of figure this stuff out, hire former employees that can help them do this. So I think they're basically, I know other options other than working with Google and trying to take the paycheck there from Google directly because they know that the whole business model of selling these books is, I think, basically dead in the future. I think as far as AI and education, some people think it's controversial.
I think it's an amazing thing. A lot of teachers might be worrying that students could become overly dependent on Gemini or or chat GBT and outsourced to much of their thinking to it. People have argued that if AI does all the heavy lifting students are going to miss out on building some core problem solving and critical thinking skills, some people say that, I think there's a study that might maybe suggested that a lot of those concerns are not basically very founded. Some others were also said, the opposite, they said that excessive reliance on AI tools can weaken independent reasoning over time.
But I mean, things haven't been out for that long. So I think there is not like a huge long term study. And I actually think probably a lot of people listening to this will say, yes, using AI and chat GBT too much, it could be a negative thing. So you definitely do have to learn to strike the balance.
But I just, I hate it when I hear people say like, we got to get chat GBT completely out of the school system because kids are outsourcing all of their thinking to it. And in my opinion, chat GBT has just become another calculator for text and for writing essays and articles, the same way when a calculator was invented. We didn't throw it out. Well, they probably didn't when it first was invented from school.
But eventually we just learn how to use the calculator to do more complex math problems. I think chat GBT is going to help us to do more complex reasoning and essays and articles and thinking. And that's kind of where I would hope to see it. And in any case in the real world, you're not sitting there writing any essays and articles by hand, although I'm sure there are authors out there and writers that are screaming into their headphones listening to me say that.
But I really do believe most writing is going to have some sort of AI assistant and be creative, but you're on stuff as well. I think that's phenomenal. But I think AI is a great place to maybe start or to help you finish stuff and has different things that it's used for. So in my personal opinion, AI and education is incredibly important, especially once you get to a university level, like this is a no brainer, university should be preparing people for their careers and their careers going to be using AI for everything.
So guess you could argue about it from a below university perspective, but university level, I say maximize how much you can use AI. All right, I think right now this is going to be also having a couple other impacts. You know, I talked about like the Princeton Review and how they'll be directly impacted, right? Like, oh no, they'll have less books sales or something like that.
I think this is also going to impact human tutors as well. I, you know, growing up had a friend and he would have his tutor come over every single week to help him with his math homework and help him immensely. I perform a lot better. And so I think this is, you know, that's an entire job that today wouldn't exist.
You'll definitely would have an AI and a system. I mean, even Khan Academy now that they have AI integrated is going to be doing a lot of that. But there's still an element, I think, to having a human there that's actually holding you accountable. So I think we can't overstate, you know, understate that.
It's kind of like it. If you're like, well, my AI can tell me all my gym workouts and all my eating routine, but it's if you don't have a personal coach calling you on the phone, holding you accountable, being like, hey, man, did you do your workout today? Like, here's like your meal plan. Did you stick with it last week?
Like, if you know you're accountable to that person and it's a real human that's going to call you on the phone, it's a lot harder to say you didn't do it. Whereas, I mean, you could probably simulate a lot of that stuff with AI, even the phone calls and how like an AI call you and ask you what your update is on things. But if you're like, eh, it's an AI, like it's not going to judge me. Basically, like it's, maybe that sounds bad, but like that, that human that you're paying on the other end of the phone that is judging you and telling you, you got to do better and can't like mess up on the stuff.
Like, there is some value to that. And that's what you're paying for it, right? Because that's how you're going to get results. So I think human tutors, I don't think are going to be completely kicked out because especially when it comes to kids studying for things, if it's like their parents want them to study, a human tutor is going to actually make sure that that happens versus, you know, maybe they're on the computer and, you know, that's actually, you know, that's what they're doing.
This latest announcement follows Google's recent launch of a bunch of other Gemini powered education features that had a tool that lets teachers create podcast style audio lessons, which is trying to be a little bit more engaging to Gen Z students. They also have some Gemini tools to help educators brainstorm ideas or to build lesson plans to customize learning materials. I think Google really is planning to keep pushing deeper into education is kind of a big area. I think it knows that this is a high use area.
And if they can build some of these really customized tools that help people, whether that's for planning or for actually studying for specific tests, I think they're going to see a lot of lift from that and a lot of usage. So it's going to be a good direction for them. And plus it just feels like it's a good area. It's good for the branding and the branding to be like, you know, we're the number one AI for educators.
It's going to be good for the branding. So no doubt that's an angle of it as well for Google. All right. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today.
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