Kim Thanos, CEO of Lumen Learning, discusses how generative AI tools disrupted paywalled education providers like Chegg.
0:00 / 0:12exact quote · 12.5s
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“I mean, Chegg definitely had a major market correction because it was so easy for students to say, I'm not going to pay a subscription to access information that I need for my course. I'm just going to go to ChatGPT.”
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More from Kim Thanos
PredictionOpen · timeframe Jun 2030
Thanos: Using ChatGPT for Essays Will Become as Common as Microsoft Word
“Saying using chat GPT is going to become as common as somebody using Microsoft Word to write an essay.”
Kim ThanosJun 12, 2025▶ 35:53Disrupting Higher Education and Embracing AI at Lumen Learning
Insight
Gates Foundation found funding educational websites has a zero percent success rate
“And the program officer said to me, you know, Kim, what you basically proposed is putting up a pretty good website to change education. And we've funded put up a pretty good website. Many times, and it has that effect zero percent of the time. Never works.”
Kim ThanosJun 12, 2025▶ 9:22Disrupting Higher Education and Embracing AI at Lumen Learning
Insight
Thanos: Balancing grant funding with venture capital creates productive accountability tension
“We liked the balance of having some grant funding that was more impact driven and some traditional investment that was more scale and efficiency driven, and I think that tension really served us very well. It really helped us, you know, have to pay attention o…”
Kim ThanosJun 12, 2025▶ 15:38Disrupting Higher Education and Embracing AI at Lumen Learning
Insight
Thanos: Lumen Learning Demos Perform Better Over Zoom Than On Campus
“We've really found that for our demos, we actually do much better with a demo over Zoom than we do a demo on campus, because we want everybody kind of looking at the screen and, you know, you can do that in a more intimate way if you're sitting at your desk th…”
Kim ThanosJun 12, 2025▶ 16:31Disrupting Higher Education and Embracing AI at Lumen Learning
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Thanos: College Faculty Rarely Knew Student Textbook Costs in 2015
“A lot of times faculty members honestly didn't know how much the textbook Cost was for their students. They weren't paying it, and they very rarely got direct information from the sales folks they were working with on exactly what it was going to cost”
Kim ThanosJun 12, 2025▶ 17:06Disrupting Higher Education and Embracing AI at Lumen Learning
Disclosure
Lumen shifted content creation to AI, moving subject matter experts to QA
“In the past we would have our internal team was the gatekeeper in terms of QA, but we worked with many more subject matter experts in the creation of the content. And we're able to balance that quite a bit with generative AI doing content development And then …”
Kim ThanosJun 12, 2025▶ 32:22Disrupting Higher Education and Embracing AI at Lumen Learning
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