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Sandra Liu Huang on Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s Renewed A.I. Push in Schools

“Technology should empower teachers rather than try to replace the human relationships at the heart of learning," President of Learning Commons Sandra Liu Huang said.

In 2015, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, pledged the vast majority of their wealth to launch the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), driven by a broad and ambitious goal to “build a more inclusive, just, and healthy future for everyone.” In the decade since, Zuckerberg’s tech empire underwent sweeping overhauls, including a high-profile rebranding to Meta, in response to shifting tech landscapes and a maturing founder’s evolving vision. New technology, specifically the rise of A.I., eventually forced a reckoning for his family philanthropy. Last year, CZI restructured its mission into two independent pillars: Biohub, focused on A.I.-driven scientific and biomedical research; and Learning Commons, an initiative dedicated to building open A.I. infrastructure for K–12 education.

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At the helm of Learning Commons is Sandra Liu Huang. A seasoned product manager with stints at Google, Facebook and Quora, Huang joined CZI in 2017 as head of technology before narrowing her focus on education. She faces an intriguing question for product managers: How do you apply Silicon Valley discipline to public-good tech where the ultimate metric isn’t user retention or revenue, but meaningful societal impact?

Today’s schools stand at a chaotic crossroads. Teachers and students are overwhelmed by a fragmented sea of A.I. tools, which threaten to derail learning with shortcuts and hallucinations. In an interview with Observer, Huang broke down what Learning Commons is actually building and how its tools are deployed in real classrooms. More importantly, s

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Observer: You spent years in product development at Google, Facebook and Quora before leading product at CZI and now presiding over Learning Commons. How is building a “product” at a philanthropic organization fundamentally different than at a tech startup? And how do you define success?

Sandra Liu Huang: The fundamentals of building a great product are actually pretty similar: you have to understand the problem deeply, build alongside the people you’re trying to serve, and keep listening and iterating based on what works. But the key differences for a philanthropic organization typically lie in........

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