#331 The Future of Data & AI Education Just Arrived with Jonathan Cornelissen & Yusuf Saber

53 snips

Nov 12, 2025

Jonathan Cornelissen, Co-founder and CEO of DataCamp, and Yusuf Saber, technology leader and founder of Optima, explore the revolutionary impact of AI on personalized education. They discuss how AI tutors can rival human educators by adapting to individual learning needs at scale. Yusuf shares insights on Optima's dynamic lesson delivery model, and Jonathan highlights the importance of customizing learning experiences for organizations. The conversation also touches on future possibilities for AI in curriculum design and the expansion of learning beyond data science.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

AI Could Match Or Exceed Private Tutors

One-on-one tutoring yields much larger learning gains than classroom instruction according to Bloom's research.
Jonathan Cornelissen argues GenAI can scale and eventually exceed the best human tutor's effectiveness.

INSIGHT

Third S-Curve: Personalized AI Learning

The next S-curve in education is AI-driven personalization that adapts to pace and context.
Cornelissen frames Optima as a leading example of that AI-native vision materializing.

INSIGHT

Ingredients Model Enables Dynamic Delivery

Optima separates course 'ingredients' (exercises, examples, figures) from delivery and lets AI assemble them live.
Yusuf says this enables contextualized examples and pace adaptation to prevent boredom or gaps.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

The future of education is being reshaped by AI-powered personalization. Traditional online learning platforms offer static content that doesn't adapt to individual needs, but new technologies are creating truly interactive experiences that respond to each learner's context, pace, and goals. How can personalized AI tutoring bridge the gap between mass education and the gold standard of one-on-one human tutoring? What if every professional could have a private tutor that understands their industry, role, and specific challenges? As organizations invest in upskilling their workforce, the question becomes: how can we leverage AI to make learning more engaging, effective, and accessible for everyone?

As the Co-Founder & CEO of DataCamp, Jonathan Cornelissen has helped grow DataCamp to upskill over 10M+ learners and 2800+ teams and enterprise clients. He is interested in everything related to data science, education, and entrepreneurship. He holds a Ph.D. in financial econometrics and was the original author of an R package for quantitative finance.

Yusuf Saber is a technology leader and entrepreneur with extensive experience building and scaling data-driven organizations across the Middle East. He is the Founder of Optima and a Venture Partner at COTU Ventures, with previous leadership roles at talabat, including VP of Data and Senior Director of Data Science and Engineering. Earlier in his career, he co-founded BulkWhiz and Trustious, and led data science initiatives at Careem. Yusuf holds research experience from ETH Zurich and began his career as an engineering intern at Mentor Graphics.

In the episode, Richie, Jo and Yusuf explore the innovative AI-driven learning platform Optima, its unique approach to personalized education, the potential for AI to enhance learning experiences, the future of AI in education, the challenges and opportunities in creating dynamic, context-aware learning environments, and much more.

Links Mentioned in the Show:

Read more about the announcement
Try the AI-Native Courses:
Intro to SQL
Intro to AI for Work

New to DataCamp?

Learn on the go using the DataCamp mobile app
Empower your business with world-class data and AI skills with DataCamp for busines