NSF has recently established a National AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education (AI-ALOE) headquartered at Georgia Tech. The AI-ALOE Institute seeks to address the societal challenges of lifelong learning, workforce development, and reskilling and upskilling of millions of American workers. Online education offers an affordable medium for taking education to workers where they live. AI-ALOE will develop new AI technologies that enhance cognitive engagement, teacher presence, social interaction, and self-directed learning in online education, and thereby improve its quality for adult learners in STEM disciplines. In addition to these use-inspired AI techniques, AI-ALOE will conduct foundational AI research on personalization of learning at scale, interactive machine teaching, mutual theory of mind, and participatory design of sociotechnical systems for responsible AI. I will describe AI-ALOE’s vision, goals and plans, using examples from my research laboratory for illustration.