(Bloomberg) — OpenAI has hired Leah Belsky, a former Coursera Inc. executive, to be its first chief education officer, leading the artificial intelligence startup’s efforts to bring its products to more schools and classrooms.
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Belsky, who previously served as chief revenue officer of the online learning platform, will be tasked with strengthening OpenAI’s engagement with K-12, higher education and continuing education educators and students, the company said Wednesday. Belsky will also work internally with the startup’s product, policy, marketing and other teams on partnerships and sharing feedback from academia. After OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, the chatbot quickly took off with students — so much so that the product saw a seasonal spike in usage at the start of the school year last fall. Some teachers have tried to crack down on the use of AI in classrooms, fearing students would use it to cheat on their homework. But other educators have accepted that AI is here to stay and have begun incorporating the technology into their lesson plans and research. OpenAI is working to develop partnerships with academia alongside a broader revenue push. In May, the startup released a version of its chatbot called ChatGPT Edu, with more custom controls and special pricing for educational institutions. Oxford University, Arizona State University and Columbia University are among the schools currently subscribing to the product.
“Leah will accelerate our work with leading academic institutions to ensure that people working across disciplines and industries have the training they need to maximize the benefits of AI,” OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap said in a statement to Bloomberg.
To support these efforts, OpenAI said it will host a meeting in October with presidents and provosts of leading higher education institutions to discuss how to effectively and responsibly adopt AI in an academic setting, including for teaching and advancing academic research.
OpenAI’s models are becoming increasingly powerful research tools. The company said its latest model has more advanced reasoning capabilities and performs similarly to PhD students on some benchmark tests in physics, chemistry and biology.
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