The Boston Globe, August 2025
In a TED Talk called “How AI Could Save (Not Destroy) Education,” Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, gushes about AI’s potential to give every student in the world a personal tutor and every teacher a personal assistant. To demonstrate the pedagogical potential of Khan Academy’s chatbot, called Khanmigo, Khan describes a scenario in which a high school student writing a report about “The Great Gatsby” was stumped about how to interpret the distant green light seen by the book’s protagonist.
The student prompted Khanmigo to take the form of Jay Gatsby and asked: “Why do you keep staring at the green light?” The student received a straightforward answer purportedly in Gatsby’s voice: “It’s a symbol of my dreams and desires, you see. It’s situated at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock, across the bay from my mansion. I gaze at it longingly, as it represents my yearning for the past and my hope to reunite with Daisy, the love of my life. The green light is a constant reminder of the elusive nature of the American Dream and the distance between reality and our aspirations.”
