by Yizahi on 5/20/25, 12:27 PM
by metalman on 5/20/25, 9:33 AM
I watched a kids face boggle, totaly transparent discomfort and incomprehension as I handed him the correct amount for my purchase at the grocery store.I do this regularly, carrying a good mix of bills and change, some of the checkout kids respond differently, and I see the light go on, and I get a grin, but the most common reaction is confusion, looking at the money, at the display, back and forth, counting the money, entering it, and even
remarks like "it worked!"
But lets face it, if you cant count, and do basic math in your head, or with pencil and paper, there are millions of potential tasks that are going to be much harder to do, just sipmle time management.
The kicker is that if someone NEEDS to husle durring busy challenging events and time, nothing can or will be better than inate skills.So think about a societal/national crisis or challenge , the whole concept of automating basic thought processes is predicated on afluence and plenty, and a lasitude that never ends.
Instead of some alien zombie apocalypse, it's a never ending garden party with milling slightly confused somewhat shabiliy dressed people expressing a general mild angst and triumph is to latch on to some biting enui, again.
by dzink on 5/20/25, 5:05 AM
An easy way to circumvent the AI problem is to ask the kids to read the material ahead of time and use class time for socratic method questions each student has to answer to determine their grade over time. Social media is training the new generations to be fed information - mostly stuff that flushes down the brain with an emotion, but also content. AI can easily create custom courses fit to a child’s needs and add density or adjust pace without being tired. Have them answer questions along the way to adjust pace and you have an educational opportunity beyond measure. The real problem is not that - it’s the US system’s multi use as a credentialing signal. Grading on curves and having kids play zero sum games where there don’t need to be any is what makes bad behavior unethical and unethical behavior a habit at an early age. With AI everyone can have mentors in every discipline (some better that others). So instead of encouraging laziness with laziness, invest in gamifying the degree experience so the more levels a student unlocks the more advanced they are certified to be. You will find abundant qualified people in no time. The real problem is that the current qualified people don’t want abundant competition for high paying jobs.
by ndr42 on 5/20/25, 4:46 AM
What I find strange: my students (german school system, 11th grade) let chatGPT do the creative work (like inventing a character for a play). That was what I liked in school the most.
by rincebrain on 5/20/25, 4:49 AM
IMO, it's because this has been the status quo for many years for people who could pay to cheat their way through the formal process of a degree, and now the opportunity cost is ~0.
I recall it being pretty obvious for a large number of years of my time in the education system which kids were cheating their way through, because they'd be able to parrot crap in writing or do perfectly on take-home things, but mysteriously be crap if you required them to reason about it in the moment.
I imagine we've all met people in our professional careers who could sell you a heater on the beach but can't reason their way out of a paper bag, as well - it's the same problem.
by ggm on 5/20/25, 4:38 AM
What we want education to teach, and what is formally structured into curriculum and what is measured and what is measurable and what is valuable to the individual and valuable to society; they aren't the same, they aren't in the same surface, they co-relate and co-exist.
I think it very likely AI is the chisel which opened up one or many of the cracks but the cracks have existed for a very long time.
I think "what is the education system" is a great open-ended pub discussion topic.
The article makes a very good claim that for people with freedom to chose expensive ivy league education, actual knowledge acquisition is the last thing on many of their minds.
by brockshipalpha on 5/20/25, 4:32 AM
People who don't use AI will be better off. We all know people who cheated--heavily--really do get weeded out (unless they are super rich, in which case they get promoted). I worry about the young cheaters who are dooming themselves by squandering the one chance they get to really learn, and wish there was some way to make them see the long game they need to prepare for.
by OutOfHere on 5/20/25, 11:44 AM
Has everyone lost their minds? Tests in class still work. No phones or other electronics would be allowed in class while taking a test.
by BobbyTables2 on 5/20/25, 4:19 AM
People should talk more about entire states relying on AI to grade student performance instead of human graders…
by charlie0 on 5/20/25, 4:25 AM
The education system needed a rehaul a long time ago, only now with AI, the can can no longer be kicked down the road.
by jay_kyburz on 5/20/25, 4:55 AM
How about you get the kids to write the essay in class, on a computer without network access?
by ur-whale on 5/20/25, 7:27 AM
All this point to is the fact that there needs to be a better testing system for student's progress.
Lock them in a room for 4 hours to 6 hours with a list of carefully crafted questions to answer in writing (rather than ticking boxes) with no access to a computer.
See how AI will help them get out of that one.
And testing student progress on "home" work, give me a break. It has always been broken.
Way before AI existed, all you had to do is hire someone to do the work on your behalf, all the more easy if you're born in a family with money. Nothing new under the sun.
by constantcrying on 5/20/25, 5:33 AM
>Everybody who uses AI is going to get exponentially stupider, and the stupider they get, the more they’ll need to use AI to be able to do stuff that they were previously able to do with their minds.
No. AI can be very helpful when trying to understand new topics. The author does not seem to understand that a technology is good or bad, nor in itself, but in how it is used.
The real question, which is totally unrelated to AI, is: "Why don't students care about their education?"
by amadeuspagel on 5/20/25, 9:27 AM
If a system can be screwed up merely by giving teachers and students access to useful tools, maybe it wasn't that great in the first place.
by ivape on 5/20/25, 4:32 AM
I've been to public school in the US and I can testify that 90% of teachers can easily be replaced. There's literally no two ways about it, the AI can do it better. The basis for this claim is that all real teaching is done on a one-on-one tutoring basis. That's why parents that walk the child through homework have better performing students. Your average teacher in a classroom simply can't provide that to 20+ kids in a classroom.
by jcranmer on 5/20/25, 4:54 AM
I don't think it's so much AI that is screwing up the education system as it is the "STEM über alles" crowd doing so. They've spent decades effectively telling people that it's the STEM fields that matter most, and any investment in education outside of that is frowned upon because it might detract from learning the important stuff. But the truth is that all of the non-STEM stuff is
also important, and in many ways more so than the STEM stuff. I work in a STEM field, and I spend a significant fraction of my time trying to write essays and make coherent arguments; a
good class on writing would probably be more useful than any other class actually required for my degree.
But now we have AI, which means that these people, who lack appreciation for the value of these classes and consequently don't even really understand what it is they lack, are better able to foist their beliefs in the unimportance of a well-rounded education on the rest of us.