[HN Gopher] I am starting an AI+Education company
___________________________________________________________________
I am starting an AI+Education company
Author : bilsbie
Score : 373 points
Date : 2024-07-16 17:57 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| treprinum wrote:
| Cool! Does Eureka Labs/Andrej plan to offer grad/PhD-level
| courses (or better) with similar topics to CS236, CS224N etc. in
| the future as well?
| juliushuijnk wrote:
| Hope it will enable all of us to become not just smarter, but
| also wiser :)
| boyka wrote:
| Can someone please provide the mentioned links? (For those
| without X account)
| layer8 wrote:
| https://xcancel.com/karpathy/status/1813263734707790301
| MarcScott wrote:
| I think teaching is one of the few roles that can't be replaced
| by AI. If you're a self-motivated learner, eager to gain new
| skills, then AI is perfect for you. Having a virtual Feynman
| coach you through a Physics course is perfect.
|
| Most learners, the world over, are not self-motivated. The
| pandemic showed us exactly what children would prefer to do, when
| they don't have a physical teacher standing over them, which is
| bugger all. We send kids to school, in the hope they get some
| education, but the reality is that we use schools for free
| childcare while we work. If parents have to additionally monitor
| their child's learning, it breaks down pretty quickly.
|
| I see AI being more of a teaching assistant, rather than a
| replacement for teachers. Having been in the education game for
| over twenty five years, I know the difference in impact when
| comparing virtual learning to in-person training.
| ilaksh wrote:
| AI certainly can't completely replace teachers, but the
| potential gains for personal tutoring from SOTA LLMs still seem
| enormous to me.
|
| And I'm not trying to make a general argument against in person
| training. But I think the details of how virtual learning
| happens matters quite a lot. AI can make it much more
| personalized and make tutoring relatively affordable. Don't you
| think?
| dinobones wrote:
| AI has personally tutored me about obscure, deep linear
| algebra concepts. It's so great to get applied examples and
| be able to ask why/how something works, rather than reading a
| stuffy Wikipedia article or math textbook.
|
| It's been extremely effective for me, where reading a math
| textbook/wikipedia article seemed like _too much effort_ ,
| but a friendly conversation with my AI tutor was just fine.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| How can you bring yourself to trust the AI? Just yesterday
| a friend and I asked Chat-GPT a physics question, and for
| some reason his assistant asserted that the speed of light
| was 3,000 m/s, which is off by two orders of magnitude. We
| know that's wrong so we can tell the AI to do it again but
| right this time, but if it was explaining a concept we
| didn't already understand, I can't see how the output would
| be any more meaningful than asking a random stranger and
| trusting their response.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Ever since the step(s) beyond ChatGPT 3.5 I haven't
| noticed any huge errors like that, personally. Are you
| sure you were on a new model?
|
| Also, how can you trust anyone? People are wrong.
| Teachers can be wrong. Web pages can be wrong. Books can
| be wrong. I think LLMs will probably soon be the least
| likely to be wrong out of any of those.
| dinobones wrote:
| Yeah exactly this, ChatGPT 4-o very rarely, if ever,
| hallucinates.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| A very easy way to get basically _every_ current AI model
| to hallucinate:
|
| 1. Ask a highly non-trivial research question (in
| particular from math)
|
| 2. Ask the AI for paper and textbook references on the
| topic
|
| At this point, already many of these references could be
| hallucinations.
|
| 3. If necessary ask the AI where in these
| papers/textbooks you can find explanations on the
| questions, and/or on which aspect of the question or
| research area the individual references focus.
| simonw wrote:
| How can you bring yourself to trust a human teacher?
| Humans are wrong sometimes too, often with confidence.
|
| The trick to learning effective timely (with both LLMs
| and human teachers) is to recognize that you should learn
| from more than one source. Think critically about the
| information you are being exposed to - if something
| doesn't quite feel right, check it elsewhere.
|
| I genuinely believe that knowing that an information
| source is occasionally unreliable can help you learn MORE
| effectively, because it encourages you to think
| critically about the material and explore beyond just a
| single source of information.
|
| I've been learning things with the assistance of LLMs for
| nearly two years now. I often catch them making mistakes,
| and yet I still find them really useful for learning.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| To your point... if you _trust_ anything, you already are
| at a big disadvantage in learning. It 's the wrong
| attitude.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > How can you bring yourself to trust a human teacher?
| Humans are wrong sometimes too, often with confidence.
|
| If humans/AIs are wrong about a topic (in particular
| wrong in a confident way) multiple times, I _will_ stop
| trusting them to be experts in the topic. What I
| experienced is rather that many human experts in academia
| tend to be honest when they are not sure about the
| answer.
| mecsred wrote:
| Trust but verify. If you're doing your homework you
| should be able to notice things not lining up and ask the
| model about them. Human teachers can also make mistakes
| (though usually less than an AI hopefully) and it's the
| same process dealing with those.
|
| In my opinion the best teachers just direct your
| questions in the direction where the answers you find
| give you the most useful information. I'm optimistic that
| AI could be an improvement to the average for
| scientifically minded learners, though I wouldn't expect
| it to be more effective than a 1 on 1 with a good
| teacher.
| nathan11 wrote:
| This problem isn't exclusive to current implementations
| of AI.
|
| I had a US business professor explain in one of my
| business classes that making a bit more money might push
| you over into the next tax bracket and cost you more in
| taxes than you made.
|
| This guy had a PhD, had been teaching for decades and
| apparently didn't understand the marginal tax system.
| gjm11 wrote:
| Nitpick: Your number of orders of magnitude is off by a
| (binary) order of magnitude.
|
| The speed of light is about 300,000,000 m/s. (In fact
| it's _exactly_ 299,792,458 m /s, because that's how the
| metre is defined.) So 3,000 m/s is off by _five_
| (decimal) orders of magnitude, not two.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| A likely truth no one wants talk about : LLMs will only
| help people who want to learn. Those people are likely
| already in very good shape in life. The amount of help from
| LLMs is likely very high for such people - as you note the
| ability to have a back and forth is very helpful.
|
| For 99% of the population, they aren't going to do this. It
| is what it is.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| A major part of the learning process is your peers. Learning
| is groups has benefits especially when you can bounce ideas
| off other humans.
|
| You cannot replace that with a machine.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Gotcha. So I guess the question is, can an AI run a Zoom
| meeting or interactive multiplayer learning game with a
| bunch of kids on it? Have to admit that might be a stretch.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| AI can augment teachers though.
| surfingdino wrote:
| How?
| OmarShehata wrote:
| > Most learners, the world over, are not self-motivated
|
| this seems like a bizarre conclusion. In my experience, most
| people, the world over, are in fact self motivated. You won't
| see that if you have a very narrow definition of what is it
| that they're supposed to be learning
|
| kids aren't motivated to do boring math drills, because they
| don't see why it matters to their life (the real answer is: it
| does not, they are not wrong).
|
| I appreciated hearing this echoed by Conrad Wolfram in a recent
| PIMA episode: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-do-we-still-
| teach-peopl...
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I think it might be worth considering whether you've had a
| privileged upbringing. Thinking back on it, the majority of
| people probably would have been content to play games all
| day. You could argue that that's learning, but unfortunately
| it's not the kind of learning that society tends to reward.
|
| I've heard that kids in upper middle class circles are
| totally different in this regard though. Maybe they want to
| do more on average.
| pigscantfly wrote:
| I think this perspective is belied by the vast over-
| subscription of free public education in places where it
| has previously been paid only[1] (at this point, mainly in
| Africa). It does seem like there is strong evidence that
| most children and parents recognize the value of education
| and are self-motivated to pursue it where it is accessible
| to them. I believe it follows that lowering cost and
| barriers to quality education will improve outcomes without
| a need to otherwise coerce participation.
|
| [1] See, most recently, Zambia
| geodel wrote:
| Not really. In my experience it is mostly effect of
| socio-legal pressure that kids can't be anywhere but
| school. In primary schools most kids are bored or
| miserable as hell while in school. And further parents
| keep pushing it because apparently _education is key to
| future success / great career_.
|
| For higher education there is charade of education to get
| jobs. So for office manager job where grade 8 would be
| enough, we have MBAs now because we all need advanced
| education to survive in global economy blah..blah.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Yeah if anything, current education system is so garbage that
| it manages to completely demotivate curious kids who want to
| genuinely learn. It's designed around adults that need to run
| the place, runs at the wrong pace for most students and
| focuses on PTSD-inducing high anxiety testing constantly
| because it's easy to do for the teachers. Not to mention
| piles of pointless busywork as homework that's been proven to
| not help with learning at all.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I'm curious - have you ever taught in a public school?
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| > kids aren't motivated to do boring math drills, because
| they don't see why it matters to their life (the real answer
| is: it does not, they are not wrong).
|
| Most kid athletes are also not self-motivated to run laps, or
| do boring repetitive drills, when they know from experience
| that these activities help them win games within the next few
| months. Usually need a coach to force them to do them. Same
| for young music players. Practicing scales endlessly does
| make you a better musician. But they won't do it till forced.
|
| The primary reason kids don't like running laps or playing
| scales or doing math drills is because they are boring.
| nsagent wrote:
| Reminds me of a recent podcast with Stasa Gejo [1], a top
| competition climber. She basically says the same thing. At
| times she hated being told to do drills growing up, but
| really valued that later because as a kid she sometimes
| didn't feel like doing the hard work necessary for the
| outcomes she desired.
|
| [1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=hg4jPdMnPyE&t=995
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| > Practicing scales endlessly does make you a better
| musician. But they won't do it till forced.
|
| The value of such exercises, or any other drill-based
| curriculum, must be measured with its opportunity cost. If
| you practise scales for an hour a day, you can indeed
| reliably expect to be better at your musical instrument,
| but it could very well be that the same hour spent on
| improving another skill (sight-reading, articulation etc.)
| would make you _considerably better still_ at your
| instrument.
|
| I think it might be more generally useful to say that, in
| order to develop well-rounded competency in a given field,
| one should expect to _sometimes_ have to perform boring
| drills.
| choppaface wrote:
| Feedback is a critical part of education as well as
| motivation for learning. But the act of giving feedback is
| very hard to scale, even for virtual learning. Enter an LLM
| chatbot, which is imperfect but can fill a lot of gaps in
| expectation. Chatbots certainly aren't for everybody, but the
| large gains in accuracy in years past make them on average
| more effective.
| ugh123 wrote:
| >kids aren't motivated to do boring math drills, because they
| don't see why it matters to their life (the real answer is:
| it does not, they are not wrong).
|
| I think you are partially right in that the dryness of much
| of math teaching hides a lot of the underlying material's
| applicability to life. I think one thing AI could do is help
| design rich situational lessons that could are prompted,
| vetted, and updated by teachers and then taught to the class.
| It could be trivial to create incremental difficulty of
| problem materials tailored to each student's progress and
| goal.
| MarcScott wrote:
| > In my experience, most people, the world over, are in fact
| self motivated.
|
| In your experience? The world over? Can you tell me your
| experience. I've been a teacher for a long time. I've worked
| in the UK, the USA, PNG, and Kenya.
|
| The vast majority of kids in the developed world don't really
| care about education. A few do, and they get great grades.
| Most care more about social status, their cliques, or just
| surviving the jungle that is school.
|
| School is important. It teaches you how to deal with other
| people. It teaches you how to deal with people in authority.
| You can't get that at home, in front of a screen. Learning
| stuff is secondary. I'm sure there are plenty of people here
| that are not working in whatever they majored at.
| elliotbnvl wrote:
| Learning stuff is secondary? Found your problem.
|
| School shouldn't be primarily about experiencing social
| interaction. It's an artificial environment that disappears
| as soon as you graduate, and which you'll never find again
| anywhere else in society. You can learn social interaction
| in plenty of other settings, most of which are vastly more
| efficient and realistic. Admittedly, none of them function
| as daycare...
|
| School _should be_ (and used to be) about learning to
| learn, building mental discipline and a base of knowledge
| sufficient to bootstrap whatever other studies appeal to
| the student, even more so than memorizing a particular list
| of facts. But it seems that that position has been largely
| abandoned.
| techostritch wrote:
| This is circular, how do you propose making school about
| that? If you're only goal is to maximize the folks who
| like to obey authority then great, and maybe that's all
| you care to do, and maybe you don't care about losing the
| kids who don't have the academics to make it, but you
| also lose a whole mess of kids at the top end of the
| spectrum too.
| elliotbnvl wrote:
| I'm not sure which part of my comment would result in
| maximizing folks who like to obey authority. I'm more
| focused on improving individual outcomes in terms of
| functional individuals, their quality of life, and the
| contributions they're able to make to society as a whole.
|
| In any case, we homeschool.
|
| I haven't really considered how to improve schooling at
| scale (particularly in an affordable way), but my
| proposal would be to introduce a _lot_ more granularity
| to schooling by eliminating the idea of grades and
| classes and focusing more on individual assessment.
|
| Obviously this is likely cost prohibitive, but perhaps
| promoting and subsidizing homeschooling and homeschool
| co-ops is a good start in that direction, and could give
| rise to more cost-effective solutions over time. Not all
| parents are equipped to homeschool, but homeschooling
| does make use of resources which could be improved and
| which others could leverage as well.
| techostritch wrote:
| I'm mixed, I definetly wouldn't home school my kids and
| it doesn't seem scalable and I do think there's value in
| a population having a shared identity from education,
| but, at least from my own experience I suspect my kids
| will have their most valuable academic opportunities
| outside of school.
| simonw wrote:
| "You can learn social interaction in plenty of other
| settings, most of which are vastly more efficient and
| realistic."
|
| What settings are those?
| afarviral wrote:
| Community gardens, sports, religious or interest groups,
| collectives, contributing in a large household, early
| work experience, hobbies/interests. It probably is a
| fairly finite list because societies have optimized for
| the individual and people are often only active within of
| a community at work or in education facilities. So a part
| of a solution in my view would be establishing more
| communities that are separate from the family... they
| might look a lot like schools though, so maybe we should
| just focus on those? There's more need for new
| communities to be established for other age ranges.
| elliotbnvl wrote:
| I pretty much agree 100%. We need more, smaller
| communities - and we need them offline.
|
| Notably, this is largely an American problem, since
| America is built around cars, which given the capitalist
| nature of American society proves to be antithetical to
| establishing local communities.
|
| European and other countries, whose layouts and culture
| were established in pedestrian days, are much better off
| in this regard.
| koonsolo wrote:
| How does being an employee differ so much from being a
| student? You still get either good or bad grades for your
| work. You do assignments, get rules and processes you
| have to follow, play well with your fellow
| students/colleagues, etc.
|
| I would say it's quite similar.
| elliotbnvl wrote:
| I'm mostly talking about the rather artificial division
| of students into grades of equal ages without taking into
| account the individual's proclivities, abilities and
| achievements. This separation is entirely contrary to
| organic human self-organization (even in work places)
| from a tribal perspective and results in a great deal of
| social illnesses (bullying, cliques, etc.) that are,
| although found elsewhere, exacerbated by the
| artificiality of the group-making (which is necessary for
| the public school model as it currently exists today to
| function).
| koonsolo wrote:
| At age 12, kids get split up in groups according to their
| abilities, no?
| elliotbnvl wrote:
| Not sure what you're referring to, tbh. Are you talking
| about the occasional student being promoted or held back
| a grade? If so, I would say that isn't a granular enough
| separation to be meaningful.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| Work environments tend to be class sorted. You also have
| recourse to handle people who behave horribly towards
| you. Disruptors are removed. Everyone is generally
| aligned towards the same goal. The two are vastly
| different.
| vundercind wrote:
| Anyone who hits someone, says truly horrible shit about
| others, doesn't do the job at all, constantly distracts
| others while doing a poor job themselves, blatantly
| sexually harasses people, et c, is highly likely to get
| fired from a job, and may go to prison.
|
| The same person as a student, gets tons of chances before
| _maybe_ having to leave. Depending on what they're doing,
| you could just be stuck with them for north of a decade.
| No escape.
|
| I mean, we can joke about how actually such people still
| exist at work, but it's a far less widespread problem and
| manifests differently.
|
| You can look for other jobs if you want out of a bad work
| environment. Probably, you'll be able to find somewhere
| else to go. Getting out of a bad class is way harder.
|
| There's a couple huge differences.
| dash2 wrote:
| Actually, until the mid 20th century almost everyone
| agreed that school was about building character, which
| can only be done in a social environment. As a British
| government report put it in 1846, schools should be "a
| little artificial world of virtuous exertion".
| elliotbnvl wrote:
| I believe we agree? Character and mental discipline are
| closely aligned, perhaps even the same.
| dash2 wrote:
| Character was specifically moral character, which is
| related to how you interact with others.
| elliotbnvl wrote:
| Mmh, I have to read more about this, I'm not really
| familiar with British schooling models of the 19th
| century.
|
| In any case, the problematic schooling model that
| persists to this day was introduced around the time of
| the Industrial Revolution, which predates your
| references.
| bdangubic wrote:
| Learning stuff is 100% secondary. If it wasn't these two
| below would have same-ish chances in life/career.
|
| Student A: Went to College X and majored in Y. Finished
| all XXX number of credits and graduated with Bachelor's
| Degree
|
| Student B: Went to same College X and majored in same Y.
| Finished all XXX-1 number of credits so is 1 credit short
| and never got a degree.
|
| Student B is worthless even though she/he learned exactly
| the same thing as Student A. School (especially in USA)
| never was and never will be about learning ...
| elliotbnvl wrote:
| I agree that learning is secondary in practice, but in
| theory is the whole point of school, and society would be
| a lot better off if we managed to draw theory and
| practice closer together.
|
| In your example, I would argue you haven't taken my
| position to its required logical extent. I don't believe
| in the value of college degrees at all, the way things
| are currently structured, and I would discourage my kids
| from going to college unless they had a very specific
| career path in mind for which the degree is required. The
| measurement of learning has become the goal of learning,
| unfortunately.
| ozim wrote:
| Yes teaching how to learn is the way for schools, but it
| is hard to explain to kids and lots of adults.
|
| Just a nitpick that school enforcing memorizing
| particular list of facts or memorizing poems - is indeed
| teaching people how to learn, because how else will you
| explain to a child or an adult "hey you know if you read
| this thing 10 times and then try to repeat it another 20
| times from memory - guess what !!! that is one trick to
| learn to memorize something."
|
| But if they spend time on finding out how to memorize
| hand picked for them stuff and how to perform on exams on
| limited and picked topics - that sounds like they will be
| able to learn anything but still too many don't realize
| what the real lesson there is.
| afarviral wrote:
| I mean ... many people went to school as students for a
| good 12 years. That's likely tainted experience, less
| objective perhaps, but nontheless valid experience.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Those same people will say "I wish school taught me <X>
| (things like how to fill out a check book etc"
|
| It did. You didn't pay attention. You want school to
| teach media literacy? It did, but you complained the
| whole time "when are we going to use this?". My school
| taught us how to interpret a "source", how to write well
| defended arguments (even if I don't always rise to that
| level), how to calculate mortgage interest rates and
| payments etc etc etc.
|
| But people will swear up and down "school doesn't teach
| anything important"
|
| _because they didn 't pay attention to what was taught!_
|
| The primary problem with education in america today is
| that a huge proportion of parents do not give a fuck
| about education, see school as just a thing you have to
| do instead of a constant opportunity. When a kid sees
| their parent complaining about education being "Liberal
| brain washing" every other day, why would they pay
| attention in class?
|
| Education requires emotional and ideological buy in from
| parents and students for best results.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > School is important. It teaches you how to deal with
| other people.
|
| In other words: school teaches that/how it it possible to
| hate people (e.g. classmates) so much that wishing them to
| be dead is the most positive thing that you can wish for
| them.
|
| > It teaches you how to deal with people in authority.
|
| ... to deeply despise people in authority, and wish them to
| be die as fast as possible.
|
| ---
|
| Without school, I would never have learned these "social
| skills" for the rest of my life.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| > the real answer is: it does not, they are not wrong
|
| The real real answer is that it probably does, but on a much
| longer timescale that we generally consider and it is really
| hard to explain why. Something like better math skills lead
| to better life outcomes. Maybe due to a better model of the
| world and sharper thinking, but I am just guessing.
| elliotbnvl wrote:
| I would tend to agree with your last (speculative) point.
| The breakdown lies in communicating this to students and
| ensuring that each student receives adequate support at
| their own pace and style of learning.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| What is a disproportionate amount of people are claiming
| to require a slower pace and visual-only learning style?
| elliotbnvl wrote:
| They very well may! Unfortunately, since our approach to
| teaching how to learn is flawed to the core, it results
| in peoples' ability to learn being compromised from the
| very beginning, requiring them to build their knowledge
| base and learning approach on shaky foundations.
|
| The way to correct this is by imbuing students with the
| confidence and skills required to learn (according to
| their style of learning) correctly from the very
| beginning, so that they build on solid foundations
| instead.
| koonsolo wrote:
| > In my experience
|
| So you are a teacher?
| skhunted wrote:
| There is evidence that a person's ability to understand and
| succeed in algebra is mostly determined by whether or not
| they can do arithmetic with fractions. Number sense is
| important in my opinion. Relying always on the calculator or
| a CAS leaves students confused and befuddled. I see this all
| the time in calc classes that I teach. The CAS loving
| students just don't understand as well.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > There is evidence that a person's ability to understand
| and succeed in algebra is mostly determined by whether or
| not they can do arithmetic with fractions. Number sense is
| important in my opinion.
|
| My opinion differs a lot here. I would not say that I have
| a good number sense (I guess that people who have to do
| "numeric calculations" or "back-of-the-envelope
| calculations" as daily part of their job have a much better
| number sense than me). On the other hand, I find it rather
| easy to learn really abstract algebraic concepts (think
| Grothendieck-style algebraic geometry or similarly abstract
| mathematical topics), which many people (most of them with
| much better number sense than me) tend to find insanely
| difficult.
| skhunted wrote:
| The number sense I talk of is not being able to do
| numerical calculations easily or in your head but rather
| understanding how to operate with numbers and their
| different representations. A person who can understand
| algebraic geometry doesn't have trouble understanding
| things like simplifying x + 5/3 x. People workout any
| number sense have a hard time with this. Knowing that 8/3
| is just a different way of writing 1+5/3 is confusing to
| them.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| Textbooks about "abstract nonsense" rarely require you to
| do such routine calculations/simplification - they rather
| require you to be capable of making sense of definitions
| that are (at a first glance) insanely far removed from
| anything you have seen in your real life: I would rather
| liken it to taking strong, dangerous hallucinogenic
| drugs, and making sense of the world that you now see
| (which is something that only some people are capable
| of); by the way: I don't understand why hallucinogenic
| drugs are illegal, but textbooks about very abstract math
| are not. :-D
|
| On the other hand, textbooks about, say, analysis and
| mathematical physics (both in a broader sense) - which
| can also be very complicated - have a tendency to demand
| a lot of (also long, tedious) "routine" calculations from
| the reader (often to do by his own). For _these_ areas of
| mathematics your argument surely makes sense.
| trod123 wrote:
| There are quite a number of experts who would disagree with
| your conclusion.
|
| Upon reaching a certain threshold of technological
| dependence, the need for rational thought (which includes
| calculation) is tied to the need for food. The actual yield
| may be low based on other factors, but it is absolutely
| necessary for survival.
|
| The alternative you suggest, is where technology no longer
| advances.
|
| Logically then, population growth hits a malthusian trap, the
| old crowd out the young since they have the most influence,
| and then a depopulation occurs as the old naturally die off,
| and replacement births cannot sustain those dependent systems
| used to feed the masses.
|
| You get a dragon-king event where everyone its a free for all
| over food and bare necessities, farming no longer becomes
| possible (because of looters), and the world order collapses
| to pre-agrarian levels, assuming the environment isn't
| destroyed in the chaos (i.e. MAD and Nuclear Fallout).
|
| There are much better ways to calculate than are currently
| taught in schools, Trachtenberg System and Vedic Maths have
| worked well in many places.
|
| Mental math has been around for quite some time, and the
| principles of math are all about finding uncommon knowledge
| or information that is not immediately apparent (though it
| becomes so via various mathematical transformations).
|
| The current pedagogy of math is all about sieving and
| exclusion, and rote-authority based teaching, since it is a
| requirement for any specialized area of science (and is only
| taught in relation to mathematical concepts, instead of
| intuitive approaches). This is why they adopted a burn-the-
| bridge strategy right around trigonometry at the grade school
| level (intended to cause PTSD/suffering/torture), to
| safeguard against disruptive innovators at the source.
|
| Algebra -> Geometry -> Trig
|
| 1 -> 2 -> 3
|
| What do you suppose happens when the passing grading criteria
| in 1 is changed from just following the process (but not
| correct answer) to 2 (separate unrelated material which is
| passed) to 3 (correct process and correct answer).
|
| If they fail Trig, and the problems are from Algebra (not
| something a teacher paid bupkiss will bother to look at), how
| do they go back if they passed Geometry? The students not
| knowing why they are failing are simply told, well you maybe
| you are just not good at math and should consider other paths
| if you can't do it.
|
| This structure is called burning the bridge because it makes
| it so you can't go back from a progression standpoint.
| Ironically, this structure was adopted at the request of
| representatives from the National Teachers Union in the late
| 80s/90s, and largely remains the same today.
|
| There are several other progression sieves embedded in
| academia intended to make it almost impossible for us as a
| society to develop a large number of creative people who
| reach einstein-level achievements in math and science
| (outside-self study, or specific environments/private
| schools).
|
| This broad push largely started in the 1970s in publishing,
| and expanded from there.
| zulban wrote:
| I imagine a world where a 19 year old takes a few courses in
| first aid, child psychology basics, and now they're a licensed
| "class supervisor". They aren't university educated but the AI
| is what offers personalized learning and expertise to the
| students.
|
| Most teachers today aren't experts anyway, we just pretend they
| are. So I'm not sure "replaced by AI" is the right way to frame
| the conversation. Instead, it may change education.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Sounds fucking afwul to be frank.
| freejazz wrote:
| > Most teachers today aren't experts anyway, we just pretend
| they are
|
| Experts in what, grade school math? Do you mean professors?
| zulban wrote:
| In anything. Like math, or math education. I was a teacher
| for years and studied education and I've seen some shit.
| The acceptance criteria for education degrees is often the
| lowest of any field in colleges/universities. The pay is
| extremely low. Great teachers exist, but often teaching is
| just a backup career for people that don't know what else
| to do. Most class time is just a waste of time for the
| students, partly because class sizes are so large.
|
| Outside North America teachers are sometimes respected and
| paid as professionals like a doctor or lawyer. Here they're
| more likely the butt end of a joke. You don't need to be an
| expert in anything to be a teacher in NA, generally.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| > Most teachers today aren't experts anyway
|
| Lmao what
| eldaisfish wrote:
| this place is filled with people who are motivated to learn
| for themselves which creates a huge sampling bias.
|
| You will see this come up in all sorts of discussion and i
| find it enlightening as to how exactly the decisions behind
| modern software are made.
|
| Too many here fail to realise that real life has all sorts
| of edge cases and exceptions, including bad teachers.
|
| Claiming that most teachers aren't experts is just another
| example of this. One student learns more about one narrow
| topic and then dismisses the teacher's broader, but
| shallower knowledge as being that of a non-expert.
|
| Typical of the general population, myself included.
| visarga wrote:
| I think online courses and AI education need the kind of
| supervision you mentioned. But they should also be able to
| give career advice, not just watch the room and push students
| to focus.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Most highschool / gradeschool is being forced to sit in a chair
| being baby sat until 3PM each day, with no opportunity to
| select goals, and act towards them. My daughter transitioned to
| a Montessori jr high, and she went from enduring school to
| actively engaging in self-directed learning.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Weirdly enough I was not very curious in my schooling years,
| barely getting through classes. As I have grown up, I have so
| much more curiosity about the world and my willingness to
| actually learn has skyrocketed. I feel like this could be a
| great space for adults who are seeking to do the same. I always
| thought calculus would be daunting to learn(and I still do),
| but with AI tools I feel like I can approach it with a
| different mindset.
| ugh123 wrote:
| > I see AI being more of a teaching assistant, rather than a
| replacement for teachers
|
| That is exactly what he says in the tweet.
|
| I think the problem with traditional teaching, as in any
| skilled profession, is often in short supply and underpaid, not
| happy, and unable to keep up with 25+ kids in a class. The
| world needs orders of magnitude more teachers that are highly
| competent and more easily accessible.
|
| AI could massively scale high quality teaching with still a
| teacher in the loop.
| lacy_tinpot wrote:
| Most people that are academically inclined are self motivated
| and have a desire to learn more.
|
| Most people aren't academically inclined so it follows that
| most people aren't academically self motivated. Therefore among
| those that are academically inclined it is important to provide
| them with all the tools necessary because they're the ones that
| will most likely excel in an academic environment.
|
| It is odd that the curriculum tends to accommodate people that
| aren't academically inclined at the expense of those that
| actually want to learn.
|
| People that aren't academically inclined should not be forced
| to learn, or at least forced only insofar as they're baseline
| literacy so that they function in today's world.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| > Most people that are academically inclined are self
| motivated and have a desire to learn more.
|
| Isn't that by definition? Most xes are x.
|
| > Most people aren't academically inclined
|
| Is that so?
|
| > It is odd that the curriculum tends to accommodate people
| that aren't academically inclined at the expense of those
| that actually want to learn.
|
| Well, if what you say is true, isn't it fair that the program
| is catered to the majority, who are apparently not
| academically inclined? For one size fits all mass education,
| catering to the largest mass is the best you can do.
|
| > People that aren't academically inclined should not be
| forced to learn, or at least forced only insofar as they're
| baseline literacy so that they function in today's world.
|
| Isn't that what the curriculum already accommodates then?
| Didn't you just say that?
| lacy_tinpot wrote:
| >Isn't that what the curriculum already accommodates then?
| Didn't you just say that?
|
| No. The current curriculum penalizes people that are
| academically incline. Fast track programs are difficult to
| access for example.
|
| >For one size fits all mass education, catering to the
| largest mass is the best you can do.
|
| Yes. But we now have other options.
|
| > Most people aren't academically inclined >>Is that so?
|
| As OP pointed out most people need someone to guide them
| and give them directions. This is because a lot of kids are
| not interested in learning and do "bugger all" without
| supervision.
|
| The kind of self-directed learning only benefits people
| that are already academically motivated.
|
| >Isn't that by definition? Most xes are x.
|
| Yes. This was in contrast to what OP was saying, which is
| "The pandemic showed us exactly what children would prefer
| to do, when they don't have a physical teacher standing
| over them, which is bugger all."
|
| This isn't true for students that are academically
| inclined. Only true for those that aren't academically
| inclined.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's not odd to me at all. The most "academically inclined"
| (although I don't think that's just one type of person) are
| people who have the ability to help themselves with very
| little advice from others. We shouldn't be going out of our
| way to provide anything for them; we should provide all
| levels of materials for everyone. It's the stupid people who
| need to be coaxed and trained to use them, whereas for the
| smart people, it's enough to make them available and give
| them advice when they ask.
|
| Teachers like gifted kids because they'll be successful no
| matter what they do, and the teachers can test out all of
| their dingbat social and pedagogical theories with no
| consequences. They can start with elite kids, finish with
| elite kids, yet somehow take the credit. Not impressed. Make
| dumb kids smart, then I'm impressed. You might even be
| holding back the smart kids, but they're probably smart
| enough to see through you and do well anyway.
|
| That being said, there are some people who are motivated to
| learn entirely by the desire to impress teachers and other
| authority figures. They need attention to develop. However, I
| do not think that most people are like this, and I honestly
| think those people should be in therapy.
| owenpalmer wrote:
| > I think teaching is one of the few roles that can't be
| replaced by AI
|
| So far, AI can't replace _good_ teachers. But there aren 't
| that many good teachers. In my experience, GPT4 is better at
| explaining advanced concepts than 70% of college professors.
| Unfortunately, education is often oriented around this
| horrifyingly archaic method of instruction, which prevents
| people from imagining what an AI oriented system could look
| like.
| red_admiral wrote:
| I remember when the future was MOOCs. Let's get the top 30%
| (or 10% or whatever) of teachers to record high-quality
| videos, then everyone can have a top education. Even the rest
| of the professors might learn something!
|
| AI based education might or might not be "MOOCs 2.0". Even
| for the less good teachers, having a real human in the room
| is one of the features that lots of people appear to be ready
| to pay lots of college fees for.
| p1esk wrote:
| His point is an AI teacher cannot force someone to learn,
| while a human teacher can (maybe).
| renjimen wrote:
| I really agree. And I think it's likely your detractors have
| not stepped foot in a classroom lately.
|
| The issue is not engaging teachers. The teachers we have here
| in BC are excellent and love their subjects (my wife and many
| of my friends are teachers). The issue is behaviour, which has
| deteriorated significantly since COVID, though the changes have
| many other contributors.
|
| Try asking an AI to engage with 30 kids who are on their phones
| with earbuds in. You absolutely need a human as a teacher.
|
| That said, AI teaching could be a great teaching assistant.
| fritzo wrote:
| AI would engage individually with each student _via_ those
| earbuds
| Neekerer wrote:
| Kids would just take the ai earbuds out
| renjimen wrote:
| A large amount of engagement is reading and responding to
| body language. There are also no social ramifications of
| ignoring your laptop.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I think AI has a role in the future
| classroom, but that should be lead by professional
| educators used to dealing with children.
|
| There is also the social side to education that goes beyond
| course content. Teachers are not just there to dole out
| information, but to act as role models and part time
| parents.
| criddell wrote:
| I don't think children are the initial target of this
| company, but I get what you are saying.
|
| The type of person who's going to sign up for a course
| from this company are probably already autodidacts to
| some degree.
|
| If I were teaching sixth grade mathematics, I wouldn't be
| too worried yet. If I were running one of the many
| mathematics academies that have popped up throughout a
| lot of more affluent 'burbs, I'd be very worried.
| evanwolf wrote:
| Yes, it looks like this project is starting with helping
| highly motivated adult learners go deep into a hard to
| teach/learn material. Contrast this with the Khan Academy
| approach at https://www.khanmigo.ai/ targeting young
| students and their teachers and parents with broad
| assistance across subjects. Maybe they converge?
| exe34 wrote:
| > There are also no social ramifications of ignoring your
| laptop.
|
| you could absolutely have a digital social credit system
| the way you have game scores and leaderboards. once you
| get a competitive system like that going, it would
| sustain itself. top students could get to visit cool
| stuff like grown up labs and get involved in museums,
| etc. bottom ones could be celebrated with a virtual dunce
| hat on their avatars.
|
| the problem is how mediocrity is now valued over hard
| work.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> A large amount of engagement is reading and responding
| to body language._
|
| I don't follow this assertion - it's possible to be
| engaged by something that doesn't even _have_ a body. For
| example: the things currently engaging them in this
| scenario - their phones (or whatever 's on them).
| MarcScott wrote:
| I was walking to my classroom last Thursday, and a kid pushed
| another kid down the stairs, right into me. I went ballistic,
| and sorted it all out, but there is no way an online AI tutor
| can deal with that kind of behavior. So if you want social
| education, you need physically present teachers. If you want
| online education, then parents are going to have their work
| cut out.
| elliotbnvl wrote:
| > _The pandemic showed us exactly what children would prefer to
| do, when they don 't have a physical teacher standing over
| them, which is bugger all._
|
| This is not true. The pandemic showed us exactly what children
| who are accustomed to being force-fed information and whose
| natural learning mechanisms and curiosity have been suppressed
| in favor of a generalized one-size-fits-all approach do when
| suddenly removed from the only learning paradigm they've ever
| been exposed to.
|
| My kids (not yet old enough for school) are extremely self-
| motivated to learn and explore the world around them. So am I,
| and that never went away over the course of a full homeschool
| education.
| dontlikeyoueith wrote:
| The ignorance of this post is astounding.
|
| You and your kids are not typical of society at large.
| elliotbnvl wrote:
| Could you elaborate? I would like to be less ignorant, if
| possible.
|
| I went to public high school, public community college, and
| college. None of these experiences have changed my opinion,
| but rather informed it.
| infecto wrote:
| Totally incorrect. The vast majority of the population are
| relying on schools and teachers to potty train, teach
| manners, instill excitement for learning and basically do
| everything a parent should be doing. Large number of kids
| have no real parent figure and thats from all types of
| backgrounds. We are not talking about kids who have strong
| households where learning and general manners are being
| taught.
| elliotbnvl wrote:
| I agree with you, but fail to see how our viewpoints are
| mutually exclusive?
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| >The pandemic showed us exactly what children would prefer to
| do, when they don't have a physical teacher standing over them,
| which is bugger all.
|
| Amend to: The pandemic showed us exactly what children's
| parents would prefer to do, when they don't have a physical
| teacher standing over their children, which is bugger all.
| koonsolo wrote:
| I also noticed the material of an entire day can be learned or
| made in a few hours. So indeed I also realized it's mainly
| daycare with a bit of, or slow learning.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.khanmigo.ai/ is adopting this ideal, and I would
| agree you with your perspective. It's a tutor, not a teacher.
|
| > Khanmigo is an AI-powered personal tutor and teaching
| assistant from trusted education nonprofit Khan Academy.
| silverlake wrote:
| I worked on online learning for a bit. Turns out people are
| willing to pay for the inconvenience of in-person learning,
| even flying to another location. It's the only way most people
| can focus on a topic. Otherwise, work, kids, life interrupts
| and they can't stay on track. Replit's 100 Days of Python says
| only 0.4% of those who complete day 1 finish day 100.
| fragmede wrote:
| yeah. When trying to learn, say algebra and getting stuck on a
| problem, what's better for learning? staring at the problem
| until you get bored and wander off, looking at the back of the
| book for the answer and then maybe going back to figure out
| why, or individual instruction where you're able to ask someone
| who knows that they're doing about why you're stuck, and have
| them give you hints until you get unstuck, and then give you
| another, similar, problem for you to work through?
| andrepd wrote:
| > Having a virtual Feynman coach you through a Physics course
| is perfect.
|
| So would fusion power, unfortunately such a thing does not
| exist yet, nor close to.
| logifail wrote:
| > We send kids to school, in the hope they get some education,
| but the reality is that we use schools for free childcare while
| we work
|
| We also send kids to school to learn social skills they can't
| learn by themselves.
|
| My kids sometimes watch science shows (on TV as well as online)
| and tell me all kinds of fascinating facts about black holes
| and the human immune system and
| {insert_huge_list_of_stuff_I_don't_fully_understand}. That's
| the easy bit.
|
| "Getting along with other people" isn't something you learn ...
| by yourself.
| Lichtso wrote:
| If the technology is truly as capable as humans in many domains
| (and that might still take a while), it will not matter anymore
| whether it is a good teacher or not. The need for (and thus
| value of) human labor will depreciate and so will its "supply
| chain" the education sector.
|
| > hope they get some education, but the reality is that we use
| schools for free childcare
|
| Exactly, teachers will be less and less pedagogs and more and
| more wardens.
| afarviral wrote:
| But how to harness "Bugger all" so that it results in educated
| students? Because my understanding is everyone likes to do
| stuff.. no one really does nothing, but often
| unproductive/consumptive things if not channelled.
| awahab92 wrote:
| i think kids would be self-motivated with the right system.
|
| I got a lot more motivated to learn when i learned programming.
|
| during the pandemic, the world was in shock, so of course kids
| are going to play video games when their parents are anxious
| and filled with cabin-feever.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| I do wish people on this website would stop using themselves
| as an example of the median anything.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > I do wish people on this website would stop using
| themselves as an example of the median anything.
|
| HN readers, in my opinion, _are_ a decent median sample of
| the group of "self-motivated learners". :-)
| dimal wrote:
| > I see AI being more of a teaching assistant, rather than a
| replacement for teachers.
|
| That's what he announced he's doing. Creating an assistant, not
| a replacement.
| surfingdino wrote:
| Except what you'll get will be an all-seeing, spying,
| hallucinating LLM.
| yaj54 wrote:
| Kids, when given the choice, will choose to play games (of many
| different kinds) above just about anything else.
|
| The future of education is the playful gamification of relevant
| skills, knowledge, and behaviors.
| toofy wrote:
| kids will choose many different kinds of activities at any
| given time.a lot of kids really don't like games, some do,
| some don't.
|
| i'm not trying to be pedantic, but anytime someone implies a
| human, particularly a kid will be at all predictable shows an
| incredible lack of understanding of people. the vast array of
| moods, time of day, quality of sleep the night before, are
| they hungry, mood of the parents when they drove them to
| school, how did their school/work day go, how was their
| social day, and on and on and on.
|
| again, apologies, i'm not trying to be pedantic but i think
| in this particular topic it reeeeaalllly matters.
| yaj54 wrote:
| My broad sweeping generalization was primarily meant as a
| counterpoint to this from parent comment: "The pandemic
| showed us exactly what children would prefer to do, when
| they don't have a physical teacher standing over them,
| which is bugger all."
|
| My point is more that kids, when left to their own devices
| (with basic needs met), will find ways to occupy themselves
| that they find interesting that are not outcome oriented (I
| call this playing).
|
| And I personally have never met a kid that didn't like
| playing in some form or another, though the form of playing
| is highly, highly individualized.
| signatoremo wrote:
| Is reading playing? Because most kids I've seen enjoy
| reading.
| cha42 wrote:
| I don't understand at all my kids choices in game or way of
| spending time at all
|
| It seems completely random but in a coherent way. It is
| wonderful.
|
| Anyway, you are right and not pedantic at all.
| tomcam wrote:
| Disagree slightly. I think AI can be used to generate average
| quality course material, which may be useful to below average
| teachers, or good teachers thrown into a subject they haven't
| taught yet.
|
| Obviously someone like Andrej will totally crush it.
| renonce wrote:
| Even as a self-motivated learner I fail to see the bigger
| impact of AI. For a "virtual Feynman" I would prefer the online
| video courses and books which exist without AI. The best I
| expect an AI to do is to answer my questions and confirm my
| understandings. At AI's current state I can use it as a better
| search engine but due to hallucinations I can't expect reliable
| answers yet.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Using gpt-4o?
| renonce wrote:
| Asking it "3.11He 3.8Na Ge Da " (meaning "Which one is
| larger, 3.11 or 3.8?" in Chinese) and it answers 3.11 more
| than half of the time. I assume it's because Python 3.11 is
| larger than Python 3.8. While it does work in its native
| language English, this failure doesn't give me much
| confidence in its reliability, as we don't know why it
| works in one language but not the other yet.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Uh, I think people have a good idea why it doesn't work
| as well in other languages.
| skhunted wrote:
| There is an interesting physics education experiment. A random
| group of students are shown a lecture on a topic and take a
| quiz after watching the video. The students rate the lecture.
| Repeat with a different lecture on the same topic. The students
| did worse with the higher rated lecture.
|
| There's teaching students like. There's teaching where students
| learn. Sometimes the two intersect. Will an AI education
| company optimize one that students enjoy or one where they
| learn better?
| azhenley wrote:
| We just published a paper on this topic. I wrote a summary of
| it, "Learning to code with and without AI".
|
| https://austinhenley.com/blog/learningwithai.html
| blackbear_ wrote:
| What is the baseline performance of the LLM in solving those
| programming tasks? And did you test the performance of the
| students in the Codex group at the end of the course without
| allowing them to use Codex? Essentially I'm asking how can
| you conclude that these students didn't just learn to call a
| LLM, but actually learned to code independently?
| pessimizer wrote:
| I don't think this is true at all. People failed to learn
| during covid because the technology is bad. I don't think most
| people are motivated very much at all by the disappointment of
| some stranger standing over them. I don't even see it as a
| desirable aspect of someone's personality that they can be
| extrinsically motivated by the approval of strangers.
|
| What a teacher provides is a sometimes customized, sometimes
| flexible schedule, that (sometimes) pays individual attention
| to what aspects of a concept a student is falling behind at,
| and (sometimes) comes up with personal recommendations and
| alternative approaches to break down a student's involuntary
| resistance to a concept. This might be doable with A.I.. It's
| not doable with actual teaching anymore because class sizes are
| too large. A.I. will be cheaper.
|
| And I'm not saying that teaching is so simple that A.I. can do
| it, I'm saying that teaching is so complicated that it might be
| that only A.I. is sufficient to largely replace it. I think
| that what I'm arguing against is that the idea that teachers
| could be replaced by glowering scarecrows, or fur-covered wire
| armatures like they once used in experiments to replace
| animals' mothers.
|
| I don't think that teachers make as good parents as parents do
| teachers. I don't think most people are mostly motivated by the
| approval or judgement of their teachers.
|
| What people need is constant, helpful, personalized guidance,
| and that is very expensive to get from employees.
| unraveller wrote:
| >teaching ... can't be replaced by AI.
|
| Teaching is not the end goal of education though, the educated
| student is. Or so I was taught.
|
| Part of the reason why teaching is considered noble is because
| it is an act of assured replacement, inspiring not dependency
| imparting skills of self-motivation and will power.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Completely disagree. ChatGPT has taught me more than I could
| ever learn from any lecture and I have a doctorate. A
| moderately motivated student will do wonders with AI.
|
| For instance, I've had trouble understanding exactly how heat
| pumps worked. Sure I knew the basic concepts of condensation
| and evaporation but not the nuances of pressures and boiling
| points at various stages. I asked chatGPT to explain it to me
| from the perspective of the refrigerant. It started with "I am
| R-134a, a refrigerant just leaving the evaporator...", and
| proceeded to give me the most thorough understanding of heat
| pumps I could imagine, complete with working pressures, boiling
| points, pressure differentials at the escape valve etc. Follow
| up questions led me down interesting paths where it came up
| with a brilliant comparison to quantify the greenhouse
| potential of the refrigerant R22 ie 1 pound of R22 has the same
| greenhouse potential as a human being breathing for 787 days in
| a row.
| fsndz wrote:
| When it comes to AI, self learning is dope, and Lycee AI is a
| pioneer:
| https://www.lycee.ai/courses/91b8b189-729a-471a-8ae1-717033c...
| obastani wrote:
| This is exactly the problem we have found in our research on
| generative AI for education [1]. We ran a pilot in a large high
| school in collaboration with math teachers, and found that
| students basically copy answers from ChatGPT, resulting in
| worse performance compared to students not given ChatGPT. If
| students don't want to learn, ChatGPT isn't going to fix
| anything.
|
| [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4895486
| yinser wrote:
| For those without an X account: Website: https://eurekalabs.ai
| GitHub: https://github.com/EurekaLabsAI
| layer8 wrote:
| https://xcancel.com/karpathy/status/1813263734707790301
| kaladin_1 wrote:
| Thanks for the link. Found it useful. x is blocked at dns
| level on my computer.
| ffhhj wrote:
| > we are heads down building LLM101n
|
| Kind of ironic an AI isn't building it. But that's an example of
| the current state of AI being more a remixer of knowlegde than a
| planner of actions.
| jasonsb wrote:
| Don't worry about it, I'm sure that "AI" is working on
| something much bigger.
| dontlikeyoueith wrote:
| Killing all humans?
| simonw wrote:
| From the announcement:
|
| > The teacher still designs the course materials, but they are
| supported, leveraged and scaled with an AI Teaching Assistant
| who is optimized to help guide the students through them.
|
| So the AI isn't expected to build the materials.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I assume that it would be an agent that the teacher prompts
| in a loop to build and refine the course material. Probably
| with an upload so if they want to bring the full thing ready
| to go they can and in that case the data just needs to be
| formatted by the LLM for their database, but also can have
| the AI fill things in. And then check what came out and
| refine it.
| epups wrote:
| It seems that this would compete with Khan Academy for a similar
| space. Perhaps Karpathy will aim for adults instead?
| minimaxir wrote:
| Khan Academy is more than AI/LLM courses.
| simonw wrote:
| It sounds like Andrej's ambitions stretch beyond AI/LLM
| courses too - but they're a natural "first course" starting
| point because that's where his own teaching expertise is
| focused.
| LegitShady wrote:
| ambition is cheap, value is expensive.
| petercooper wrote:
| It is. Though they are also doing some really smart and
| thoughtful stuff with LLMs to power courses and learning
| environments (https://www.khanmigo.ai/ is a part of it).
| nedrylandJP wrote:
| Any openings for a 40-something career-changing educator?
| beardedwizard wrote:
| I would suggest you contact karpathy and not randoms who
| posted/commented this
| ryandrake wrote:
| Hopefully the AI knows whether 9.11 is greater or less than 9.9,
| something ChatGPT seems to have had a problem figuring out[1].
|
| 1: https://x.com/liujc1998/status/1813244909501182310
| spencerchubb wrote:
| that's a tokenization issue. every tool has strengths and
| weaknesses. why does it matter whether an LLM can compare
| numbers? that can be done trivially in any programming language
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| As an AI layman (downloaded Claude for android as a result of
| hn, just today) "why does it matter whether an LLM can
| compare numbers?", is rather important to me. Probably
| others, also.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| It doesn't seem super relevant to karpathy announcing he's
| created a company so that he can increase the production
| value of his AI YouTube videos
|
| I mean, sure, the company is ostensibly going to also teach
| math at some point, but karpathy will not be using gpt 4o
| for that when it launches (what do you think his timelines
| are? Do you think he is going to be able to solve trivial
| things like "having the llm use something like function
| calling to do math"? If you're unfamiliar with his work,
| karpathy is a very good engineer, and this is a small
| problem that anybody working in building production apps on
| LLMs can easily deal with)
| layer8 wrote:
| At least LLMs know when to use upper case.
| ryandrake wrote:
| If I'm going to augment my education with AI, I'd at least
| want to know it could get basic numerical facts right. If a
| computer program struggles with the concept of a number being
| greater than another number, how do I have any confidence
| that it can teach physics?
| SrslyJosh wrote:
| AI bros: "Why does it matter whether [a program that people
| want to use to teach children] can [tell whether one number
| is bigger than another]?"
|
| =)
| ryandrake wrote:
| "But, teacher, it was a _tokenization issue_! "
| freejazz wrote:
| Are you saying we shouldn't teach children things that "can
| be done trivially in any programming language?"
|
| How will they know what they are doing in that language?
| dyarosla wrote:
| What's the differentiation with other similar ventures?
|
| For instance, Synthesis[0] is an instructor designed, AI
| supplemented site for early math. https://www.synthesis.com/
|
| It really seems like the distinction for these kinds of AI-
| education ventures comes down to the human educator(s) involved.
| jppope wrote:
| thank god for Andrej Karpathy... doing amazing work. I love this
| concept and look forward to seeing how things develop
| ugh123 wrote:
| According to the picture in the tweet, you could grow 3 arms by
| following these courses!
| mads wrote:
| I am getting Jehovah's Witness vibes from it.
| layer8 wrote:
| AI is an arms race.
| shellfishgene wrote:
| And after all those Feynman Physics courses they placed their
| solar panels in the shade ;)
| vunderba wrote:
| I don't understand how he missed that.
|
| This is the same issue I have with large language model as
| coding assistants, since you're effectively not in the driver
| seat - you're acting more like a code reviewer, and I think
| that _that passivity_ eventually causes critical observational
| skills to atrophy.
| ModernMech wrote:
| The rest of the AI art in the course isn't any better. The
| thing is, it doesn't have to be like that. I do AI art and I
| follow a lot of AI artists, and you can fix all those little
| weird mistakes it makes.
|
| The thing is, when the AI art generator makes a mistake and
| draws a person with 3 arms, that is obvious to the student and
| they can take the output with a grain of salt.
|
| But when the AI physics tutor generates some physics result
| that's the equivalent of a person with 3 arms, that will not be
| obvious to the student. They will take the words of the AI
| credulously. I see it all the time in programming as well,
| where the AI just invents APIs, semantics, and syntax.
|
| I don't know how to solve this.
| prewett wrote:
| > I don't know how to solve this.
|
| Don't use an algorithm which produces its response according
| to a probabilistic arrangement of tokens when solutions
| require accuracy / correctness? Most probable and most
| accurate are not the same thing. Hoping that we can get the
| errors down to something acceptable using an algorithm that
| is fundamentally inappropriate to solving the problem seems
| like a fool's errand to me.
| demondemidi wrote:
| Might wanna wait until the hype cycle is over in a few years.
| nineteen999 wrote:
| Why? The VC money is flowing right now.
| throwedu wrote:
| Thats a zillion dollar company right there
| LegitShady wrote:
| its super easy to start ai companies, its difficult to make them
| meaningful. The ai generated image in the twitter post has an
| asian woman with 3 arms and some of the most horrific AI face
| placements I've seen in a while - Is this the quality control we
| can expect our future AI education systems to embody?
| layer8 wrote:
| > its super easy to start ai companies
|
| And only barely an inconvenience.
| bastien2 wrote:
| Chatbots can't teach critical thought or ethics. They need to be
| able to understand language and bias first, and that's an as yet
| unsolved problem.
|
| Until a chatbot is provably correct and ethical in its output, it
| must not be used to teach.
|
| Case in point: the slop image attached to the announcement has
| the typical malformed hands and ghoulish faces problems.
| GaggiX wrote:
| Are humans provably correct and ethical in their outputs?
| moffers wrote:
| I appreciate attempts to disrupt things, but education seems to
| be one of those verticals that seems to be allergic to disruptive
| technologies. Education seems like it can either be very
| specialized, or very generalized, but at the end of the day it
| should be egalitarian. If this approach to education works, would
| we be able to have every teacher in every school in America adopt
| it? I have to imagine the resources needed to train the teachers,
| distribute the technology, acclimate the parents, and then do
| this all on a scale such that no one is left out or treated
| better if you didn't happen to go to an "AI" school makes for a
| tough hill to climb.
|
| I think a lot of the real issues with solving problems in
| education is that they have trouble applying to the larger
| picture of compulsory education.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| This is the fundamental problem with education: everyone treats
| it as some problem to "solve" with tools, and technologies. The
| issues with education are human ones -- interpersonal and
| policy -- not because it's lacking some tool or technique.
|
| They just installed some state of the art AI-enabled, "smart"
| mega drawing screens w at my daughter's schools touting all the
| supposed immeasurable benefits it will bring, and most of the
| parents, including myself, just rolled our eyes.
| 8338550bff96 wrote:
| If delivering a good education can't be achieved because there
| are parts of our education system that continually resist
| adaptation, then whatever those parts are they ought to reach
| their breaking point and be pushed beyond it.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Those parts have reached their breaking point - the teachers
| are ready to quit from lack of resources and support, and
| parents can't do their part because they have to work far too
| hard to keep a roof and food for their families. AI doesn't
| solve that.
| __loam wrote:
| I got an excellent education from the public school system
| and had passionate, committed teachers throughout, and was
| well prepared to pursue an engineering degree at a top
| university. The solution to education is not to try and scale
| up some absurd and ineffective AI system that is worse than
| teachers, it's to pay teachers an actual proportionate salary
| that is in line with their impact on our society so we can
| retain good people. Just because people like Karpathy
| understand AI doesn't mean they understand education.
| wendyshu wrote:
| > Education ... should be egalitarian
|
| Why?
| tucnak wrote:
| Because university people truly, sincerely believe they're
| special.
| OKRainbowKid wrote:
| We do?
| __loam wrote:
| We shouldn't have to explain that it's plainly obvious that
| society massively benefits from an educated populace,
| especially one that claims to be a democracy. There are
| incredibly broad benefits from a reduction in crime to the
| expansion of the skilled labor pool.
|
| I've noticed that many people in tech seem to disregard or
| disrespect educational institutions. So I'll turn it back on
| you. What draconian reason could you possibly have to make
| the argument that we shouldn't try to give every child an
| equal opportunity for a high quality education? Do you hate
| living in an educated society that much? Are you interested
| in living in a malthusian nightmare?
| djeastm wrote:
| One thing I've not understood about this is how do you create an
| AI course to teach people things... without creating an AI that
| can DO the very thing that will make that very same knowledge
| obsolete?
|
| For example, how do you create an AI language teacher without
| creating an AI that can make learning languages obsolete? If
| you've got an AI that can, in real time, hear other languages and
| translate them (as you might have for an AI language teacher),
| then why would a human need to spend countless hours learning
| this other language? Just hold your phone up and let AI do the
| work for a fraction of the effort.
|
| For a harder, non-solved problem, consider math. For an AI to do
| math will require something unknown at this point, if it can ever
| happen. But assuming it does, why would we want a human ever to
| "do math" ever again when we have the AI that can teach it just
| do it for us? The AI will almost certainly do it more cheaply and
| with more skill than a human IF it can be done at all.
|
| It's this sobering realization that I struggle with. If someone
| can tell me where I'm wrong I'd be greatly pleased
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Is this not the same as human teachers?
|
| In the language example, people still want to learn to
| read/write other languages despite many translators being
| available. The tech to teach might be less sensitive to latency
| than the skill in humans, or it might be very expensive, or it
| might be useful to non-tech-literate people.
| qup wrote:
| Well, for instance, because hearing other languages and
| translating them is not even the primary use-case for knowing a
| language. It would take a suite of purpose-built AIs, and the
| knowledge and ability to use them in-situ, to replace knowing a
| language.
|
| AIs can also teach us to do things they cannot themselves do,
| for instance you could have a driving-test tutor. It could
| teach you a lot of things, despite us not having full self-
| driving AIs.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Well I've never learned a language in order to be the best at
| that language, or the only person who can speak it.
|
| If you only want some basic communication, sure use a
| translation app, but learning a language is also about learning
| a culture. Learning about new music and literature and poetry
| that you'd never otherwise get exposure to.
|
| It's like asking what's the point of learning a musical
| instrument when I'll never be a great musician.
|
| It's to benefit myself so what would be the point of just
| getting a translation. They're never the same.
| Sanzig wrote:
| Using a phone translator is fine for being a tourist or maybe
| for short business trips. It's super inconvenient if you want
| to live and work somewhere where they speak that language,
| though.
|
| You need to have your phone on you all the time, otherwise you
| can't communicate. There is always going to be at least one
| clause worth of latency in each direction of translation due to
| differences in word order and semantics, so you'll be at least
| a sentence or two behind the conversation - whereas if you
| learn the language, you're interacting in real time. Also do
| not underestimate the goodwill that comes from being willing to
| learn a language - people recognize that it's hard, they're
| going to be much warmer to someone who spent over a thousand
| hours to reach B2 in their second language vs. someone who
| downloaded an app instead of putting the effort in.
|
| Near real time speech-to-speech machine translation is super
| cool if you're a tourist visiting a country for a couple weeks,
| or an employee visiting a factory in a country you don't speak
| the language. It isn't a replacement for learning a language,
| though.
| huevosabio wrote:
| Some subjects are necessary building blocks to more
| sophisticated tasks. The AI can teach the building blocks and
| leave the task of building to us.
|
| Coding, for example, is just a small subset of the tasks
| necessary for software engineering, which in turn is a small
| subset of the tasks necessary for SaaS company.
|
| We can break down human endeavors into subjects that are "AI
| teachable" and without ever needing the AI to be able to use
| them in a sophisticated fashion.
|
| We already do it like this, but with humans.
| Lichtso wrote:
| I generally agree, in the long term there will be far less need
| for teachers, as there will be less need for human jobs to be
| taught.
|
| However, creating many individual systems which are better than
| a human in a specific area each is very different from one
| unified and integrated system which combines all of them. The
| latter will take a lot longer to achieve. Until then there is
| value in teaching humans.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| I think you're imagining something like chess. In order for an
| ai chessbot to teach me chess as efficiently as possible, that
| bot is probably superhuman at chess.
|
| That's not necessarily the case. A good tutor can be more
| "curator" than "creator of course content"
|
| I can learn math by reading existing math textbooks. Imagine
| having an ai that is able to judge my knowledge of that math
| and assign reading or problem sets accordingly. Imagine an AI
| that is compelling to talk to and keeps me on task given my
| stated learning goals.
|
| None of that requires superhuman anything.
|
| Would I still want to learn linear algebra even if the frontier
| of math is being advanced by some super intelligence? Sure, why
| not? Isn't the frontier already being advanced by many people
| smarter than I am?
| nybsjytm wrote:
| > ... in the case of physics one could imagine working through
| very high quality course materials together with Feynman ... with
| recent progress in generative AI, this learning experience feels
| tractable.
|
| Actually, this seems to be absurdly beyond any of the recent
| progress in generative AI. This sounds like the kind of thing
| people say when their only deep knowledge is in the field of AI
| engineering.
| Yenrabbit wrote:
| It's optimistic, but given the OP is one of the best-informed
| technical generative AI researchers, and has been passing on
| that knowledge to the rest of us for a decade +, I don't think
| we can just dismiss it as unfounded hype :)
| nybsjytm wrote:
| My point is that he's a world expert on the engineering of AI
| systems. That shouldn't be mistaken for expertise, or even
| general knowledge, about anything else.
|
| It's a good principle to bear in mind for people from any
| profession, but top AI engineers in particular seem to have
| an unusually significant habit of not being able to recognize
| where their expertise ends and expertise from another field
| (such as, say, education) begins. They also seem very prone
| to unfounded hype - which isn't to say they're not also good
| researchers.
|
| Maybe Karpathy happens to be better on this than his peers, I
| wouldn't know.
| devindotcom wrote:
| incidentally, feynman would laugh pretty hard at this
| Balgair wrote:
| >> feels tractable
|
| I mean, the guy isn't saying that it's going to 100% happen.
| He's saying that the problem _feels_ like it might be doable at
| all. As Andrej has a background in physics, the phrase of
| 'feels tractable' would mean that he thinks that a path might
| exist, possibly, but only a lot of work will reveal that.
| nybsjytm wrote:
| > As Andrej has a background in physics
|
| This seems rather generous given that he was just a physics
| major. There's lots of physics majors who understand very
| little about physics and, crucially, nothing about physics
| education.
| og_kalu wrote:
| "Just" a physics major. I'm sorry but you're being
| ridiculous.
|
| There's nothing just about that especially when the
| commenter only said he had a background in physics.
| cyost wrote:
| Would any hypothetical training data corpus even be sufficient
| to emulate Feynman? Could any AI have a sufficient grasp of the
| material being taught, have enough surety to avoid errors,
| mimic Feynman's writing+teaching style, and accomplish this
| feat in a reasonable budget and timeframe?
|
| The example is obvious marketing hyperbole, of course, but it's
| just not going to happen beyond a superficial level unless we
| somehow create some kind of time-travelling panopticon. It's
| marred by lack of data (Feynman died in 1988), bad data
| (hagiographies of Feynman, this instance included), flawed
| assumptions (would Feynman even be an appropriate teaching
| assistant for everyone?), etc.
|
| I wonder if AI fans keep doing this thing in hopes that the
| "wow factor" of having the greats being emulated by AI
| (Feynman, Bill Gates, Socrates, etc.) will paper over their
| fundamental insecurities about their investment in AI. Like,
| c'mon, this kind of thing is a bit silly
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og2ehY5QXSc
| nybsjytm wrote:
| > Feynman, Bill Gates, Socrates, etc.
|
| One of these doesn't quite belong ;)
|
| But these AI researchers don't even understand these figures
| except as advertising reference points. The Socratic dialogue
| in the "sparks of AGI" paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712
| has nothing whatsoever to do with Socrates or the way he
| argued.
|
| Fourteen authors and not a single one seemed to realize
| there's any possible difference between a Socratic dialogue
| and a standard hack conversation where one person is named
| "Socrates."
| cyost wrote:
| > Prompt: Can you compare the two outputs above as if you
| were a teacher? [to GPT-4, the "two outputs" being GPT-4's
| and ChatGPT's attempts at a Socratic dialogue]
|
| Okay, that's kinda funny lol.
|
| It's a bit worrying how much the AI industry seems to be
| focusing on the superficial appearance of success
| (grandiose marketing claims, AI art that looks fine on
| first glance, AI mimicking peoples' appearances and speech
| patterns, etc.). I'm just your random layperson in the
| comment section, but it really seems like the field needed
| to be stuck in academia for a decade or two more. It hadn't
| quite finished baking yet.
| nybsjytm wrote:
| As far as I can see there are pretty much zero incentives
| in the AI research arena for being careful or
| intellectually rigorous, or being at all cautious in
| proclaiming success (or imminent success), with industry
| incentives having well invaded elite academia (Stanford,
| Berkeley, MIT, etc) as well. And culturally speaking, the
| top researchers seem to uniformly overestimate, by orders
| of magnitude, their own intelligence or perceptiveness.
| Looking in from the outside, it's a very curious field.
| __loam wrote:
| Dunning Kruger at work.
| xyst wrote:
| I wonder what's the next hype after this? Maybe biotech again?
| Biotech + AI? Get your (propaganda) results beamed straight to
| your brain augmentation with a 3D overlay (just like the movies,
| bro!!).
|
| But if you opted for the mega ultra premium gemini pro max++
| model, then you get a minimal ad free experience. No wait, forget
| a monthly subscription. Think, micro subscription model on a per
| usage basis.
|
| In your death bed and need life saving measures? Augmentation
| returns "402 Payment Required" before nanobots can proceed to
| excise the root of the issue. 5M SHIB tokens required.
| Unfortunately, 20G signal is not reliable in the Wilderness Zone,
| thus old school EMS services are dispatched to the scene.
| Unfortunately, EMS services do not accept your insurance and
| private EMS leaves the scene and dispatches public EMS services.
| The wait is 2 hours given the WZ.
|
| You fail to receive life saving measures (ie, tPA) in time, thus
| resulting in impaired motor functions and decreased quality of
| life. The flashing 402 Payment Required prompt is forever
| imprinted in your augmentation.
| caconym_ wrote:
| I am seriously worried about what it's going to cost to buy my
| daughter a seat at the human table rather than defaulting to the
| AI slop trough it seems most kids less privileged than her will
| be forced to learn from in the near future.
| bilsbie wrote:
| I think we've been at the point you're worried about for a
| while. It's just we don't even have a substitute like Ai yet.
|
| Instead we just accept really bad education.
| uoaei wrote:
| Sounds like what it really is, is the largest prompt injection
| testing platform possible.
|
| Kids everywhere will be learning nothing except how to hack these
| chatbots to get passing grades.
| techostritch wrote:
| I feel really weird about education, the only value I think I've
| ever gotten in education is tangential (social, inspirational)
| which I think many people say is the primary value, but when it
| comes to actually work skills Im mostly self taught. I'm not sure
| if there's a way to make school better without making it way more
| expensive. AI would be interesting but so far it's not reallly
| there yet, for one I think it needs coaching skills to know when
| to reach out rather than just respond to prompts. And most self
| learning is experiential not interactive.
| jimhefferon wrote:
| I'm sorry, but you wrote this post. Did you self-teach writing?
| techostritch wrote:
| The mechanics no. I'm like very intentionally trying not to
| be an extremist about this, yes I did get some value out of
| school but relatively disproportionate to the effort I put
| in.
| SrslyJosh wrote:
| Please don't.
| tekno45 wrote:
| Anytime someone says AI can give everyone their own einstein,
| Feynman, Galileo in a box i can only think about how little data
| we have on anyone before the 90's.
|
| These would be charcutiers of these people with nothing but their
| most famous equations and examples and quips letting you know
| "this is supposed to be a famous person"
| freejazz wrote:
| Lord, spare me.
| jrflowers wrote:
| > imagine working through very high quality course materials
| together with Feynman
|
| I like this idea. What if you could study geometric function
| theory with Kaczynski? You could study chemical engineering with
| Thomas Midgley Jr!
|
| Creative writing with L Ron Hubbard!
| koonsolo wrote:
| I'll tell you where it will go wrong.
|
| We had an economics teacher, that when you would bring up "the
| pope" topic, she could go on a 1+ hour rant about what is wrong
| with the whole catholic institution, etc.
|
| Of course us kids, would somehow be able to get this topic into
| the lesson, to trigger her rant.
|
| If you want to know various ways on how to break AI, let some
| kids, who are forced to interact with it, loose on the thing. I'm
| sure they'll figure out how to get it to say the most crazy shit
| in no time.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| All of it has to go tremendously right for that to be the point
| where it breaks.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Eventually they'd make an app for AR with a virtual human
| teacher, depending on the execution, it could work especially if
| they can make it so real that it can suspend disbelief it is just
| an avatar
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| This is a worse idea than the jump to conclusions mat. I have no
| doubt that some VC will value it in the billions.
| ecjhdnc2025 wrote:
| "I am not very observant where pictures are concerned"
|
| Like... is that a satirical choice or what?
| tschellenbach wrote:
| Imagine world class education, for everyone, accessible to all at
| the price of Netflix. AI can be a teaching assistant, but also
| makes it easier to create course materials. Generating video
| explanations, infographics etc.
| htk wrote:
| I'm impressed by the amount of flak that Karpathy is getting
| here.
|
| His great instructional videos on YT tell me that he is
| passionate for both AI and education, so I'm all for him trying
| to mix the two. More effort on education is always welcome in my
| book.
| layer8 wrote:
| Their first planned product is an online course for building a
| "Storyteller" LLM, explicitly stating that the course will take
| some time to build and that there is no timeline on when it
| will launch [1]. The company page states that their vision
| merely "feels tractable", and concedes that they might not be
| successful [2]. There is a lack of arguments regarding how they
| can bring any substantial advancements over current generative
| AI tech. At present this all looks rather underwhelming, with a
| substantial dose of wishful thinking.
|
| [1] https://github.com/karpathy/LLM101n [2]
| https://eurekalabs.ai/
| jmull wrote:
| > There is a lack of arguments regarding how they can bring
| any substantial advancements over current AI tech.
|
| It doesn't sound like that's a goal though.
| layer8 wrote:
| It would be necessary to fulfil the vision.
| ramon156 wrote:
| It would be, but its not top priority to finish by
| yesterday. This is a new direction, so I'd rather have it
| be good than quick
| surfingdino wrote:
| AI today cannot piece together a pizza recipe based on the
| thousands of recipes it was trained on so I'm not holding my
| breath waiting for it to become a useful tool in education.
| uptownfunk wrote:
| Whatever anyone will say. I am glad he is doing something
| meaningful with his life beyond just making investors in OpenAI
| more wealthy. At some point I suspect the money just becomes a
| number and then you can afford to think about bigger things like
| how can we help alleviate some of the broader suffering in the
| world.
| huevosabio wrote:
| Karpathy is amazing. A rare combination of top tier technical
| chops with top tier communication skills, wrapped in a wholesome
| person.
|
| I am very excited for this and can't wait to try their products!
|
| As an aside, odd to see people here are so pessimistic about the
| idea. Education is hard to scale because tutors are hard to
| scale. ChatGPT is already an ad-hoc educator for me, in a similar
| jump that Wikipedia was. Having a purpose-built product with a
| hand-crafted curriculum, that's a killer idea.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| Hacker news famously hates on companies that have gone on to
| billion dollar successes:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
| Balgair wrote:
| > Outbound links with a bit more info in the reply!
|
| Hey, I don't have a twitter account (long story). Can anyone post
| those links here?
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Cool.
|
| I'm a process oriented learner. While I can read any fact or
| trivia and retain it with no effort, things that require steps I
| only really learn by repeatedly doing them. So if there's an AI,
| for example, that can create problem sets for me to do with
| something that I am attempting to learn, and then explain to me
| the steps after I've attempted to find the solution, then I am
| more likely to retain that knowledge in the long run.
|
| This would have been especially beneficial to me in my college
| statistics class, for example, where I had a prof who was... not
| much of an educator.
| sensanaty wrote:
| This far in and they're still drawing 3 arms and you want me to
| believe these bullshit generators are gonna be useful in
| education?
|
| We've collectively lost our minds with this AI hype
| rhspeer wrote:
| https://www.narratear.com/ is pretty far along with this, and the
| founders are solid.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| What are the hardware requirements for this course though?
| cccybernetic wrote:
| This is a problem I'm working on.
|
| I'm a software engineer at major US research university
| developing AI-powered software to improve critical reading and
| writing skills in higher ed. The idea is to provide immediate,
| high-quality feedback to students, closing the "latency" of
| submitting something and waiting to hear back from you professor.
|
| I do genuinely think AI can reshape teaching and learning, but it
| will be a slow iterative process. We can use it scale what works
| (personalized learning and tutoring, helping students develop
| mastery/automaticity on topics, targeting areas where they
| struggle). It can also automate time-consuming tasks that bog
| teachers down.
|
| If you're interested in pedagogy, AI, and tech, please reach out.
| __loam wrote:
| I'm glad I got my degrees before people starting trying to
| integrate bullshit generators into my education. I've been
| really frustrated with the conversation about the potential
| applications for this technology. These chatbots have no
| relationship with the truth or with knowledge, and are designed
| to agree with users and act accommodating regardless of how
| wrong someone is. We're talking about putting this tech between
| patients and doctors, students and teachers and meanwhile
| McDonald's is rolling back deployments because it can't even
| take a fast food order accurately.
| ilamont wrote:
| > I'm a software engineer at major US research university
| developing AI-powered software to improve critical reading and
| writing skills in higher ed.
|
| Oftentimes, the root cause of the critical reading problem is
| the quality of the writing that students are subjected to. My
| daughter recently showed me one of her economics readings, and
| said she couldn't understand it. It was 40 pages of convoluted
| academic writing like this:
|
| _Wibbels argues that developing countries face an inherently
| disadvantaged position in the world economy due to their
| dependence on foreign capital and an undiversified base of
| commodity exports as primary sources of hard currency. This
| dependent position relative to capital markets prevents
| developing countries from borrowing to engage in counter-
| cyclical aggregate demand management._
|
| Is such language the optimal way to express ideas for
| comprehension by peers, students, and policymakers?
|
| I hope your mission to improve writing skills in higher ed
| addresses the source of output - professors, teaching
| assistants, journal editors, and others who continue to promote
| outdated, inconsistent, and counterproductive academic writing
| styles.
| trod123 wrote:
| This is misguided, naive, and likely to end in multiple potential
| failure outcomes that may be unacceptable, both from a profit
| standpoint; as well as a societal standpoint.
|
| Education is a part of what gets adopted into each and every
| student's self concept (identity). There is an uncanny valley in
| communication where any inconsistent distortion of reflected
| appraisal can lead students down a path of irrational madness, in
| a way that they themselves cannot perceive. This is well known in
| certain circles.
|
| AI always has the biases which are programmed into it by the
| creators of the AI, whether this is explicit or implicit, the
| fact remains, there are biases.
|
| AI in education will be proven to be harmful because there is no
| possible way that AI can remain consistent in its interactions at
| all times. We already know this from hallucinations where experts
| went and fact checked it and found it had lied, where lawyers
| were disbarred or censured.
|
| Put plainly, this is a safety critical system involving our
| children.
|
| Given the level of care to date that's occurred with AI in
| industry, there is no room for discussion or adoption of these
| tools, unless the actual unspoken intention is to drive your
| children crazy; where they self eliminate later as a result.
|
| Rationally, good people don't create a world of intolerable
| suffering and then magically expect that somehow, someone, will
| figure out a way to fix everything you've broken but were too
| blind to see; at the time when knowing would save lives.
|
| For those who enjoy cinema, a perfect analogy of this might be
| the Day After Tomorrow, where the main scientist turns out to be
| correct, but was ultimately ignored until devastating losses and
| risks were nearly insurmountable.
|
| Leadership didn't want to hear the facts when knowing would have
| saved lives, and so they had to take a triage on the battlefield
| approach (abandoning half the country). While it is a fictional
| story, it sufficiently demonstrates what lack of scientific or
| rational foresight can lead to for those that can't imagine it
| themselves (people who are blinded like that should never be in
| positions of influence or power).
| __loam wrote:
| Put much more politely than I would. I'm glad people are
| starting to question the narrative on this technology.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| " There is an uncanny valley in communication where any
| inconsistent distortion of reflected appraisal can lead
| students down a path of irrational madness, in a way that they
| themselves cannot perceive. This is well known in certain
| circles."
|
| Please expand.
| trod123 wrote:
| Foundational material comes from 1940s and 1950s wartime
| records of torture done on individuals during WW2 and Korean
| Conflict (under Mao).
|
| You can find the raw case studies in the literature:
|
| Robert Lifton "Thought Reform & The psychology of totalism";
|
| John Meerloo "Rape of the Mind" covers the methodology often
| used along with knowledge at the time that physical coercion
| is not effective compared to mental coercion.
|
| There are a number of more modern references. Just to get you
| started (as an overview).
|
| I believe Cialdini writes about the other mechanisms in his
| book on Influence (i.e. the structure imposed by consistency;
| which was used to induce PoWs to inform on other PoWs during
| the Korean Conflict).
|
| Most modern documented cases of torture involve mental
| coercion, absent physical coercion. This may take the form of
| varying and intermittent loud noises, bright lights (meant to
| disorient and confuse), isolation, sleep deprivation, etc
| which induces hypnotic states. The subject may become
| psychotic/violent, or withdraw (disassociate) becoming non-
| responsive.
|
| Both may to a degree adopt characteristics of their torturer
| (through distorted reflected appraisal), or whatever they
| promote (towards the promise of relief, which is not physical
| relief).
|
| Additionally, this material also includes the process of
| breaking down an individuals self-concept (as an example more
| coercively, by forcing them into acts that violate their
| deeply held beliefs, Abu Ghraib comes to mind) through
| destructive interference.
|
| Many of these structures, tactics, and techniques that
| originate in torture, form the basis for what is used today
| very commonly in advertising and marketing, as well as
| subversion and propaganda.
|
| The reality is its fairly simple to break people with certain
| structures. One such structure is prompting for confession to
| induce consistency traps, then using that to mold the person
| to a certain narrative in a circular loop.
|
| The use of the hot potato in the classroom, for open-ended
| questions (opinion) is one such example where this material
| has found purchase in K12 education.
|
| Often, these elements are subtle, and are non-alerting; but
| demonstrably effective.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I am seeing a lot of skepticism on this thread.
|
| While I agree that this approach to learning (with a bot) may not
| be a good fit for everyone, I am absolutely sure it can be for
| some.
|
| I don't see the harm in exploring this path.
|
| This is not like education was a solved problem, it is extremely
| wasteful, inconsistent and costly.
|
| I think there is a path for more projects/interest based, less
| competitive and more individually tailored learning system when
| we remove all the constraints attached to a classroom and
| teachers, many of them being incompetent or miserable.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| The goal is to get closer to what a tutor can do, and it has
| been proved that tutoring by experts is by far the most
| efficient education system, the only problem is it does not
| scale.
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