Like many other multi-millionaire individuals, like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and others, Quddus Pativada, a native of the United Arab Emirates, dropped out of college in his twenties.
The 20-year-old currently holds the position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a firm that developed ASI, an artificial intelligence-driven tutor that offers personalised help, immediate feedback, and adaptive learning. Its objective is to help students who follow the national curriculum of the United Arab Emirates with their homework and exam preparation.
“I am trying to build a company instead of going to university,” Quddus said in an interview with The Dubai Lands on Monday, outside the “UAE AI Tutor Hackathon,” which served as an experimental launchpad for the AI tutor at COP 28. I took a year off from university after dropping out. Subsequently, we managed to get around $3 million from US and UAE investors. Currently, I work on this full-time, and I wish to continue growing the business.
A month before he was about to graduate from high school in Dubai, Quddus was sitting with a group of friends when he started the firm.
“We began considering methods to facilitate learning. At the time, I was 17. As a generation, we are ‘Tik Tok’. We started off by investigating cutting-edge teaching techniques, having our first FaceTime discussions before Chat GPT became popular. This inspired us to learn more about this area and begin creating our own solutions. The student, who attended Repton Dubai, stated, “Earlier this year we had the chance to collaborate with the UAE Ministry of Education to develop a national AI that has significant potential to expedite the learning journey.”
“We used all of our research to create this tool, which will help students who are following the national curriculum.” The Indian immigrant, who migrated here when he was seven months old, claimed that tasks that formerly took two hours could now be completed in a matter of minutes.
He makes a point of saying that the ASI is an adoptive system for its pupils.
Pativada clarified how ASI differs from other AI tools, stating that it is an educational tool that focuses on establishing curricular material rather than being widely applicable. It underwent many testing rounds, during which time various stakeholders provided input to his organisation.
In order to match the AI Tutor with the national curriculum of the United Arab Emirates, the Ministry provides access to relevant educational resources, curricular guidelines, and statistics.
“The rules are not too complicated. Both the English and Emirati Arabic languages are used for testing. Our objective is to create a tool that performs better than human tools while being available around-the-clock, at a fraction of the cost. Students will find it more enticing because of this particular use case. Because this product is especially tailored to meet their needs, students end up learning a great deal more from it than from a tool like chat.
“Just like a buddy”
It was fantastic, according to Basmla Mohammed Fawzi Alsaid Gebril of Zayed Educational Complex, RAK. The AI tutor really impressed me. The AI instructor was giving me instructions just like a teacher would. It will be much great if voice chat is added.
