The Los Angeles Unified School District is taking AI where few other districts have gone before. So how does “Ed,” LAUSD’s personalized AI student assistant work?
Superintendent Alberto Carvalho joins senior writer Matt Zalaznick and education reporter Micah Ward on this week’s episode of the “Talking Out of School” podcast to detail how Ed is beginning to support the district’s 540,000 students and their families. Simply put, Ed “addresses every single issue students may be facing,” Carvalho explains.
“It’s your best friend, your concierge, your personal assistant, your buddy,” he adds. “Ed is transforming a school district of 540,000 students into 540,000 schools of one for everyone.”
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Ed operates 24/7, speaks 100 languages and communicates with students and parents as it gets to know the students through district data. Ed, for example, can tell parents if their student boarded a school bus and where the bus is located. It can remind students of sports practices. It also provides a single sign-on for the district’s array of online learning tools and other platforms.
“One thing that Ed is not nor will ever be is a replacement for the teacher or the counselor,” Carvalho concludes. “Ed is a personal assistant to the student, to the parents—it is not a substitute for the organic social interaction that requires face-to-face interaction between a student and their teacher.”
You can listen to the full podcast below on Apple, Podbean or Spotify.
