Yanni Kouloumbis & Nour Gajial

Yanni Kouloumbis, a Fullerton resident who graduated from Parks Junior High and Troy High School, is now an AI innovator. Having been involved in robotics since junior high, thanks to his teacher, Mr. Nguyen, Kouloumbis went on to build a mobile app for a local food bank that won the 2020 Congressional App Challenge, all while he was a junior at Troy. With his classmate Nour Gajial at Cornell, he has now taken his innovations a step further and created a Math GPT application for students to get help with math questions. The Observer interviewed the young innovators.

Yanni Kouloumbis & Nour Gajial at a hackathon.

How did both of you meet and develop this idea?

We met two years ago at Cornell in our introductory first-year engineering class and teamed up for the NASA Space Apps hackathon. We won NASA New York State Global Nominees and have since formed a strong technical team, building projects that solve a need.  We’ve worked together in over nine hackathons, winning first at the largest national college hackathon (PennApps) and two Niantic hackathons. 

We created MathGPT because we needed quick help with challenging math concepts before exams but found limited resources. At Cornell, students are only allowed two free tutoring hours per week, which get fully booked during exam season. We endured the struggles of finding help and wanted to build a solution. MathGPT offers on-demand help through personalized chats and video-based explanations.

What makes Math-GPT stand out when compared to Chegg/ChatGPT/other similar services?

MathGPT is the first platform to develop custom AI videos for any question. We were inspired by the effectiveness of video tutorials, like those on Khan Academy, but wanted to make this style of video explanations more accessible and tailored to each student’s individual questions. MathGPT enables students to submit their questions and receive an on-demand AI-generated video with simple step-by-step explanations, diagrams, and comprehensive voiceovers tailored to their individual questions.

What does the business model for MathGPT look like right now? Are you a business/non-profit/student start-up?

Every student may submit up to 7 questions to MathGPT for free every day before they must pay $10 / month for unlimited access to the platform. We are currently self-funded and cover user costs out of pocket. 

We have been off on being remote (Yanni in Fullerton and Nour in Bellevue), but we really value in-person work and are going to be moving to the Bay area as we grow MathGPT. 

We’re currently on leave from Cornell, and this is a significant change for us, but we are thrilled to take the risk and dedicate 100% effort to helping as many students as we can.

What are your future goals with MathGPT?

Our vision for MathGPT is to become the go-to app for videos, similar to what Quizlet was for flashcards. We aim to provide intuitive visual explanations that help students comprehend complex concepts by breaking them down into simpler, easier-to-understand parts. Our goal is to support students as they progress through high school, college, and beyond.

We are currently in the process of hiring software engineers who will closely collaborate with us to enhance our product and invest in marketing channels to reach students. We also plan to significantly increase the number of free videos that students can create and make these videos shareable. Additionally, we are planning to raise a seed round of funding in the upcoming months to accelerate our growth.

How have you noticed students utilizing the software? What are some trends?

Since August 2023, more than 1 million students have submitted questions to MathGPT. We have assisted students with over 4 million questions and are creating approximately 3,000 video explanations daily.

We have found that by being our own customers – as students ourselves – we are able to better understand what our users want. Our top 5% of active paying subscribers use MathGPT over 50 times per day, and we have learned the most from interviewing these top users. During customer interviews, users mentioned that they had not returned to YouTube or Khan Academy for educational videos because they could easily generate videos tailored to their problems right on MathGPT.

How would you answer concerns that educators and parents might have about students using this for cheating?  

MathGPT is designed to provide clear explanations and visual aids to help users understand complex topics. Our main goal is to promote comprehensive learning rather than just providing answers. We encourage students to verify each step on our website. Our success is measured by how much students improve their understanding using our product, so our incentives are aligned with helping students truly grasp the material. Ultimately, we aim to minimize academic dishonesty and hope that students will use these new AI tools to enhance their educational experience, rather than detract from it.

There’s a stigma associated with “AI,” which follows the line of thought: “AI will confiscate intelligence, take over human jobs, forever change the job/social landscape, and leave humans in a worse position than ever.” What does the future of AI–as inventors who have used AI & students–look like to you? 

We think that a future with AI, if done safely and carefully, looks like a future full of abundance. A common phrase used by Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, and in AI circles is “intelligence too cheap to meter,” which refers to a world where intelligence is boundless – and that it can be used for any application. In this world, every human will have access to the best education tools, healthcare, and general quality of life. While some jobs will be replaced, others will be created, and humans have always been able to adapt to new technology in the past. We’re excited about the possibilities that AI brings.

Do you have any book recommendations about AI/tech/math? What have you been reading lately? 

We get a lot of our news and updates from Twitter/X. We’ve found that the latest developments in AI news, research papers, and AI product innovations occur in tight-knit communities.

We recommend hackathons for hands-on experience in building problem-solving products. Andruil participated in a successful Orange County hackathon last year. We want more hackathons in Fullerton to boost the engineering and technology culture.

Try out Math GPT at math-gpt.org