Across the world schools are wedging AI between students and their learning materials; in some countries greater than half of all schools have already adopted it (often an “edu” version of a model like ChatGPT, Gemini, etc), usually in the name of preparing kids for the future, despite the fact that no consensus exists around what preparing them for the future actually means when referring to AI.
Some educators have said that they believe AI is not that different from previous cutting edge technologies (like the personal computer and the smartphone), and that we need to push the “robots in front of the kids so they can learn to dance with them” (paraphrasing a quote from Harvard professor Houman Harouni). This framing ignores the obvious fact that AI is by far, the most disruptive technology we have yet developed. Any technology that has experts and developers alike (including Sam Altman a couple years ago) warning of the need for serious regulation to avoid potentially catastrophic consequences isn’t something we should probably take lightly. In very important ways, AI isn’t comparable to technologies that came before it.
The kind of reasoning we’re hearing from those educators in favor of AI adoption in schools doesn’t seem to have very solid arguments for rushing to include it broadly in virtually all classrooms rather than offering something like optional college courses in AI education for those interested. It also doesn’t sound like the sort of academic reasoning and rigorous vetting many of us would have expected of the institutions tasked with the important responsibility of educating our kids.
ChatGPT was released roughly three years ago. Anyone who uses AI generally recognizes that its actual usefulness is highly subjective. And as much as it might feel like it’s been around for a long time, three years is hardly enough time to have a firm grasp on what something that complex actually means for society or education. It’s really a stretch to say it’s had enough time to establish its value as an educational tool, even if we had come up with clear and consistent standards for its use, which we haven’t. We’re still scrambling and debating about how we should be using it in general. We’re still in the AI wild west, untamed and largely lawless.
The bottom line is that the benefits of AI to education are anything but proven at this point. The same can be said of the vague notion that every classroom must have it right now to prevent children from falling behind. Falling behind how, exactly? What assumptions are being made here? Are they founded on solid, factual evidence or merely speculation?
The benefits to Big Tech companies like OpenAI and Google, however, seem fairly obvious. They get their products into the hands of customers while they’re young, potentially cultivating their brands and products into them early. They get a wealth of highly valuable data on them. They get to maybe experiment on them, like they have previously been caught doing. They reinforce the corporate narratives behind AI — that it should be everywhere, a part of everything we do.
While some may want to assume that these companies are doing this as some sort of public service, looking at the track record of these corporations reveals a more consistent pattern of actions which are obviously focused on considerations like market share, commodification, and bottom line.
Meanwhile, there are documented problems educators are contending with in their classrooms as many children seem to be performing worse and learning less.
The way people (of all ages) often use AI has often been shown to lead to a tendency to “offload” thinking onto it — which doesn’t seem far from the opposite of learning. Even before AI, test scores and other measures of student performance have been plummeting. This seems like a terrible time to risk making our children guinea pigs in some broad experiment with poorly defined goals and unregulated and unproven technologies which may actually be more of an impediment to learning than an aid in their current form.
This approach has the potential to leave children even less prepared to deal with the unique and accelerating challenges our world is presenting us with, which will require the same critical thinking skills which are currently being eroded (in adults and children alike) by the very technologies being pushed as learning tools.
This is one of the many crazy situations happening right now that terrify me when I try to imagine the world we might actually be creating for ourselves and future generations, particularly given personal experiences and what I’ve heard from others. One quick look at the state of society today will tell you that even we adults are becoming increasingly unable to determine what’s real anymore, in large part thanks to the way in which our technologies are influencing our thinking. Our attention spans are shrinking, our ability to think critically is deteriorating along with our creativity.
I am personally not against AI, I sometimes use open source models and I believe that there is a place for it if done correctly and responsibly. We are not regulating it even remotely adequately. Instead, we’re hastily shoving it into every classroom, refrigerator, toaster, and pair of socks, in the name of making it all smart, as we ourselves grow ever dumber and less sane in response. Anyone else here worried that we might end up digitally lobotomizing our kids?
I’ve never seen anything make more people act stupid faster. It’s like they’re in some sort of frenzy. It’s like a cult.
Three years ago and everyone talks about it like life has never and will never exist without it and if you don’t use it you’re useless to society
So stupid I don’t have a nice, non-rage-inducing way to describe it. People are simply idiots and will fall for any sort of marketing scam
“AI: not even once”
People who can’t think critically tend to vote Conservative.
Coincidence? I think not.
thats why conservative govts are all in adopting AI. because conservatives cant tell the difference between an AI video and a real one. jus tlook on reddit how many videos are accused of being AI when its not.
I’ve been working on formal a socialist students society, our first and current campaign is fighting back against AI in the local college, the reaction from students has been electric. Students don’t want this, they know they are being deskilled, they know who profits.
My brother in law is in college for engineering. His mom was telling me he uses AI for his assignments and just edits the responses. She is writing a book, and said she uses AI all the time for it.
It makes me want to scream. We weren’t even allowed to use spark notes when I was a student, and yet, the schools today seem to be pushing this tech on them. The mother used my spark notes example as an excuse, “see kids always have looked for ways to make their work easier”. It’s not the same lady…
While I’m glad to hear your school cohort is enthusiastic and informed, I’m not so sure it’s the general consensus among college students.
I’ve met some in this campaign who like AI, but they don’t take much convincing once the material conditions are explained. I’m sure most of those students will continue to use AI. 90% of the students I’ve spoken with so far agree tho. I’d imagine the education institutions are getting some form of kick back or guidance from AI firms/partners, we saw similar with PCs entering education, something silicon valley opt their own children out off.
AI highlights a problem with universities that we have been ignoring for decades already, which is that learning is not the point of education, the point is to get a degree with as little effort as possible, because that’s the only valueable thing to take away from education in our current society.
I’d argue schooling in general. Instead of being something you do because you want to and enjoy it, it’s instead a thing you have to do either because you don’t have the qualifications for a promotion, or you need the qualifications for an entry-level position.
People that are there because they enjoy study, or want to learn more are arguably something of a minority.
Naturally if you’re there because you have to be, you’re not going to put much, if any effort in, and will look to take what shortcuts you can.
The rot really began with Google and the the goal of “professionalism” in teaching.
Textbooks were thrown out, in favour of “flexible” teaching models, and Google allowed lazy teachers to just set assignments rather than teach lessons (prior to Google, the lack of resources in a normal school made assignments difficult to complete to any sort of acceptable standard).
The continual demand for “professionalism” also drove this trend - “we have to have these vast, long winded assignments because that’s what is done at university”.
AI has rendered this method of pedagogy void, but the teaching profession refuses to abandon their aim for “professionalism”.
Hello
I just keep seeing in my head when John Connor says “we’re not going to make it, are we?”
Major drag, huh?
We aren’t.
It’s in our nature to destroy ourselves.
Can’t I just take one for the team and do it one weekend booze binge at a time?
You can. But why wait for the weekend?
I like being sober at my job.
then maybe we should focus on destroying the more difficult targets first, instead of the defenseless targets like children and homeless people.
Thru AI as some glorified meme generators, what oligarchies are now steering millions of people to become… cows.
Wasn’t this from CP2077?
Yeah, and it’s also the perfect horrifying metaphor like being headed to the Brave New World.
yeah cartoon from “The Hunt” quest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cibafW6XFLACan’t believe I called that.
It’s pretty fucked up but awesome quest about our future.
Specifically about the abused kid who grew up to bait and kidnap kids with issues then pump them with an extreme amount of cow growth hormones until they die.
One of the super dark quests in the game
deleted by creator
At work now we’re having team learning sessions that are just one person doing a change incredibly slowly using AI while everyone else watches, but at least I can keep doing my regular work if it’s a Teams call. It usually takes the AI about 45 minutes to decide what I immediately knew needed doing.
Already seeing this in some junior devs.
Recently had to lay someone off because they just weren’t producing the work that needed to be done. Even the simplest of tasks.
I would be like we need to remove/delete these things. That’s it. It took some time because you had to just do some comparison and research, but it was a super difficult task for them.
I would then give them something more technical, like write this script and it was mostly ok, but much better work than the simple tasks I would give.
Then I would get AI slop and I would ask WTF are you thinking here. Why are you doing this? They couldn’t give a good answer because they didn’t actually do the work. They would just have LLMs do all their work for them and if it requires them to do any sort of thinking, they would fail miserably.
Even in simple PR reviews, I would leave at least 10 comments just going back and forth. Got to the point where it was just easier if I would have done it myself. I tried to mentor them and guide them along, but it just wasn’t getting through to them.
I don’t mind the use of LLMs, but use it as a tool, not a crutch. You should be able to produce the thing you are giving the llm to produce for you.
Same. My guy couldnt authenticate a user against a password hash, even after i gave him the source code. Its like copying homework - you just shoot yourself in the foot for later.
its already pretty bad if they cant read or write past the 6th grade level, and then having LLM do all thier hw/coursework. i see this getting worst, if PEer review papers are generated by AI and getting through publication. it already was somewhat of a slop for research papers before llm.
Meanwhile Junior Devs: “Why will no one hire me?!?!”
There is a funny two-way filtering going on in here.
Job applications are auto-rejected unless they go over how “AI will reshape the future and I am so excited” as if it’s linkedin.
Then the engineers that do the interviews want people interested in learning about computers through years of hard work and experience?
Just doesn’t work out.
Problem is, people are choosing careers based on how much it will pay them, instead of things they want to do/ are passionate about. Its rare nowadays to have candidates who also have hobby work/ side projects related to the work. At least by my reckoning.
Problem is most jobs don’t pay enough anymore. So people don’t have the luxury of picking what they’re passionate about, they have bills to pay. Minimum wage hasn’t raised in 16 years. It wasn’t enough 16 years ago. It’s now buys only 60% of what it did back then. This is the floor all other wages are based on. If the for doesn’t raise, things above it won’t keep up either.
Ths seniors can tell. And even if you make it into the job, itll be pretty obvious the first couple of days.
I interview juniors regularly. I can’t wait until the first time I interview a “vibe coder” who thinks they’re a developer, but can’t even tell me what a race condition is or the difference between synchronous and asynchronous execution.
That’s going to be a red letter day, lemme tell ya.
I get that they can download widgets to accelerate the results, but they need to learn how the things work. I just code what i need by hand instead. Net result of their approach is quick up front results, but heaven forbid maintenance or customization.
Thanks to this crap, the world is being flooded with awful, unmaintainable code, and the thing is, the LLMs that build it promptly forget everything about it as soon as you move on to the next task. Fixing this garbage will be an unending nightmare.
“Would you say I have a decorator on this function?”
Children don’t yet have the maturity, the self control, or the technical knowledge required to actually use AI to learn.
You need to know how to search the web the regular way, how to phrase questions so the AI explains things rather than just give you the solution. You also need the self restraint to only use it to teach you, never do things for you ; and the patience to think about the problem yourself, only then search the regular web, and only then ask the AI to clarify the few things you still don’t get.
Many adults are already letting the chatbots de-skill them, I do not trust children would do any better.
My experience is most adults don’t know how to search the internet for information either lol.
Also I haven’t been in school for over a decade at this point, but the internet was ubiquitous and they didn’t teach shit about it, the classes that were adjacent (like game design) were run by a coach who barely knew how to work the macs we were forced to use.
Nor was critical thinking an important part of the teaching process, very rarely was the “why” explained, they’re just trying to get through all the material required to prepare you for the state tests which determine if you move onto the next grade.
Most people including adults don’t use AI to learn. They just use it to format emails, messages, generate things or do other stuff.
Children shouldn’t really be within the internet without supervision, parental controls are one thing but in school, children should be carefully guided as to digital skills and life. It quite self explanatory that children are incapable of using such technology as they’re still developing independent thinking and the fundament aspects of computing.
It’s only when children become teenagers, they become independent thinkers and where self-control and maturity could be at par with adults. In this case, age isn’t the problem - but the systematic methodology in which AI enables more “streamlined” approach which “gets the job done”.
Of course your statement highlights children, but the fact is; when those children become capable teenagers they’re just as “equipped” as adults - the only problem with teens and adults being the technical experience and knowledge which may vary.
I wonder if this might not be exactly the correct approach to teach them, though. When there’s actually someone to tell them “sorry that AI answer is bullshit”, so they can learn how to use it as a ressource rather than an answer provider. Adults fail at it, but they also don’t have a teacher (and kids aren’t stupid, just inexperienced).
We need to be able to distinguish between giving kids a chance to learn how to use AI, and replacing their whole education with AI.
Right under this story in my feed is the one about the CEO who fired 80% of his staff because they didn’t switch over to AI fast enough. That’s the world these kids are being prepared for.
I would rather they get some exposure to AI in the classroom where a teacher can be present and do some contextualizing. Kids are going to find AI either way. My kids have gotten reasonable contextualizing of other things at school, like not to trust Google blindly and not to cite Wikipedia as a source. Schools aren’t always great with new technology but they aren’t always terrible either. My kids school seems to take a very cautious approach with technology and mostly teach literacy and critical thinking about it. They aren’t throwing out textbooks, shoving AI at kids and calling it learning.
This is an alarmist post. AIs benefits to education are far from proven. But it’s definitely high time for
kidseveryone to get some education about it at least.ai companies don’t care about kids learning.
Soy sauce is made from fermented soybeans.
I do agree with your point that we need to educate people on how to use AI in responsible ways. You also mention the cautious approach taken by your kids school, which sounds commendable.
As far as the idea of preparing kids for an AI future in which employers might fire AI illiterate staff, this sounds to me more like a problem of preparing people to enter the workforce, which is generally what college and vocational courses are meant to handle. I doubt many of us would have any issue if they had approached AI education this way. This is very different than the current move to include it broadly in virtually all classrooms without consistent guidelines.
(I believe I read the same post about the CEO, BTW. It sounds like the CEO’s claim may likely have been AI-washing, misrepresenting the actual reason for firing them.)
[Edit to emphasize that I believe any AI education we do to prepare for employment purposes should be approached as vocational education which is optional, confined to those specific relevant courses, rather than broadly applied]
I agree with you that education is not primarily workforce training. I just included that note as a bit of context because it definitely made me chuckle to see these two posts right together, each painting a completely different picture of AI: “so important you must embrace it or you will die” versus “what the hell is this shit keep it away from children.”
I fall in between somewhere. We should be very cautious with AI and judicious in its use.
I just think that “cautious and judicious” means having it in schools - not keeping it out of schools. Toddler daycares should be angelic safe spaces where kids are utterly protected. Schools should actually have challenging material that demands critical thinking.
I think, therefore I am. If they don’t think, I’m not so sure.
AI gets increasingly easy and more capable, so there’s really no reason to adopt AI early in case you miss out. AI never allows anyone to miss out, the end goal is quite literally to be used by babies and animals. Any preparation you do today, is preparation you don’t need to do in the near future as AI strives to take over everything.
Feel free to set AI aside and work on yourself. You won’t miss out. AI won’t let you miss out.
I think you’d probably have to hide out under a rock to miss out on AI at this point. Not sure even that’s enough. Good luck finding a regular rock and not a smart one these days.
I do not think, therefore I do not am.
They let AI into the curriculum immediately, while actual life skills have been excluded for the benefit of work skills since Prussian schooling became popular. Dumbing down the livestock.
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-things-schools-should-teach-but-dont/answer/Harri-K-Hiltunen
The very same people, who called me stupid for thinking typing will be a more important skill that “pretty writing” now think art education is obsolete, because you can just ask a machine for an image.
AI stands for “anti-intellectualism”.
One of Big Tech’s pitches about AI is the “great equalizer” idea. It reminds me of their pitch about social media being the “great democratizer”. Now we’ve got algorithms, disinformation, deepfakes, and people telling machines to think for them and potentially also their kids.
It seems writing things by hand is better for memorization, and it certainly feels more personal and versatile in presentation.
I write lots of things by hand. Having physical papers is helpful, I find, to see lots of things at once, reorganise, etc. I also like being able to highlight, draw on things, structure documents non-linearly…
I’m a computer scientist, so I do value typing immensely too. But I find it too constraining for many reasoning tasks, especially for learning or creativity.
Handwriting’s still important. “Pretty” usually means legible, too, and the point of art education is not to be able to confidently produce pictures.
I suppose it would matter if i wrote anything down by hand in the last ten years
never left a note for someone in that time? a few quick thoughts before you forget? a list, some date, when a device is out of reach/battery/service?
I’ve been online enough to know they weren’t thinking before either.
This. (Offline too.)
Which generation did we really taught critical thinking to? In general, those “thinkers” or people with nice research skills (e.g. reading comprehension and other traits) were always a minority within each generation. And I agree there will be less now with AI. But we have no polls or measurement, so the title goes a little clickbaity, in resonance to the generalized discomfort towards a new technology that schools haven’t accomodated yet (e.g. all kind of solutions are seen in the wild)
I reckon it was the same with arithmetislcs and calculators in the past. We were able to deal with that! (so that whatever proportion of people that graduates knowing arithmetics with each generation didn’t shrink “too much”.)
If we are considering possible scenarios, let’s be optimistic too.
AI (discounting other problems like their ecological footprint) may not be that bad on our educational systems once we adjust…
This may be unpopular opinion but in my class today, even the teacher was using ai… to prepare the entire lecture. Now i believe that learning material shoult be prepared by the teacher not some ai. Honestly i see everybody using ai today to make the learning material and then the students use ai to solve assigments. The way its heading the world everybody will just kinda “represent” an ai, not even think for themselves. Like sure use ai to find information quickly or something but dont depend on it entirely.
I asked a lecturer some question, I think it was what happens when bit shifting signed integers.
He asked an LLM and read the answer.
Similarly he asked an LLM how to determine memory size allocated by malloc. It said that it was not possible, and that was the answer. But a 2009 answer from stack overflow begged to differ.
At least he actually tried it out when I told him.But at this point I even had my father send me an LLM written slop that was clearly bullshit (made up information about non-existent internal system at our college), which he probably didn’t even read as he copied everything including “AI answers may be inaccurate.”
Can’t even type out a coherent, properly punctuated comment.
