Frustrated by inadequate resources to help students study for advanced placement courses, two Seattle-area high school teens turned to technology, and put AI to work on AP.
Pradyu Kandala and Abhay Chebium are juniors at Eastlake High School in Sammamish, Wash., and the co-founders of Professor AI, an ed-tech tool they started building last summer.
“We started this because we experienced the problem,” said Kandala, an aspiring entrepreneur who is the startup’s CEO. Chebium is the CTO. “We know that if we can use this for our homework, everybody’s going to want to use it for homework.”
Professor AI is “like a ChatGPT for AP courses,” according to Kandala, and is designed to help students via study guides, practice tests or quizzes, course-specific chats, and more. Using AI models from OpenAI, Claude, Anthropic, and Mistral AI, Professor AI is trained on AP-specific curriculum such as AP rubrics, textbooks, and various niche questions.
As artificial intelligence technology has increasingly made its way into the classroom, concern has also increased over the use of ChatGPT and similar software that can automatically generate content and answer prompts. Seattle Public Schools originally banned ChatGPT on student devices before making it available to ensure “students have access to this transformative technology.”
Professor AI is not built to just give kids answers and help them cheat.
Kandala said the goal is to use tech to replace three obstacles impeding how students currently study for AP courses — the college-level classes that some kids take in high school to prepare for higher education. Those obstacles include teachers with too many students and not enough time; tutors that are expensive and less accessible; and self study, which can be overwhelming for lots of kids.
With plenty of competition online promising all kinds of help with schoolwork, Kandala said he feels like he and Chebium are uniquely qualified to tackle the problem. They know what AP students need, they have access to potential customers on a daily basis at school, and they can iterate and make a better product faster because of their connections.
“If I want to talk to an AP student, I can go to class tomorrow and talk to 30 of them instantly,” Kandala said. “Compared to a conglomerate, it would take them months to get in contact with people and have proper conversations.”
Kandala and Chebium are already enrolled in a New York-based accelerator program with Antler.
The company has raised $20,000 so far and is actively looking for more investors.
The startup’s monetization plan is based on a subscription model. There’s a free plan, a $14/month “scholar” plan and an “elite” plan for $29/month that promises unlimited access to chats, messages, classes, math problems and more. In a nod to their student customer base, Professor AI notes that the scholar plan would cost “one Chipotle.”
Professor AI has a small number of mostly high schoolers working as developers and in marketing/content.
https://ift.tt/cpxh5CX April 27, 2024 at 03:00PM GeekWire
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