The company’s goal is not to use AI to lessen the involvement of its human teachers. Instead, it aims to augment their expertise in a way that scales way, way up. The company’s largest class so far has had about 1,000 students, but 7,500 people have signed up for its upcoming free course on building AI products using OpenAI technology, which it’s producing in partnership with OpenAI itself. Back in 2021, when Stiglitz and her cofounders were roughing out a game plan for their startup, believing that AI could give a huge cohort of learners a more personal form of education required a leap of faith. Now Uplimit’s AI assistant, dubbed Cobot, answers students’ questions, analyzes their programming code, and even provides moral support. The company is also deploying AI to aid instructors as they put together their course plans.
