ChatGPT, AI platforms next big thing in learning, education: Deborah Quazzo of GSV Ventures

ChatGPT and platforms built on AI (artificial intelligence) will disrupt the way kids learn and teachers teach, benefiting companies to deliver better teaching outcomes, especially at a time when content and engagement have become the main focus for edtech startups, Deborah Quazzo, Managing Partner, GSV Ventures said in an interaction with Moneycontrol on the sidelines of the Emeritus GSV Summit in New Delhi.

“We are seeing a whole bunch of companies just building on the open source. So suddenly companies can now create new products on top of the AI layer and you are going to see this proliferation of folks building on it and I think that’s just gonna change the way teachers think about teaching and how can they turn kids more proactive,” said Quazzo.

“I think it is going to cause a rethinking of how to best have students learn whether it is K-12 (kindergarten to class 12) or higher education. And when it comes to ChatGPT eating into jobs, I think it's rather going to make people move to more sophisticated jobs. I think ChatGPT will be a job disruptor and will be a catalyst for rethinking, and learning,” she said.

Quazzo’s comments on ChatGPT attain significance as the AI tool that can perform tasks ranging from answering questions to writing fiction and non-fiction has got educationists divided over whether it is useful or “dangerous” for learning.

In January, Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda told Moneycontrol that the technology, while extraordinary, isn’t perfect and is dangerous and disruptive. Moreover, educationists also felt that one of the main challenges of ChatGPT was the threat it posed of plagiarism. However, Quazzo has different views.

“I'm on the board of Turnitin, which is the plagiarism software company that dominates the market, and now the question is, what is plagiarism? We have got to rethink what plagiarism is. What does it mean? Is it only an academic phenomenon, right? When you leave and go into the workforce, you don't have plagiarism,” Quazzo said.

“And so all the ChatGPT applied to the workforce is productivity, right? It's going to help a non-English speaker write an email effectively. We think that's really the catalyst of ChatGPT. While it's pretty head-spinning right now to figure out where you ought to play, we think that's the next wave,” she added.

Quazzo, who started as a banker at Merrill Lynch in 1987, has been with GSV Ventures, an edtech-focused venture capital firm for over a decade now. She has also been on the boards of a lot of Indian education companies, including Simplilearn, Aakash Educational Services, BrightChamps and Classplus.

Bullish on India

Quazzo said that GSV Ventures continues to remain bullish on the edtech sector in India as the country is one of VC’s two major markets. GSV Ventures has invested in over 10 edtech companies in India and nearly 80 companies globally. GSV Ventures counts unicorns like edtech companies PhysicsWallah, and LEAD, and blue-collar job portal Apna.co on its portfolio.

Her optimism on the edtech sector in India comes at a time when the sector has been struggling with a double whammy of the ongoing funding winter and slowing demand for online learning solutions with schools, colleges and physical tuition centers reopening post the pandemic. Some of the most heavily funded edtech companies in India, including Byju’s, Unacademy and Vedantu have also had to lay off thousands to navigathe this downturn.

“We have seen companies make decisions that perhaps would have been more sensible for them if they had done it a year earlier, but they just didn’t. This has led to everything slowing down a bit, but I think it is also healthy,” Quazzo said.

“I think these are cycles and cycles will recover. This (current slowdown) does not feel as deep as the 2000 (dot com bust) or the 90s market crash or even 2008. Companies did not have funds then, did not have enough runway to survive. This time companies have runway but the negative side is some companies have too much runway and there’s gonna be zombies because they don’t have a product market fit,” she said.

Quazzo said that in the current downturn, edtech companies should focus on product alignment. According to her, Indian edtech companies have had “great sales machineries,” but should now now change their focus towards improving their product and content, which will drive growth for them after Covid.

“The easy accessibility to human capital made sales orientation of many Indian companies and not just edtech companies, the easy route,” Quazzo said.

“But my advice is that from now on it is got to be product-led because that is going to drive everything and it should drive the gap down and it should result in the long lifetime value of the learner because you have got a product that’s able to capture lifetime value and that’s what you are going to see companies like PhysicsWallah do, build great communities that keep moving them along in terms of lifetime value,” she said.