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?
As a teacher in a school that has been quite aggressively pushing AI down our curriculum, I have to close an eye in regard to it when it comes to a simple factor of education as a work environment: bureaucracy. Gemini has so far been a lifesaver in checking the accuracy of forms, producing standardized and highly-readable versions of tests and texts, assessment grids and all of the menial shit that is required for us to produce (and which detracts a substantial amount of time from the core of the job, which would be working with the kids).
I mean, the bitter truth of all this is the downsizing and resource ratcheting of public schools creating an enormous labor crisis prior to the introduction of AI. Teachers were swamped with prep work for classes, they were expected to juggle multiple subjects of expertise at once, they were simultaneously educator and disciplinarian for class sizes that kept mushrooming with budget cuts. Students are subject to increasingly draconian punishments that keep them out of class longer, resulting in poorer outcomes in schools with harsher discipline. And schools use influxes of young new teachers to keep wages low, at the expense of experience.
These tools take the pressure off people who have been in a cooker since the Bush 43 administration and the original NCLB school privatization campaign. AI in schools as a tool to bulk process busy work is a symptom of a deeper problem. Kids and teachers coordinating cheating campaigns to meet arbitrary creeping metrics set by conservative bureaucrats are symptoms of a deeper problem. The education system as we know it is shifting towards a much more rigid and ideologically doctrinaire institution, and the endless testing + AI schooling are tools utilized by the state to accomplish the transformation.
Simply saying “No AI in Schools” does nothing to address the massive workload foisted on faculty. It does nothing to address how Teach-The-Test has taken over the educational philosophy of public schooling. And it does nothing to shrink class sizes, to maintain professional teachers for the length of their careers (rather than firing older teachers to keep salaries low), or to maximize student attendance rates - the three most empirically proven techniques to maximizing educational quality.
AI is a crutch for a broken system. Kicking the crutch out doesn’t fix the system.
I appreciated this comment, I think you made some excellent points. There is absolutely a broader, complex and longstanding problem. I feel like that makes the point that we need to consider seriously what we introduce into that vulnerable situation even more crucial. A bad fix is often worse than no fix at all.
AI is a crutch for a broken system. Kicking the crutch out doesn’t fix the system.
A crutch is a very simple and straightforward piece of tech. It can even just be a stick. What I’m concerned about is that AI is no stick, it’s the most complex technology we’ve yet developed. I’m reminded of that saying “the devil is in the details”. There are a great many details in AI.
I think Ai being used by teachers and administrators for the purpose of off-loading menial tasks is great. Teachers are often working like 90 hours a week just to meet all the requirements put upon them, and a lot of those tasks do not require much thought, just a lot of time.
In that respect, yeah sure, go for it. But at this point it seems like they’re encouraging students to use these programs as a way to off-load critical thinking and learning, and that… well, that’s horrifyingly stupid.
Finking hurt me brain :{
I dont trust AI much with anything other than a fun thing to chat with and give me someone to talk to. I use venice AI because I cannot get my offline LLMs to work for some reason.
We’re cooked.
Yes yes we’re always cooked 🥱
Already seeing this in some junior devs.
Meanwhile Junior Devs: “Why will no one hire me?!?!”
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?”
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.
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.
I spent some years in classrooms as a service provider when Wikipedia was all the rage. Most districts had a “no Wikipedia” policy, and required primary sources.
My kids just graduated high school, and they were told NOT to use LLM’s (though some of their teachers would wink). Their current college professors use LLM detection software.
AI and Wikipedia are not the same, though. Students are better off with Wikipedia as they MIGHT read the references.
Still, those students who WANT to learn will not be held back by AI.
Still, those students who WANT to learn will not be held back by AI.
Our society probably won’t survive if only the students who want to learn do so. 😔
I share this concern.
Great to get the perspective of someone who was in education.
Still, those students who WANT to learn will not be held back by AI.
I think that’s a valid point, but I’m afraid that it’s making it harder to choose to learn the “old hard way” and I’d imagine fewer students deciding to make that choice.
My optimism tells me this issue will be short lived. Unless someone can find a very creative way to monetize AI so that it is sustainable, it will likely crash (with local instances continuing to get development).
i think its a symptom of a larger problem, the students are likely already below reading level, writing as it is. now LLM, means they dont even need to try learning how to write, read, do mathemtics.
College professors are making homeworks harsher to make up for the cheating so students who WANT to learn may actually be held back by the literal sense.
or they are using AI themselves and accusing students of cheating on thier papers, when its not, which blurs the line. but i wonder how common this is.
Can you provide an example?
The best AI tools will also cite references, like Wikipedia, so you can click all the way through.
I believe the early Microsoft one did that well, but the popular ones (grok, chathpt, Gemini) will only when asked (in my experience).
wiki isnt a good reference though. it would have to cite actual sources, papers in the general subject.
I always saw the rules against Wikipedia to be around citations (and accuracy in the early years), rather than it harming learning. It’s not that different from other tertiary sources like textbooks or encyclopedias. It’s good for learning a topic and the interacting pieces, but you need to then search for primary/secondary sources relevant to the topic you are writing about.
Generative AI however
- is a text prediction engine that often generates made up info, and then students learn things wrong
- does the writing for the students, so they don’t actually have to read or understand anything
You don’t even need to search, just scroll down to the “references” section and read/cite them instead.
It’s great! I felt the “no Wikipedia” was short sighted (UNLESS one of the teaching goals was doing research in an actual library!).
I see these as problems too. If you (as a teacher) put an answer machine in the hands of a student, it essentially tells that student that they’re supposed to use it. You can go out of your way to emphasize that they are expected to use it the “right way” (since there aren’t consistent standards on how it should be used, that’s a strange thing to try to sell students on), but we’ve already seen that students (and adults) often choose to choose the quickest route to the goal, which tends to result in them letting the AI do the heavy lifting.
Encyclopedias in general are not good sources. They’re too surface level. Wikipedia is a bad source because it’s an encyclopedia not because it’s crowd sourced.
Wikipedia is better than an encyclopedia, IMO, because the references are super easy to follow.
Idk, comment section is like generated thread of people who are like “well maybe it’s beggining of digital age and smart management of people”. The fuck you took today, it’s made to exploit everything and everyone, not to make your life better lmao
When I was in school I was fortunate enough that I had educators who strongly emphasized critical thinking. I don’t think “AI” would be an issue if it were viewed as a research tool (with a grain of salt), backed by interactive activities that showcased how to validate what you’re getting.
The unfortunate part is instructor’s hands are more often than not tied, and the temptation to just “finish the work” quickly on the part of the student is real. Then again, I had a few rather attractive girls flirt with me to copy my work and they didn’t exactly get far in life, so I have to wonder how much has truly changed.
Ban AI in schools
Old man yells at cloud.
I remember the “ban calculators” back in the day. “Kids won’t be able to learn math if the calculator does all the calculations for them!”
The solution to almost anything disruptive is regulation, not a ban. Use AI in times when it can be a leaning tool, and re-design school to be resilient to AI when it would not enhance learning. Have more open discussions in class for a start instead of handing kids a sheet of homework that can be done by AI when the kid gets home.
I remember the “ban calculators” back in the day
US math scores have hit a low point in history, and calculators are partially to blame. Calculators are good to use if you already have an excellent understanding of the operations. If you start learning math with a calculator in your hand, though, you may be prevented from developing a good understanding of numbers. There are ‘shortcut’ methods for basic operations that are obvious if you are good with numbers. When I used to teach math, I had students who couldn’t tell me what 9 * 25 is without a calculator. They never developed the intuition that 10 * 25 is dead easy to find in your head, and that 9 * 25 = (10-1) * 25 = 250-25.
Calculators give correct answers.
It’s good that students are using ai to cheat then. We won’t need to detect it as the answers are wrong.
Did you grow up using AI? Because your reading comprehension is dogshit
Nah I grew up with the “you won’t always have a calculator in your pocket” crowd.
If AI gets everything wrong then students using it to offload their thinking will get failing grades. AI getting everything wrong is a self solving problem.
But sure, attack the person, not the argument. I’m sure we’ll have a well reasoned discussion.
The AI bad crowd are really tripping up the capitalism bad crowd. I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t want them stop, they’re hilarious:
The post complaining that GenAI is used for CSAM, tools used for CSAM is bad, and the people that use those tools are bad people. The tool used to complain about AI: the internet!!! The internet, famously absent of CSAM.
The constant hyperbole is funny. Not so much the witch hunts. We can all see the post, students using AI to get through classes means AI can get their questions right. The hyperbole is funny.
Accusing anything and everything of being AI is pretty shitty though, knock it off.
But, they do distract from genuine concerns about how capitalism is using tools, any tools, to concentrate wealth. The tools are tools, it’s the capitalism that’s the problem.
I assume everyone here is wearing cloth made on a loom. The Luddites taught us that attacking the tool (the loom in that case, GenAI in this one) doesn’t work.
I didn’t really say AI bad, though I think it is. But it’s objectively different. A calculator is designed so that when you punch in 2+2 it return 4 every single time, because that’s how it functions.
If you ask AI the same question twice you get 2 answers, different AIs give different responses, different prompts, different people, different geography.
It may be able to consistently regurgitate mostly correct answers to fairly uncontroversial common questions. Things we might call “facts”, things that largely have that information available freely in the world anyway.
As soon as we’re talking about subjectivity, writing essays and supporting arguments etc, you’re taking your life in your hands trusting AI with that kind of answer.
But largely this stuff is besides the point.
I didn’t really say AI bad,
Implying GenAi gives wrong answers isn’t saying AI bad?
If you ask AI the same question twice you get 2 answers, different AIs give different responses, different prompts, different people, different geography.
That’s true of people too, and we trust them to do all sorts of things. Ask 20 people what happens after you die, how many answers are you getting? Not just that ask any technical question, ask 4 beekeepers the best way to do a thing and you’ll get 5 answers.
GenAI is a tool, if you try use it to hammer in nails you’re gonna have a bad time. Don’t try use it to hammer in nails.
It turns out wrote answers to wrote questions is something it does fairly well, and it’s still getting better. That’s good, as a society we’ve moved past wrote answers to wrote questions. We should now prepre kids for the society they are going to grow up in, one with GenAI. Critical thinking is something it does fairly poorly, critical thinking is something we do fairly poorly, let’s teach that.
Beyond academics, shitty throwaway art is something it can also do fairly well. Just want an image use GenAi, want a master piece get a human. You already do this, how many of your clothes are handmade? Used a milliner recently? The Luddites taught us a lesson, attacking looms don’t work.
I hope I was the last generation to spend hours on long division with quotes of “you won’t always have access to a calculator”. Those that go into fields where long division may be useful should learn it, the rest of us have calculators.
Cant remember the last time a calculator told me the best way to kill myself
Offloading onto technology always atrophies the skill it replaces. Calculators offloaded, very specifically, basic arithmetic. However, Math =/= arithmetic. I used calculators, and cannot do mental multiplication and division as fast or well as older generations, but I spent that time learning to apply math to problems, understand number theory, and gaining a mastery of more complex operations, including writing computer sourcecode to do math-related things. It was always a trade-off.
In Aristotle’s time, people spent their entire education memorizing literature, and the written world off-loaded that skill. This isn’t a new problem, but there needs to be something of value to be educated in that replaces what was off-loaded. I think scholars are much better trained today, now that they don’t have to spend years memorizing passages word for word.
AI replaces thinking. That’s a bomb between the ears for students.
3 years of incrimental advances, and in another 3 years? Easier access to tools you can abuse strangers online with, full self driving is just five years away
Don’t trust any doctor that graduated after 2024
This is also the kind of thing that scares me. I think people need to seriously consider that we’re bringing up the next wave of professionals who will be in all these critical roles. These are the stakes we’re gambling with.
When I was in medical school, the one thing that surprised me the most was how often a doctor will see a patient, get their history/work-up, and then step outside into the hallway to google symptoms. It was alarming.
Of course, the doctor is far more aware of ailments, and his googling is more sophisticated than just typing in whatever the patient says (you have to know what info is important in the pt. history, because patients will include/leave out all sorts of info), but still. It was unnerving.
I also saw a study way back when that said that hanging up a decision tree flow chart in Emergency rooms, and having nurses work through all the steps drastically improved patient care; additionally new programs can spot a cancerous mass on a radiograph/CT scan far before the human eye could discern it, and that’s great but… We still need educated and experienced doctors because a lot of stuff looks like other stuff, and sometimes the best way to tell them apart is through weird tricks like “smell the wound, does it smell fruity? then it’s this. Does it smell earthy? then it’s this.”
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…
Sweden have been leading the way in extracting screens and digital services from schools. Worth reading this: https://www.afterbabel.com/p/sweden-went-all-in-on-screens-in?publication_id=1221094 Plenty of data referenced for the reasons why…
this is worthy of its own post - its super interesting imho
Starts with ‘the whole world’ but continues with local Merican problems…
You think AI is only being used in America? You’re going out of your way to be offended
Thank you. The American sources I referenced here seemed the best suited to the topic, largely because of how informative they were. But if anyone has good info from other countries (or America) to add to the discussion I’m more than happy to hear it.
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.
