It's Breathtaking How Fast AI Is Screwing Up the Education System(gizmodo.com)
gizmodo.com
It's Breathtaking How Fast AI Is Screwing Up the Education System
https://gizmodo.com/its-breathtaking-how-fast-ai-is-screwing-up-the-education-system-2000603100
69 comments
Nymag article referenced by Gizmodo is great: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/openai-chatgpt-ai-ch...
Discussed a couple weeks ago: Everyone is cheating their way through college - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43914834 - May 2025 (170 comments)
Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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.
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.
> 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
I agree with all else but I get a different impression here.
The unethical behavior really ramped up not with participation trophies per se, but around the same time we started gamifying everything. People treated each other like NPCs in GTA to abuse for their own amusement or advancement. On the internet we stopped being people and became targets to destroy. Nothing appeals to psychopathic behavior like turning any environment into a feedback loop of reward-seeking.
"Gamifying" life should give anyone pause when you witness how people act within existing game systems. How much effort is spent policing fraud, abuse and antisocial behavior within zero-stakes environments of games themselves? Multi-player Minecraft is unplayable unless you band together into tribal cliques with private servers (de-facto ingroup "racism" with no inclusivity clause for trolls); otherwise random people will log in, destroy your world on purpose and leave. We see similar behavior in real life from terminally-online types committing arson and trying to bait law enforcement into killing people. It's not coincidental.
Gamifying anything drives a competitive environment in which people are compelled to win (dominate) by any means necessary. It's not ethical to force opponents into bankruptcy by ruthlessly exploiting them, but it's the literal point of Monopoly.
School itself is gamified through the reward of grades and privileges. The system you describe is the one we already have. People will always have incentive to cheat to get ahead, especially when competing for or trying to retain tenured positions.
I agree with all else but I get a different impression here.
The unethical behavior really ramped up not with participation trophies per se, but around the same time we started gamifying everything. People treated each other like NPCs in GTA to abuse for their own amusement or advancement. On the internet we stopped being people and became targets to destroy. Nothing appeals to psychopathic behavior like turning any environment into a feedback loop of reward-seeking.
"Gamifying" life should give anyone pause when you witness how people act within existing game systems. How much effort is spent policing fraud, abuse and antisocial behavior within zero-stakes environments of games themselves? Multi-player Minecraft is unplayable unless you band together into tribal cliques with private servers (de-facto ingroup "racism" with no inclusivity clause for trolls); otherwise random people will log in, destroy your world on purpose and leave. We see similar behavior in real life from terminally-online types committing arson and trying to bait law enforcement into killing people. It's not coincidental.
Gamifying anything drives a competitive environment in which people are compelled to win (dominate) by any means necessary. It's not ethical to force opponents into bankruptcy by ruthlessly exploiting them, but it's the literal point of Monopoly.
School itself is gamified through the reward of grades and privileges. The system you describe is the one we already have. People will always have incentive to cheat to get ahead, especially when competing for or trying to retain tenured positions.
Grades are a competition with yourself. The grading curves where a certain % has to have a low grade even if they answer 90% of their test correctly. Curves means that if someone does close to as well as you they became an enemy instead of a future teammate.
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.
Everybody likes a different part of school the most. That's part of the joy of life.
It’s not always that simple.
Creativity is not a tap that you turn on and off. Sometimes it is hard to be creative, even if you enjoy it. Even if you are good at it.
When a student feels pressure to perform, and they have an LLM to fall back on, they can poison the well of their creativity. LLMs are that tap that they can always turn on.
Then soon enough they no longer want to put in the effort. Why, when an LLM can do it perfectly right now?
Creativity is not a tap that you turn on and off. Sometimes it is hard to be creative, even if you enjoy it. Even if you are good at it.
When a student feels pressure to perform, and they have an LLM to fall back on, they can poison the well of their creativity. LLMs are that tap that they can always turn on.
Then soon enough they no longer want to put in the effort. Why, when an LLM can do it perfectly right now?
> Then soon enough they no longer want to put in the effort. Why, when an LLM can do it perfectly right now?
Assuming we get to the point where the output of these models is adequate for the task, I don't think that's a problem.
Sure, we'll end up with many fewer poets, playwrights, songwriters, photographers, and the like - but those we do have will be doing it because they're passionate about it. They'll be doing it in spite of the economics, not because of them.
I'm in my 40s, and very much a software engineer at this point. I don't want to do anything else professionally if I can help it. Yet, I have a Fujifilm X-Pro3 sitting on my desk right now. I've got about $5k in lenses in my bag, and still love photography. I've done it professionally. I know with certainty that I can sustain my family on it as a career, and I know how much work that is. I'm not interested.
Instead, I'm mostly the "official photographer" for my wife's side businesses. I take on jobs here and there for friends and acquaintances when they seem fun and interesting. I do just enough to keep my name out there in the community, so I can fall back to it if my "real job" goes away unexpectedly -- which is always a possibility working for startups!
Basically, I do think creative fields will shrink significantly. I agree that we'll see AI-generated art used more and more frequently. The quality will improve - though, honestly, there is already a market of almost unlimited size that wasn't being served by humans because the expected value of those works didn't justify their creation.
In fact, that's also a good point: a rise in AI-generated art usage does not necessarily mean a fall in human-created art. I think it will mean less human art and fewer human artists in time, but that may not be the case. It very well could be the case that most brands use AI, but those that want to set themselves apart as particularly high quality or luxury will lean more heavily on human artists than ever before.
Assuming we get to the point where the output of these models is adequate for the task, I don't think that's a problem.
Sure, we'll end up with many fewer poets, playwrights, songwriters, photographers, and the like - but those we do have will be doing it because they're passionate about it. They'll be doing it in spite of the economics, not because of them.
I'm in my 40s, and very much a software engineer at this point. I don't want to do anything else professionally if I can help it. Yet, I have a Fujifilm X-Pro3 sitting on my desk right now. I've got about $5k in lenses in my bag, and still love photography. I've done it professionally. I know with certainty that I can sustain my family on it as a career, and I know how much work that is. I'm not interested.
Instead, I'm mostly the "official photographer" for my wife's side businesses. I take on jobs here and there for friends and acquaintances when they seem fun and interesting. I do just enough to keep my name out there in the community, so I can fall back to it if my "real job" goes away unexpectedly -- which is always a possibility working for startups!
Basically, I do think creative fields will shrink significantly. I agree that we'll see AI-generated art used more and more frequently. The quality will improve - though, honestly, there is already a market of almost unlimited size that wasn't being served by humans because the expected value of those works didn't justify their creation.
In fact, that's also a good point: a rise in AI-generated art usage does not necessarily mean a fall in human-created art. I think it will mean less human art and fewer human artists in time, but that may not be the case. It very well could be the case that most brands use AI, but those that want to set themselves apart as particularly high quality or luxury will lean more heavily on human artists than ever before.
Replace "no longer want" with "unable to". The ability will have completely atrophied.
True, I am the least creative person I know and abhor any kind of art. Such an assignment would have me recoil in horror.
What I liked most about school was not having school. Thankfully after I left the German school system and finally was allowed to learn something in university I enjoyed that.
I don’t see why we don’t move kids more quickly to a university style education if they show that they can handle it. The 7 hour of class time per day (but don’t worry, you can do your homework in class) doesn’t seem that great anymore, it’s just a grind and sets you up for real failure when real learning begins in college (3 hours of classes a day but 9-12 hours of homework/studying).
Most people will put in the least effort they can possibly get away with. Indulging this and training this habit in a generation of students is not going to go well.
The system is already badly misaligned. Even ambitious students may consider it a better use of their time to use tools like LLMs to grind out more standardised points than use them to gain deeper understanding of a subject they may not consider important. Any STEM student targeting finance is basically uninterested in most of the subject matter, for example. This also far predates AI.
The suckers who actually want to learn will get even more badly screwed in such a system unless the assessment is balanced to favour actual knowledge. And not only at final assessment but from start to end because if you get screwed in the short term because your low marks while you get to grips with the subject gets you penalised, it takes a lot of foresight and fortitude not to buckle and just spam for points. Doing it "right" requires more teacher engagement, more parental engagement and generally more autonomy, effort and money all round. And even then you have the ever present problem of which group do you spend each marginal unit if effort on: the stronger or weaker students?
The suckers who actually want to learn will get even more badly screwed in such a system unless the assessment is balanced to favour actual knowledge. And not only at final assessment but from start to end because if you get screwed in the short term because your low marks while you get to grips with the subject gets you penalised, it takes a lot of foresight and fortitude not to buckle and just spam for points. Doing it "right" requires more teacher engagement, more parental engagement and generally more autonomy, effort and money all round. And even then you have the ever present problem of which group do you spend each marginal unit if effort on: the stronger or weaker students?
> The system is already badly misaligned. Even ambitious students may consider it a better use of their time to use tools like LLMs to grind out more standardised points than use them to gain deeper understanding of a subject they may not consider important. Any STEM student targeting finance is basically uninterested in most of the subject matter, for example. This also far predates AI.
That's not a misalignment. That's your "ambitious student" is being unwise and stupid. To this day, I have gaps in my knowledge and skills that I regret because I avoided things that I, in my childishness, did not consider "important" or "interesting." AI is going to make that far worse.
That's not a misalignment. That's your "ambitious student" is being unwise and stupid. To this day, I have gaps in my knowledge and skills that I regret because I avoided things that I, in my childishness, did not consider "important" or "interesting." AI is going to make that far worse.
Maybe, but you can also get into some very lucrative careers by grinding points, cheating, colluding and generally gaming the system. I know of lots of people who got top-class STEM degrees and yet had barely any actual skills in the subject beyond what they needed to pass exams. They don't give a fuck they didn't really understand thermocouples or river formation or whatever. They answered the formulaic exam questions by rote and checked every marking criteria of the list for their coursework.
If AI makes their kids miscalculate and end up failing in a revamped AI-resistant educational system that actually requires learning to pass, I'll laugh.
If AI makes their kids miscalculate and end up failing in a revamped AI-resistant educational system that actually requires learning to pass, I'll laugh.
> you can also get into some very lucrative careers by grinding points, cheating, colluding and generally gaming the system
Or, more likely, you're going to fail because you can't do the things you need to do to be successful in said careers. Or, at least, you're going to struggle because you're not very good at it.
I've met plenty of bad engineers, and let me tell you, their job seems a lot more stressful than mine. I'll pass.
Or, more likely, you're going to fail because you can't do the things you need to do to be successful in said careers. Or, at least, you're going to struggle because you're not very good at it.
I've met plenty of bad engineers, and let me tell you, their job seems a lot more stressful than mine. I'll pass.
Failing kids are a detriment to society as a whole. If there is a generational step backward in human capability we’ll all suffer for it.
Unwise and stupid people sometimes "get into some very lucrative careers?" Film at 11. "The problem currently exists in a less severe level" is not any justification for making that problem worse.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't think anyone would debate that the education system has cracks (in any country, I'm from aus) or is imperfect. The debate here is how BIG of a 'crack' AI is causing in the education system.
Brand new teachers design a lesson plan using two sentences and AI, students answer it using a screenshot and AI. I'm struggling to see who learned what there.
All we do is end up with teachers that don't know how to teach, and students that learn little.
Personally I feel there is a step change towards a poorer education, but others may not. I think it's worth debating this particular topic. Or tackle education as a whole...but that feels intractable.
Brand new teachers design a lesson plan using two sentences and AI, students answer it using a screenshot and AI. I'm struggling to see who learned what there.
All we do is end up with teachers that don't know how to teach, and students that learn little.
Personally I feel there is a step change towards a poorer education, but others may not. I think it's worth debating this particular topic. Or tackle education as a whole...but that feels intractable.
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.
One chance they get to learn? You can learn any time at any age... You should never stop learning and try to learning a little something every day or at least every week.
It's not that simple, it's not just about the specific things they miss out on learning, they're not developing the framework for how to learn, and fundamentally they're not developing a positive relationship with curiosity, learning, and problem solving as valuable and desirable skills.
We know that behavioral and cognitive patterns develop at a very young age, soon become ingrained, and usually affect the rest of our lives in one way or another. Kids who are never disciplined grow up to be entitled spoiled brats, so what do you think will happen to kids who habitually delegate any work that requires even modest cognitive effort to a black box?
I don't buy the argument that this is just another technical development that makes things easier and more efficient. The WWW made information easier to find than searching for books in a library and reading them, but fundamentally you still have to read the material, understand it, and apply it to your work. LLMs can just finish students' assignments for them and they don't even have to read it or spend spend any energy thinking about it.
We know that behavioral and cognitive patterns develop at a very young age, soon become ingrained, and usually affect the rest of our lives in one way or another. Kids who are never disciplined grow up to be entitled spoiled brats, so what do you think will happen to kids who habitually delegate any work that requires even modest cognitive effort to a black box?
I don't buy the argument that this is just another technical development that makes things easier and more efficient. The WWW made information easier to find than searching for books in a library and reading them, but fundamentally you still have to read the material, understand it, and apply it to your work. LLMs can just finish students' assignments for them and they don't even have to read it or spend spend any energy thinking about it.
Yes but dedicating the same amount of time as kids or young adults do to school while also working full-time as an adult is exhausting. I washed out on my first go at college, and going back several years later took me 6 years to finish what was 4 semesters of credits back when I wasnt having to work 40 hours a week AND squeeze in classes when I can at night or early morning.
Once you’re out on your own it’s very difficult to dedicate yourself to learning as a full time job for a decade plus. The world expects the foundation to already be in place.
First you need to learn how to learn. You are doing a survivorship bias: you already know how to learn.
True - but you learn better when young and make use of it longer than if you learnt it later
i personally disagree with this because i, along with many others, simply see school as a means of qualification for certain jobs and internships. sure, there is useful knowledge obtained along the way of a degree, but i think for many people theyd be better off spending less time on subjects that arent relevant towards their goals, which using AI can enable them to do.
for example: if you had repetitive busywork for homework assignments, it doesnt make sense to spend a lot of time on it, once you have proven to yourself that you know how to do it anyway.
for example: if you had repetitive busywork for homework assignments, it doesnt make sense to spend a lot of time on it, once you have proven to yourself that you know how to do it anyway.
that's a shame. because school is a lot more than that. learning a breadth of subjects has been shown to improve overall knowledge and learning skills. but i get it, you and your many others are not cut out for a broader education. that's what vocations are for. we aren't all the same clones, humans are diverse.
I want to upvote the first half of your post, the part about school being about learning a breadth of subjects. I believe that wholeheartedly, and I believe pursuing knowledge, thinking critically about the world, and engaging with your peers on an intellectual level makes for a more fulfilling "life," something more than just a way to pay the bills or becoming a good cog in the machine of the economy.
But the second half of your post is kind of mean-spirited. "You and many others are not cut out for a broader education," is a rude, elitist way to call someone stupid. With few exceptions, I think practically anyone is "cut out" for higher education. What that education looks like is obviously different for each person, but that's as it should be, as the world is so vast that the human race can only somewhat learn a significant portion of it all if we all learn something a little (or a lot) different.
The university system is a special time and place that society has carved out where individuals can prioritize learning and experimenting above all other considerations, including (ideally) their job or paying bills. It's amazing that society has prioritized this kind of self-actualization, and "societal-actualization." It's maybe one of our greatest achievements! Anything that cheapens that experience is a shame, whether that is the belief that one's primary value is only equal to what they contribute to the economy, the outrageous costs of college tuition, or the allure to use ChatGPT and similar tools to net easy wins at the expense of building a wonderful mind.
But the second half of your post is kind of mean-spirited. "You and many others are not cut out for a broader education," is a rude, elitist way to call someone stupid. With few exceptions, I think practically anyone is "cut out" for higher education. What that education looks like is obviously different for each person, but that's as it should be, as the world is so vast that the human race can only somewhat learn a significant portion of it all if we all learn something a little (or a lot) different.
The university system is a special time and place that society has carved out where individuals can prioritize learning and experimenting above all other considerations, including (ideally) their job or paying bills. It's amazing that society has prioritized this kind of self-actualization, and "societal-actualization." It's maybe one of our greatest achievements! Anything that cheapens that experience is a shame, whether that is the belief that one's primary value is only equal to what they contribute to the economy, the outrageous costs of college tuition, or the allure to use ChatGPT and similar tools to net easy wins at the expense of building a wonderful mind.
Has everyone lost their minds? Tests in class still work. No phones or other electronics would be allowed in class while taking a test.
People should talk more about entire states relying on AI to grade student performance instead of human graders…
Little Bobby Tables has a pretty good point here. Isn't it true that standardized testing has relied on computerized grading for at least 40 years? I recall taking the ITBS in Catholic School and, in those days, our digital overlords were so strict about the way we marked our sheets. We required special punch-card shaped forms. We absolutely required a #2 Pencil and this was drilled into our heads along with our parents who purchased #2 Pencils or we would be tarred and feathered. We were strictly forbidden from coloring outside the little ovals or boxes with our pencils. We were drilled on exactly how to erase and how to fix up mistakes in every case. We were instructed on whether guessing was encouraged or penalized.
It was not uncommon for a kindly, well-meaning Sister to slightly nudge a struggling student toward a correct answer, though it never happened to me personally. Yes that's right -- when you standardize testing, the teachers become the cheaters, because they have a vested interest in seeing students excel and driving up their institution's own rankings.
In fact my very recent student career was rather dismaying, because I encountered more than one teacher who was more than willing to cross a line and help a student into a better grade than what they could earn on their own. I didn't think it was fair, that I worked my ass off for grades and teachers would just basically join in the cheating. In fact, I tanked a grade in one class because I was incensed about the teacher's behavior. I blew up some important coursework and I directly, sternly told him not to fix up my grade. It was only a "B" but I was so pissed, at that point!
In the end, all our cards were sent off, literally to Iowa, I guess, and fed into giant A.I. machines and graded without human intervention. But our results were very human indeed. I have no reason to believe that our digital overlords failed to grade our S.A.T.s in the same manner, but the regime was slightly looser as we progressed through high school.
In a way, you can say that I lost my job to A.I. in 2024, because indeed I was tasked with grading student submissions, and by the time I was resigning about half of our workload was turned over to auto-testing multiple-choice quizzes and such that would be scored in the LMS itself.
While I personally rarely determined blatant A.I. usage to solve our homeworks, plagiarism was rampant and students were constantly copying from a very small pool of solved homeworks that were publicly posted. Some more savvy students paid a subscription for a cheating website that would provide even more content to them.
But indeed, if educators have relied so heavily on A.I. to produce and grade materials on our end, I suppose it was only a matter of time before turnabout is fair play.
It was not uncommon for a kindly, well-meaning Sister to slightly nudge a struggling student toward a correct answer, though it never happened to me personally. Yes that's right -- when you standardize testing, the teachers become the cheaters, because they have a vested interest in seeing students excel and driving up their institution's own rankings.
In fact my very recent student career was rather dismaying, because I encountered more than one teacher who was more than willing to cross a line and help a student into a better grade than what they could earn on their own. I didn't think it was fair, that I worked my ass off for grades and teachers would just basically join in the cheating. In fact, I tanked a grade in one class because I was incensed about the teacher's behavior. I blew up some important coursework and I directly, sternly told him not to fix up my grade. It was only a "B" but I was so pissed, at that point!
In the end, all our cards were sent off, literally to Iowa, I guess, and fed into giant A.I. machines and graded without human intervention. But our results were very human indeed. I have no reason to believe that our digital overlords failed to grade our S.A.T.s in the same manner, but the regime was slightly looser as we progressed through high school.
In a way, you can say that I lost my job to A.I. in 2024, because indeed I was tasked with grading student submissions, and by the time I was resigning about half of our workload was turned over to auto-testing multiple-choice quizzes and such that would be scored in the LMS itself.
While I personally rarely determined blatant A.I. usage to solve our homeworks, plagiarism was rampant and students were constantly copying from a very small pool of solved homeworks that were publicly posted. Some more savvy students paid a subscription for a cheating website that would provide even more content to them.
But indeed, if educators have relied so heavily on A.I. to produce and grade materials on our end, I suppose it was only a matter of time before turnabout is fair play.
There is no issue with computers grading multiple choice questions…
I have major reservations about the evaluation of student essays solely based on an overgrown pile of matrices that has no comprehension of creativity nor literary technique.
A digital FIR filter is not intelligence, even though it can adapt to changing conditions.
I have major reservations about the evaluation of student essays solely based on an overgrown pile of matrices that has no comprehension of creativity nor literary technique.
A digital FIR filter is not intelligence, even though it can adapt to changing conditions.
I went to a very small rural school. I was a huge nerd, so standardized tests were always a breeze to me. I don't think I ever scored under ~97th percentile. My dad taught agriculture there (will be important later).
My senior year of high school, I wanted to enroll at a community college as a concurrent student. My high school demanded that I stay until at least 1:45 every day; I wanted to take a class at 12:30, which would require me to leave high school before lunch at 11:45. They absolutely refused to budge on this.
I set up a meeting with the school principal and superintendent. I laid out my case for why I wanted to leave before lunch and tried to be persuasive. Once it was clear they weren't having it, I switched gears.
My senior class was 31 students. The mean scores on the state standardized test was used to determine funding status for the school and to identify schools to target for consolidation - and my school was on probation. If their scores fell more than a couple of points the state would revoke their accreditation and work toward merging them with a neighboring district.
On the other hand, I already had a college acceptance letter and a full scholarship. The test was completely irrelevant to me.
I looked my principal in the eye and told her that if she couldn't work with me, I understood, but "if you're not willing to work to help me meet my goals, why should I work to help you meet yours?" In short, I threatened to bomb the test if they couldn't find a way to let me leave campus for college classes at 11:45 every day.
To be clear, I wasn't saying I wouldn't try to do well; I was saying I was very confident that I could get a pure 0% on that test. It wouldn't impact my future in any way, but with 31 students in my class that 0 would mean a 1-2 percentile drop in the school's mean test scores for the year -- enough to go from "secure in funding for another year" to "50/50 chance the district would be dissolved".
I left every day that year at 11:45.
They didn't change the policy, but let me enroll in a math class that was far below my level. I got along well with the math teacher (who knew what was up) and she let me take the mid-term and final before class started so I never had to attend the class.
My senior year of high school, I wanted to enroll at a community college as a concurrent student. My high school demanded that I stay until at least 1:45 every day; I wanted to take a class at 12:30, which would require me to leave high school before lunch at 11:45. They absolutely refused to budge on this.
I set up a meeting with the school principal and superintendent. I laid out my case for why I wanted to leave before lunch and tried to be persuasive. Once it was clear they weren't having it, I switched gears.
My senior class was 31 students. The mean scores on the state standardized test was used to determine funding status for the school and to identify schools to target for consolidation - and my school was on probation. If their scores fell more than a couple of points the state would revoke their accreditation and work toward merging them with a neighboring district.
On the other hand, I already had a college acceptance letter and a full scholarship. The test was completely irrelevant to me.
I looked my principal in the eye and told her that if she couldn't work with me, I understood, but "if you're not willing to work to help me meet my goals, why should I work to help you meet yours?" In short, I threatened to bomb the test if they couldn't find a way to let me leave campus for college classes at 11:45 every day.
To be clear, I wasn't saying I wouldn't try to do well; I was saying I was very confident that I could get a pure 0% on that test. It wouldn't impact my future in any way, but with 31 students in my class that 0 would mean a 1-2 percentile drop in the school's mean test scores for the year -- enough to go from "secure in funding for another year" to "50/50 chance the district would be dissolved".
I left every day that year at 11:45.
They didn't change the policy, but let me enroll in a math class that was far below my level. I got along well with the math teacher (who knew what was up) and she let me take the mid-term and final before class started so I never had to attend the class.
Well done. I wish I'd pushed back on more idiocy like that when I was in school. The "education system" has been screwed up for a long time, and keeps getting worse the more we spend on it. I'm not sure AI can make it worse; maybe it'll actually help by making more people aware of how bad it is.
It was a formative experience, that's for sure. I learned that there is a time and place to "play hardball". I learned that you don't have to be an asshole about it either, and that while it definitely harms your reputation it can also build respect and doesn't have to destroy your relationship with the person.
More importantly, it taught me to trust my kids, show them my perspective, and put my own interests on the line for them.
My dad was a teacher at that school; the people I threatened were his bosses. I talked to him before I did it - in fact, I had only made an offhand comment about being able to bomb that test in revenge. He's the one that pointed out that was leverage, and suggest that I consider explicitly using it.
I was terrified that he could have lost his job for that stunt. Much later, he told me that they never even brought it up to him. He retired from that school after outlasting both the principal and superintendent, so obviously it didn't hurt him that much.
As a result I make it a point to trust my kids when the stakes are bigger than they're comfortable with, and to highlight the potential effects when I think they may not be obvious to them.
More importantly, it taught me to trust my kids, show them my perspective, and put my own interests on the line for them.
My dad was a teacher at that school; the people I threatened were his bosses. I talked to him before I did it - in fact, I had only made an offhand comment about being able to bomb that test in revenge. He's the one that pointed out that was leverage, and suggest that I consider explicitly using it.
I was terrified that he could have lost his job for that stunt. Much later, he told me that they never even brought it up to him. He retired from that school after outlasting both the principal and superintendent, so obviously it didn't hurt him that much.
As a result I make it a point to trust my kids when the stakes are bigger than they're comfortable with, and to highlight the potential effects when I think they may not be obvious to them.
Well done! I wish I had that level of understanding of the world at that age.
It’s kinda hilarious that a lesser student would actually be less capable of such a threat as missing every question is slightly challenging (might pick the right answer by luck/error).
It’s kinda hilarious that a lesser student would actually be less capable of such a threat as missing every question is slightly challenging (might pick the right answer by luck/error).
I know somebody who was asked to say home for Australia's national testing day. The NAPLAN tests.
Parents evaluate the quality of private schools based on NAPLAN results.
Parents evaluate the quality of private schools based on NAPLAN results.
ITBS = Iowa Test of Basic Skills
It took me several seconds to recognize this acronym for a test I took decades ago but haven’t thought about since.
It took me several seconds to recognize this acronym for a test I took decades ago but haven’t thought about since.
The education system needed a rehaul a long time ago, only now with AI, the can can no longer be kicked down the road.
How about you get the kids to write the essay in class, on a computer without network access?
They’ll transcribe it from their phone.
Your kids go to a school where phones are still allowed on campus?
Wow, time to move them.
Wow, time to move them.
And this will solve what problem?
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.
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.
>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?"
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?"
> The author does not seem to understand that a technology is good or bad, nor in itself, but in how it is used.
The point regarding technology is a given and already understood by any reasonable person. This is not our first encounter with disruptive "technology".
The germinal point is the confluence of behavioral patterns and influences that ultimately determine how technology is used.
OP: >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.
This to me is a reasonably probable outcome. It is not the only possible outcome but our record with the internet (the 90s' disruptive technology with its own +/- possibilities) is the cautionary tale. Remember voices that very clearly predicted the surveillance society in the 90s?
[p.s. consider auto-correct for spelling. Would you agree with my impression that the generation that has grown up with this (hardly disruptive) tech no longer can spell words of their own language?]
So, going back to the agreed baseline of 'how we use tools' as the critical matter, it seems (based on historic facts) that we should take 'cassandras' seriously from the very onset of introducing disruptive technology at societal scale and take the necessary steps to insure that the incentive to use a technology in the optimal manner is far greater than its misuse.
What is not helpful (at all) is to revert to the baseline and dismiss timely cautionary concerns.
The point regarding technology is a given and already understood by any reasonable person. This is not our first encounter with disruptive "technology".
The germinal point is the confluence of behavioral patterns and influences that ultimately determine how technology is used.
OP: >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.
This to me is a reasonably probable outcome. It is not the only possible outcome but our record with the internet (the 90s' disruptive technology with its own +/- possibilities) is the cautionary tale. Remember voices that very clearly predicted the surveillance society in the 90s?
[p.s. consider auto-correct for spelling. Would you agree with my impression that the generation that has grown up with this (hardly disruptive) tech no longer can spell words of their own language?]
So, going back to the agreed baseline of 'how we use tools' as the critical matter, it seems (based on historic facts) that we should take 'cassandras' seriously from the very onset of introducing disruptive technology at societal scale and take the necessary steps to insure that the incentive to use a technology in the optimal manner is far greater than its misuse.
What is not helpful (at all) is to revert to the baseline and dismiss timely cautionary concerns.
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.
> 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.
That's a pretty stupid take. A "useful tool" is only useful in a context, and we really only want that tool used to to good. It's not good to have tool used to do bad things. If a school system can be screwed up merely by giving all students free access to guns, maybe is wasn't that great in the first place, amirite?
Essays (for instance) are a means to an end of developing young minds (which is a good thing) by getting them to engage with something. If your "useful tool" makes bypassing that engagement (cheating) simple and easy, those young minds will float through less developed.
There's a lot of hype about LLM tutors, but I don't see that solving much. They'll end up tutoring LLM students, so the real student can invest more effort in playing some addictive video game.
And then that decayed state will become the new normal, and some idiot will declare it's the best because that's what he knows.
That's a pretty stupid take. A "useful tool" is only useful in a context, and we really only want that tool used to to good. It's not good to have tool used to do bad things. If a school system can be screwed up merely by giving all students free access to guns, maybe is wasn't that great in the first place, amirite?
Essays (for instance) are a means to an end of developing young minds (which is a good thing) by getting them to engage with something. If your "useful tool" makes bypassing that engagement (cheating) simple and easy, those young minds will float through less developed.
There's a lot of hype about LLM tutors, but I don't see that solving much. They'll end up tutoring LLM students, so the real student can invest more effort in playing some addictive video game.
And then that decayed state will become the new normal, and some idiot will declare it's the best because that's what he knows.
That’s a gross oversimplification.
The fact that you can cheat in a game does not mean the game itself is flawed.
If you use tools to effectively ghost write your assignments you are not learning.
The fact that you can cheat in a game does not mean the game itself is flawed.
If you use tools to effectively ghost write your assignments you are not learning.
You can't expect to learn to be a painter by simply buying pictures of artwork. You need to try (and fail, over and over) to actually paint.
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.
3 observations:
1) Parents that walk their kids through the homework have more stress not better performing students
2) individualized learning programs exist since the 70s, they were not a substitute - you have to explain something to somebody to fully grasps something - I do not see how anybody wants to explan something to an ai
3) Nearly everybody has been to a school so everybody is an expert
1) Parents that walk their kids through the homework have more stress not better performing students
2) individualized learning programs exist since the 70s, they were not a substitute - you have to explain something to somebody to fully grasps something - I do not see how anybody wants to explan something to an ai
3) Nearly everybody has been to a school so everybody is an expert
The AI will generally know how to do diagnostics for any skill-level, so it should be able to identify what the child needs to work on. Diagnostic testing is not done in public schools. The teacher regurgitates a curriculum and if the kids don't get it (identified in testing), that's that. The teacher only helps students who already know how to self-diagnose (e.g, They know what they are not understanding and are willing to ask questions). Your average teacher in America has never been able to provide diagnostic testing to large classrooms. If you want to think about this differently, imagine a Doctor that can only help you if you already know what your issue is. That has been the state of the education system.
In your first comment I thought you were talking about teaching. Now It seems your main point is about diagnostics. I don’t dispute that both are intertwinned, but my reply to you was about „you can replace 90% of teachers“ with ai.
One of the strong areas of school is the in-person-interaction part of learning that can not be easily replaced by ai.
One of the strong areas of school is the in-person-interaction part of learning that can not be easily replaced by ai.
I'm not talking about the good schools in the suburbs. I'll just leave it at that. Your typical school America cannot provide the level of education an AI can, and that will be more and more true. So many kids are literally left behind, believe that.
If I understand correctly you are proposing to cut the teaching staff in the typical schools in the US to 10%, this 10% are there to place the students in front of the ai that makes the kids smarter?
I was thinking not even that. I was thinking just a dedicated staff of proctors to ensure no cheating during exams. Along with that, we can introduce psychologists for social/psychological support. But yes, the K-12 teachers as we know them need to go as they are wildly inadequate given the current state of technology.
A big part of the reason why teachers work is because they're fleshy humans.
We've had edu-tech ventures for like 25 years now, and they consistently fail. Do you know why? It's not rocket science and it doesn't require some deep analysis.
Children are humans, and they're going to listen to other humans to shape their behavior. Not a screen. Not a program. Not AI.
Just think about it. Suppose you want a well-mannered child. Should you model your manners and surround them with other children who are also learning manners? Or, should you lock them in a room and give them the perfect course in manners from manners.com? Which one will work?
We've had edu-tech ventures for like 25 years now, and they consistently fail. Do you know why? It's not rocket science and it doesn't require some deep analysis.
Children are humans, and they're going to listen to other humans to shape their behavior. Not a screen. Not a program. Not AI.
Just think about it. Suppose you want a well-mannered child. Should you model your manners and surround them with other children who are also learning manners? Or, should you lock them in a room and give them the perfect course in manners from manners.com? Which one will work?
Damn, those kids are gonna be lobotomized.
Is "ivape" Sam Altman?
Unfortunately, in my experience, it's not the teachers that are the problem. It's the administration and regulatory environment.
A lot of the best teachers have been driven out of the field, so uninvolved teachers are over-represented. That's a solvable problem, though - good teachers _want_ to teach, we've just built a system that doesn't compensate them.
For my children, my wife and I have never enrolled them in a government school. We call ourselves "unschoolers", but that community probably wouldn't accept us as we'd be unable to pass their implicit ideological purity tests :)
Basically, our kids live alongside us. When they were younger, I'd build them mechanical and electronic toys. That lead to them wanting to help, which lead to some light electrical engineering. When they were old enough to show interest, they got devices of their own. As they got older, that went from an Amazon Fire tablet in a foam protective case to an iPad Pro in a keyboard folio.
We don't filter anything. I log everything at the router level, and have MitM SSL termination configured there. That used to be monitored by a cron job and a set of grep scripts that look for keywords, but these days it's augmented by an AI that summarizes usage and sends me an email once a week. I very rarely look at it.
We have two daughters, and our oldest is 16. There have been a handful of PornHub visits in the past, as is to be expected. The first time it happened, she was 12. I sat down with her privately and asked if she visited it intentionally. She had, because a friend had mentioned an act that she hadn't heard of - so she looked it up. The visit was ~5m long, and that was consistent, so that was the end of the discussion.
Subsequent visits have been similar things, so I only mentioned it in passing to her to let her know it was visible. A longer visit happened a few months ago, shortly after she turned 16. It was still fairly short, and based on the titles and durations it was clear she was looking for information rather than self-gratification. Still, she's shown no reason for me not to trust her and was getting to the age where privacy should be a growing concern for her.
I pulled her aside again, only this time I asked her to bring me her devices. I told her that she's shown that she can be trusted, and that while she is definitely still a child her parents trust her to make good decisions for herself. I excluded her devices from the router logs, removed the MitM SSL certs, and showed her how it was all set up.
Our oldest taught herself to read at a high school level when she was seven years old, because she needed to be able to read quest text to progress in Guild Wars 2.
My youngest taught herself arithmetic with fractions because she loves to cook, and wanted to be adjust recipes to make batches large enough to sell at the farmer's market.
Both of my children learned algebra, geometry, and some basic trig on road trips. When I'm driving we often just talk through things. Sometimes that's math, sometimes history, sometimes politics. Both of them have gone from basic arithmetic to polynomials over the course of a single road trip (different trips!). For geometry and trig, we used iPads and Apple Pencils. These days I carry a reMarkable Paper Pro that gets used a lot for similar reasons.
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All of the above is to say: kids learn thing naturally. Teachers are not a requirement for learning, nor is school. If you give a child a supportive environment and access to the resources they need to support them, they will seek out knowledge.
A lot of the best teachers have been driven out of the field, so uninvolved teachers are over-represented. That's a solvable problem, though - good teachers _want_ to teach, we've just built a system that doesn't compensate them.
For my children, my wife and I have never enrolled them in a government school. We call ourselves "unschoolers", but that community probably wouldn't accept us as we'd be unable to pass their implicit ideological purity tests :)
Basically, our kids live alongside us. When they were younger, I'd build them mechanical and electronic toys. That lead to them wanting to help, which lead to some light electrical engineering. When they were old enough to show interest, they got devices of their own. As they got older, that went from an Amazon Fire tablet in a foam protective case to an iPad Pro in a keyboard folio.
We don't filter anything. I log everything at the router level, and have MitM SSL termination configured there. That used to be monitored by a cron job and a set of grep scripts that look for keywords, but these days it's augmented by an AI that summarizes usage and sends me an email once a week. I very rarely look at it.
We have two daughters, and our oldest is 16. There have been a handful of PornHub visits in the past, as is to be expected. The first time it happened, she was 12. I sat down with her privately and asked if she visited it intentionally. She had, because a friend had mentioned an act that she hadn't heard of - so she looked it up. The visit was ~5m long, and that was consistent, so that was the end of the discussion.
Subsequent visits have been similar things, so I only mentioned it in passing to her to let her know it was visible. A longer visit happened a few months ago, shortly after she turned 16. It was still fairly short, and based on the titles and durations it was clear she was looking for information rather than self-gratification. Still, she's shown no reason for me not to trust her and was getting to the age where privacy should be a growing concern for her.
I pulled her aside again, only this time I asked her to bring me her devices. I told her that she's shown that she can be trusted, and that while she is definitely still a child her parents trust her to make good decisions for herself. I excluded her devices from the router logs, removed the MitM SSL certs, and showed her how it was all set up.
Our oldest taught herself to read at a high school level when she was seven years old, because she needed to be able to read quest text to progress in Guild Wars 2.
My youngest taught herself arithmetic with fractions because she loves to cook, and wanted to be adjust recipes to make batches large enough to sell at the farmer's market.
Both of my children learned algebra, geometry, and some basic trig on road trips. When I'm driving we often just talk through things. Sometimes that's math, sometimes history, sometimes politics. Both of them have gone from basic arithmetic to polynomials over the course of a single road trip (different trips!). For geometry and trig, we used iPads and Apple Pencils. These days I carry a reMarkable Paper Pro that gets used a lot for similar reasons.
---
All of the above is to say: kids learn thing naturally. Teachers are not a requirement for learning, nor is school. If you give a child a supportive environment and access to the resources they need to support them, they will seek out knowledge.
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.
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.
Soft skills in general are vastly under appreciated. It’s the biggest difference I see between those who excel and those who spend their whole career struggling for even a modest promotion.
I will say, it was CIS classes in college which got me to expand on my writing, not English classes. In high school, even with English class every year, I tried to do the bare minimum. It wasn’t until the papers were required to be 25-30 pages long that I was forced to really flesh things out into a narrative, rather that what amounted to a bulleted list shoved into a paragraph.
This was a doubled edged sword, as I now find it much more difficult to be concise in my writing, so that takes a focused effort.
There is also a lot to be said for finding the intersection between technology and X. Having a well rounded education can provide more opportunities for people to discover where these intersections can foster new growth or innovation. I often wish I went into a non-computer field, so I could have applied technology to the job, rather than technology feeling like the job itself.
I will say, it was CIS classes in college which got me to expand on my writing, not English classes. In high school, even with English class every year, I tried to do the bare minimum. It wasn’t until the papers were required to be 25-30 pages long that I was forced to really flesh things out into a narrative, rather that what amounted to a bulleted list shoved into a paragraph.
This was a doubled edged sword, as I now find it much more difficult to be concise in my writing, so that takes a focused effort.
There is also a lot to be said for finding the intersection between technology and X. Having a well rounded education can provide more opportunities for people to discover where these intersections can foster new growth or innovation. I often wish I went into a non-computer field, so I could have applied technology to the job, rather than technology feeling like the job itself.