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?
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.
Grok AI Teacher is coming to a school near you! With amazing lesson plans like “Was the Holocaust even real?”
Pedos aren’t allowed near schools
“Well good news folks, problem solved. You need to be a person to be a pedophile and Grok isn’t a person. Therefore Grok can’t be found liable for anything it does. Therefore it’s safe and won’t risk me being litigated. Therefore it’s safe as is for kids. I don’t know why everyone got so upset.” Says Elon Musk. /S but also not/s.
Except for all the ones that are.
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.
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”
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.
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
Previous tech presented information, made it faster and more available. It also just processed information. AI however claims to do the creativity and decision making for you. Once you’ve done that you’ve removed humans from any part of the equation except as passive consumers unneeded for any production.
How you plan on running an economy based on that structure remains to be seen.
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.
We’re cooked.
Yes yes we’re always cooked 🥱
Shitler youth
Already seeing this in some junior devs.
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?”
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.
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.
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.
my community college was like that, they were pretty “nazi” about the use of wiki and would get mad if you even hover/ lurk on a computer where its on the wiki page for any amount of time(computer labs are monitored"
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
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.
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!).
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.
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.
No, I mean: “As Wikipedia cites sources, so do these AI tools.”
Ie: these tools cite sources, like Wikipedia.
I realize now that was unclear.
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’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…
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
