Student-Built AI Allows Instruction Outside the Classroom

By Caleb Pope

Innovations in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) are not restricted to large companies and foundations. One student at Lake Forest High School has developed two AI programs that aim to supplement the education he and his peers receive at school.

Vedh Krishnan, a junior who created both programs alongside his teacher, Steve Aronson, developed the first program, titled Gigiano AI, which aimed to replicate the way his AP World History teacher Thomas Gigiano lectures.

"What if you could ask the lecture itself a question and get an answer in the same style your teacher would explain it?” noted Vedh Krishnan about the impetus for one of his AI creations.

The impetus for creating Gigiano AI stemmed from COVID-19 and the resulting disconnection between students and teachers due to remote learning.

“Rewatching an hour-long video to find one missing piece just wasn’t realistic when you’re juggling everything else,” Krishnan said. “That’s where the seed for Gigiano AI came from: What if you could ask the lecture itself a question and get an answer in the same style your teacher would explain it?”

Rather than watching these long lectures, students can choose between three tabs on the page, which select between different classes Gigiano teaches. Each tab has lectures for AP Writing, AP World History, and AP European History, respectively, and also contains a dropdown menu that allows the student to select different lectures from the corresponding classes. After selecting, AI is primed to answer questions related to the selected lecture.

Krishnan built AI with humanity in mind. The goal was to create a program that could mimic the tone, punctuation, writing style, and knowledge of teachers. This would allow students to effectively have communication with their teacher outside the classroom.

The second program, Build A Teacher (BAT), allows a student to essentially clone his or her teacher to receive instruction outside school hours. BAT works by uploading documents created by a teacher, which allows AI to create a persona that matches the desired teacher.

According to Krishnan, the focus was specifically on supplementing the education received by teachers, not replacing them or making a robotic chat system.

“My whole motivation has been about strengthening the teacher-student connection, so students can get help in a familiar voice and approach even outside class hours,” he said. “That philosophy is basically the heart of Build A Teacher too: capturing the how of teaching, not just dumping content into a generic chatbot.”

BAT differs from Gigiano AI in its applicable scope. The latter program could only be used by students who have received teaching from Gigiano, but the former allows students from anywhere to have access to this technology.

Aronson, the computer science teacher who mentored Krishnan through the creation process, emphasized the growing importance of AI.

“AI is changing a lot in computer science,” he said. “It is changing so fast; it is hard to predict even the near future.  We as educators need to figure out how to adapt.”

Krishnan completed a large portion of the work for his programs over a summer break, but then his Advanced Computer Science 3 Honors class allowed him to receive help from Aronson for the rest of the project.

During the first quarter of Lake Forest High School’s fall semester, students created an application to submit for the Congressional App Challenge, which must be related to supporting communities.

“The class is very open-ended so that they can see what it is like to bring an entire project to fruition from scratch,” Aronson explained. “Then, after they have written a sample app, they come up with their own idea and start writing it.  I help them with any technical questions or give guidance on how they can improve their apps.”

Krishnan is hopeful about the future of AI and revealed he plans to continue supporting both programs, while adding more guardrails to ensure his creations support student development without being used as shortcuts from the relationship-led education that is at the forefront of Lake Forest High School.

Gigiano AI and BAT are available and ready for all who wish to try out the programs on websites maintained and continuously updated by Krishnan.