What Is LearnLM and Why Is Everyone Talking About It? Google I/O

hey everybody welcome back to Teachers Tech I'm  just at day two of Google IO It's an exciting   amount of product information and lots of AI stuff  One thing that caught my eye was Learn LM and I   got lucky enough to catch up with Ben Gomes here  who is the chief technologist uh sustainability at

Google Learning and sustainability Okay And  um one of the things I'm curious I'm going to ask   Ben about Learn LM but I'm really curious how you  got to Google and you kind of I had a little talk   with you yesterday about education and I could  see the passion coming out and everything I just   like for the viewers to kind of understand that  a bit Yeah So I've joined I joined Google a long   time ago I joined Google in 1999 and I worked on  search for 20 years But even during that time I'd   always been going back to India to uh where I  where I grew up to understand more about the   education system there and I saw so much need and  so I wanted to work on education and learning and   after 20 years I wanted to work on that and so  I decided to do it at Google because I felt like   Google's tools are information tools that are  also used for learning People use YouTube for   learning People use search to learn There's Google  Classroom There's Google Scholar Google Arts and   Culture because we build tools for organizing  information and a key use of information is   learning right So I felt like by working at  Google I could work with each of those products   to further the cause of learning and education  in those products And then the AI revolution   happened right and that uh turbocharged those  with efforts in all across all these different   pro products and you're seeing the effect of that  today with like all of these announcements around   learning in various different products So now with  the one product I already mentioned was Learn LM

and it's kind of caught my attention And I liked  how at the release yesterday on the stage they   talked about it being in 2. 5 and can you explain  how that worked kind of how the fine-tuning is   and where it is now and where you can kind of see  it going So learn started well over a year and a   half ago maybe with this notion that we talk about  using AI to create a tutor for a student But what   does it mean to be a good tutoring experience  and it means several things It means first of   all you need to be accurate You need to follow  pedagogical principles managing cognitive load   following instructions well and many other  principles of that sort So what the team did   was break down those principles and measure how  well we were doing on those different principles   and then fine-tune a model that they called LM  uh to be good on those principles and show that   they could be better than our base models and  better than anybody else using in an evaluation   uh fast forward till today and rather than having  a separate model they have built those learnings   into the core Gemini models So that learning and  those principles are now infused into the core   Gemini model and you can evoke that with the right  kind of prompting of the Gemini models and there   are like really amazing prompts that will give you  like great quizzes I' I've been using it myself   you know as a kind of self assessment of things  that I I've been trying to learn myself and and   so that capabil set of capabilities our hope is  that it will enable the building of much better   tools by teachers by students and so on for better  learning more active learning I think uh what AI   brings to the table is allows learning to turn  become active so you can follow your curiosity   and I think that's sort of if you can do that it's  a driving force behind why learning can be both   interesting fun and effective at the same time I'm  excited when I think about the idea of learnm even

differentiating for students when it's the you  know they give one input and it kind of meets   the student where they're at And you mentioned a  tutor a personal tutor Do you see that becoming   a growing thing in the future where each like I  have a 12-year-old twins and I'm excited as they   go through will they have this way to check their  knowledge you know and learn where it meets them   at Exactly So we have to have a quiz quizzing uh  gem that we launched in uh in Gemini and you can   evoke it by asking for a quiz and I think it works  exactly like that to like begin to quiz you on   what you know that's just a starting point but if  you go into with a prompt you can get uh and we've   got a whole prompt library you can get a much more  elaborate set of behaviors based on uh what you   what you want uh from for your learning process  or for for your stu for for students   uh at different levels of learning and it's just  going to be quite different based on you know at   what level are they studying and at  the same time I think I'm excited because I   think sometimes teachers fear oh they're going to  lose you know they're going to lose their job or   or something but I don't see that I see it just  enhancing their ability I think the role of the   human in learning is fundamental my mother was a  teacher and I think people learn because of other   people Uh and I think that is really uh you know  people are inspired by other people to learn I've   had a chem I had a chemistry teacher in school uh  who was an interesting teacher but he inspired a   generation of people to learn because you saw  his passion for chemistry and that made you   interested in it because he was so interested  in it and uh you know that kind of passion is   what a teacher brings to the for that kind of  understanding of the students and where they   are what their difficulty are difficulties are  I think learning is a very deeply human process   And that's the role that the teacher can uniquely  play Other humans can play too Parents can play a   role there Peers play a role there Uh but it's it  is fundamentally I think a human process Yeah Even

as it goes forward past uh I think when these  students that they can learn to use this this   technology and when they're done school it's the  lifelong learner Yeah That you're creating that   you can access that at any time And when I think  about the other thing like the Gemini live you put   the multimodal aspect in and I just kind of  blows my mind with students are just going to be   talking it's going to be seeing it's going to be  you know thinking about these education principles   behind it So it's quite exciting just  the starting of that journey right I mean uh I   use the example in co I became interested in  uh plants and I'd been interested in plants for   a while but like I could never know the names of  plants because and then with Google lens which is   uh just allows you to take a picture of the plant  and tell you what the plant is I could begin to   learn about plants the way that I wanted to  which is sort of the botany of plants What   are the divisions of the plant kingdom How  are they represented in the world around me   uh why do all these different plants that are  very different in evolution actually have a   similar structure right so there are lots of  interesting questions that I could attack my   own way and I got an abiding interest in plants  and now I have a fair number of them since   uh since that period of time and it's it's  opened up a whole new part of the world for me   that I had always ignored before it's built the  curiosity creativity right took a little germ of   curiosity in me and allowed it to be amplified Yes  Well that's exciting You know thank you so much   for taking the time and discussing this This  is something I'm really excited about I'm excited   about creating some more videos and showing people  how to use Learn LM And I'll put out those videos   soon But thank you very much Ben It was great  talking to you It's a pleasure talking to you