School Hack has been launched by a Dubai-based company unapologetically targeting children of all ages in UAE schools. The aim is to help children and schools in adapting to the new models of AI which are already transforming the educational landscape and possibilities for enhancing the education of students.
The company, which has built an app using Open AI (developers of ChatGPT) and DaVinci AI, is going further in its plans to offer an A to Z service to assist with completing homework for children. Unlike the freely available ChatGPT, School Hack is available on a subscription service at $9.99 per month (circa AED36) to complete unlimited homework assignments for students. A “free” service is available using credits which children can “earn” by watching ads and sharing the app with friends.
On the day of its launch in February the app gained 14,000 users. In just three days the app amassed 40,000 users. As of April 2023, the app has over 300,000 users worldwide.
The company explains, however, that the app does not ever truly complete homework. What the app does, rather, is provide the foundations for students to springboard development of their own ideas. Because each student’s interests and questioning is different, so too no one piece of homework will ever be the same. There is no one answer in the advancement of human knowledge. The app aims to assist students push forward the boundaries of knowledge by providing them with an extraordinarily powerful AI tool, using natural language, that has never been available to anyone before now, including students. The aim is that children should have equal access to a technology that aims to transform the world for the better.
Pictured: Muhammed Khalid, Founder and CEO of School Hack and Dubai-based tech space entrepreneur. “We want to make a positive impact on the lives of all children, students and schools” Mr Kahlid explained to SchoolsCompared.com.
Muhammed Khalid, Founder and CEO, School Hack, speaking with SchoolsCompared, explained:
“With School Hack we are aiming to create a $billion company. But that is not our primary motivation. We are a collection of individuals united in our ambition to make a powerful contribution to education in the UAE and worldwide – to improve accessibility and the potential for learning so that no child is ever left behind. The new technology will enable schools and students to push the boundaries of learning in ways unimaginable before its invention. We are based in Dubai because it is a place in the world that is hugely supportive, and at the cutting edge, of both technology and education.
We asked Mr Kahlid whether he saw the potential for the technology to be misunderstood. Will schools and children see it as a way of cheating homework; as simply a way of getting something else to do their homework for them.
“Of course, as with any technology, it is about how you use it and for what purpose. Schools and technologists need to work together to develop the landscape that adapts to the technology to support learning, pushing the boundaries of knowledge and making education even better for children. School Hack has the potential to change education positively.
We asked him to explain, simply, how it works in practice:
“What does School Hack do?
You enter your level of education. The answers School Hack generates will be based on this. so…. let’s say you ask it for a 1500-word, or 2000-word, essay on, for example, Romeo and Juliet. You would then add prompts, for example, “be descriptive” or “emphasise Romeo’s love for Juliet.”
The app will then produce a piece of work, beautifully argued and written, that addresses the question.
In other words, your teacher has given you an assignment. You upload the assignment. We will look at your assignment; understand exactly the assignment you have been asked to do. We will answer it and send it back to you.
However, this is not the end of the story.
Once School Hack has developed this foundation, this is where natural curiosity always kicks in. Students in our tests always found things that they wanted to learn more about. Sometimes they disagreed with the AI. So what happens is then each child begins developing the original question off in endless new directions. I call this the stage the “work with the work.” It is when the uniqueness of each child’s educational journey comes into play.
The possibilities for discovery and learning are endless.”
So this should not be understood as a basic tool to hack the system then at all?, we asked:
Not at all. I want AI to be useful to the education system. Not a detriment.
I want to help students.
This technology actually teaches students and provides answers to questions in real time as they ask them. It answers questions that students are interested in. Unlike Google, it provides information in conversational form – exactly as if they had a teacher with them on their journey. It makes learning interesting, because it speaks directly to the interests of the child using it.”
Asked about the ethics of School Hack, Mr Khalid commented:
“We do not condone cheating. We don’t want that.
Like everything in life, it could be used to simply complete homework. But, in practice, what actually takes place in using it is that students are inspired to ask questions, and engage with the AI. And knowledge flourishes. The result is that no “cheating” happens at all. What actually takes place is an extraordinary journey of individualised learning.”
Why did you call it School Hack?
We wanted a brand name that captures what the technology does and that would appeal to young people. This technology changes learning – and for the better. It hacks education and makes it more individual, exciting, relatable and even extends knowledge. It helps students think differently and creatively about problems in a way that no other technology before it has been able to.”
We asked Mr Kahlid how he sees schools adapting to AI and technology like School Hack:
“AI is going to disrupt the educational system, just as it will disrupt so many parts of our lives.
I believe it has the capacity to make the world a better place – and make education much more inspiring for young people.
In the years ahead we will all have to adapt to it, particularly when hardware attaches to AI. Then huge numbers of jobs are at risk. But so too, many will be created.
To survive, my advice is to get with AI, don’t fight it.
The educational system has to adapt to the possibilities and adventures in learning it opens up.
Once upon a time there was no Google….
Today schools ask children almost as second nature to “Go Google this….”
Now they have to get with AI by asking students to “Go School Hack this, or AI, it.
The world is rapidly changing – and the opportunities for educationalists are enormous.”
The SchoolsCompared View
You can read how questions are being asked already about the risks of AI here. However, this level of AI is here to stay, and School Hack will be one of many apps that are designed to put a simple front-end on AI to help students complete homework.
This is a UAE, Dubai-based company pioneering a transformational technology for education and there are strong arguments that we should support it. Interestingly, in our discussions with the founders, each of them told stories about their own struggles growing up in various parts of the educational system – problems that would not have existed had a technology like School Hack existed then. From dyslexia, to falling behind, from ADHD to Gifted and Talented children, the technology offers new ways of approaching learning that brings it to l;ife for children in ways not possible before.
As above, Mr Khalid points out that there was not always Google. Many, at the time of Google’s launch argued that it too was “cheating.” Today, of course, we take Google for granted and see its positive and transformational impacts on learning. There is no reason to believe that School Hack should be any different. AI promises even more than Google could by transforming the speed, depth and mechanics of learning – and adapting learning to the needs of individual children.
Is this cheating? The question is where the value lies in education. Should it be tied to the old ways we undertook research, or is education much more, with AI, about the depth of answers we can now discover and the new ways of interrogating and developing them that are more relatable to our personal interests and curiosity?
On this basis, School Hack is better understood as an alternative mechanism of research rather than cheating, although many will of course see anything that short cuts older ways of doing things as “unfair.”
We asked School Hack to write us a 3000-word essay on “Why Romeo and Juliet is a poor piece of literature that fails its audience.”
It took the challenge:
Screen shot of the opening paragraph given by the School Hack app to a request to write a school essay on Romeo and Juliet
What we learned is that School Hack removes, initially, the need for students to think through themselves how they would answer a complex question that inverts traditional views of a classic text in literature. Our test demonstrates that there is a fundamental difference between researching facts through Google and answering complex questions through AI and apps like School Hack that may not have been asked before. Its answers made us think – and ask it more questions. We questioned its own assumptions. In short, it enabled us to learn in ways that Google simply could not. We found it inspirational.
Is it cheating? Some may spin it that way, but to do so is to miss the point. AI is here to stay and be as common place as the toaster in your kitchen. The pressing issue is how quickly schools and educators will be able to adapt to a technology that promises so much for children. And that is what, ultimately, matters.
Further information
You can download School Hack on Google Play here and on Apple Store here.
Website: https://schoolhack.ai
Facebook: @SchoolHack-Ai
Tiktok: @schoolhackai
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/DQZ9M79GWg
Instagram: @schoolhack.ai
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