- Oboe is a newly launched AI-powered learning platform for personalized, multi-format courses.
- You can set up a curriculum from simple prompts and make deep dive lessons, audio lectures, games, and quizzes.
- The idea is to use AI to make learning fun, flexible, and low-pressure.
A new AI platform wants to help you learn whatever you want, however you want. Oboe, created by the co-founders of popular podcasting tool Anchor before it was acquired by Spotify, claims to be the first AI-powered learning platform with a curriculum of anything you happen to be interested in at the moment. It’s pretty much how it sounds. You put in a prompt about a topic as broad as the history of rice or as specific as how interest rates work or the correct pronunciation of “pain au chocolat,” and Oboe spits out a tailored course that mixes text, audio, games, and quizzes.
Oboe’s creators are pitching it as a way of reclaiming the human side of learning, based on the “core belief that technology should make humans smarter.” It’s a deliberate counter to how AI could make us all passive content consumers. That’s a big philosophical pitch, but the platform is much more practical. Oboe builds miniature educational journeys very quickly and easily. Oboe greases the gears of learning without removing your participation.
Oboe courses come in many formats, suited to your way of learning. There are deep-dive articles, narrated audio lectures, more informal AI podcasts, visual slides, quizzes, and a game called Word Quest (think a very proscribed version of Wordle). The lessons are designed to have a light tone and to fit the user, rather than funnel them through an AI-shaped lecture hall.
If you have a hankering to learn something with Oboe, you can create five courses for free. After that, there are two paid plans: one that gives you 30 new course creations per month and another for 100 a month, should you be a real education junkie or perhaps running a homeschooling class. There’s a communal side to Oboe as well, with Public courses you can check out and try.
AI education
Oboe promises to provide a more coherent approach to learning than the often scattershot way people might use the internet. Personally, I think libraries and librarians should be supported for projects like this, but it’s definitely a better option than falling into a YouTube or Reddit thread rabbit hole. And Oboe does encourage continuing learning. Finish one course, and you’ll get recommendations based on tone and theme for another one. Notably, there are no ads, at least for now.
The inevitable flaws of generative AI are present, of course. I found a couple of small errors in a quick test on the science of mushrooms, but even that was more of an ambiguous conclusion. Still, there is always the risk of factual error or oversimplification. And since Oboe builds courses so quickly, it’s fair to wonder how consistent the accuracy or depth will be across fringe topics or controversial subjects. Oboe claims that multiple agents within the system are responsible for checking output, not just generating it, to help prevent that from happening.
If Oboe does work as advertised, the question then is whether and how people will use it. To prepare teaching materials? Take a shortcut in academic research? It may just be a good way for people to satisfy their curiosity beyond a quick check of Wikipedia. And that’s not a bad thing when learning things online requires wading through a sea of misinformation and noise to educate yourself otherwise.
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