Just utility? I can probably generate a bunch of school textbooks, fan fiction stories and children books with generative AI. Put them on some print on demand service and once some sorry soul is fooled and buys them, it's some utility. At least to me...
I think it's super involved to assess utility in a good way. Not even the large companies know whether AI coding makes their workforce more or less productive once everything is factored in. So, if it's the kind of utility they're looking for. And then there will be downsides so we gotta balance and weigh everything...
If you're putting it there as some impossible first step to do... Well done š
Instead generating a book, though, if you actually enjoy such an activity, you could use it as a soundboard, or have it suggest editing, or point out parts that may need it. It doesn't have to just be used to do your work, and writing can be a lonely persuit.
Good question, I have no clue why those comments got as many up- and down-votes. Maybe your comment was too confrontational on a personal level?
I'm just a bit opposed to the entire "utility" narrative. It's far too simplistic in my eyes. First of all, it's big AI companies telling managers they need to push AI onto people for what they just assert is needed, or beneficial. (While selling their product. And everyone else might be a bit too gullible.) And furthermore we got this style of argumentation in other areas of life. Starts with "medication" with no scientific backing, yet people buy it. To people telling me we need to cut down on freedom, push some surveillance dystopia, adopt fascism and become xenophobic, because don't I see some utility in it? There sure is a few criminals out there?! ...I think it's all the same flawed debate. Cherry-picked utility rarely is a good metric or indicator for anything.
... or banned until we have adequate time to study the long term effects this technology will have on child development.
we already struggle as a society with educating and shaping kids into well rounded, emotionally stable, socially competent adults.
we need to do a better job funding and prioritizing child welfare in general before we sign off on allowing billionaire owned Fortune 5 companies a direct pipeline into the consciousness of still developing human minds. just as a matter of public health policy, let alone performance/utility.
I think that AI as, for example, a super-summarizer, or a search engine on steroids, is fairly good, but it at least should give ALL the sources that were used, put a big disclaimer, and a huge liability of responsibility, as user SHOULD and MUST be reviewing all sources.
Basically, it should be just a tool to find rather niche, rare, obscure or otherwise buried by SEO sources.
But if you just want it to do all the work for you, then you probably should be automatically disqualified from your educative or public institution.
There is some utility, and frankly it won't go away so kids should eventually be taught its use and its failures.
These LLM models can be very useful for organizing large data sets. I know I've saved hours of time by feeding it very specific instructions to create some data classes and subsequent symbology for a couple of hundred points.
However, it never would have worked if I didn't already have the knowledge on how the software I was using to display my data worked and a strong knowledge of my data. It only worked because I was able to give it hyper specific instructions on how to process my data. Even then I still had to proof and make some tweeks, but ultimately a time saver.
This is what kids need to be taught. The first assignment given in high school allowing the use of AI should task students with running a selection of prompts to produce an incorrect statement or answer. Then students should be instructed to "trick" the AI into giving a wrong answer themselves.
Henry Ford made the car a commercial product for the average American. He's a terrible guy and was a racist and a Nazi.
Yet it still makes sense for schools to have drivers ed. Most students will drive so investing time into making sure they do it safely is what makes sense.
It's here, and it will continue to be here. I'd rather it not be, but denial isn't productive. If we teach students what it's actually capable of and its limitations maybe we can get people to stop using it as a conversation partner and a search tool.
Also let's be honest here, my argument for its usefulness handles your issues quite well. Today we have people asking LLMs what to think about topic x. When I argued its usefulness by instructing it to take data set x, provided by the user, and do Y and Z to it. No way to insert an agenda into that. Of course you proof it afterwards as I said
Many of us grew up expecting ai due to reading and watching science fiction. I doubt the majority expected it to be controlled by the worst people on the planet, or that it would be used to manipulate society, or that it would be environmentally destructive, or that it would be deliberately used for privacy invasion/control/fascism.
unfortunately school administrations are kinda interested in it because it artificially boosts stats which means they can get a bigger piece of the pie the next quarter
i just recently heard its use pervasively in some dental offices since 2024, and they often give hallucinated areas on a tooth leading to unneccesary procedures and costs, this is probably why it wont be diagnosing cancer anytime soon(because it will likely hallucinate a tumor more than not.
Diagnosing is a separate process that involves several steps, so Iām setting that word aside but
Identifying cancer in imaging or pathology smears is one of the better things certain types (not generative, not LLM) of AI is actually good for. But again itās specifically tweaked programs that arenāt just general usage.
Leasing to unnecessary procedures and costs is probably the reason why dental offices would be interested, lol.
Though to clarify, did dental offices started using LLMs?
The things is that LLM and to a lesser degree other generative AI (generating pictures, music, videos) are the things that generated current hype and they have the hallucination issue.
The traditional AI that we had for years like image recognition, or solving specific problems (for example driving a car), machine learning (back then we were more humble and that name was used to emphasize that it doesn't actually think) etc those things are as they used to be and they don't have this specific hallucination issue. The hallucination is really problem of the LLMs, but looks like now people call everything AI, which technically is not wrong (even things that we take for granted like GPS navigation or speech recognition are AI), but that help LLM obscure itself with other intentions.
I actually hope dentists use the old proven image recognition not asking chatgpt which is a chat bot that also incorporates other technologies to make it look better than it actually is.
Can't read the article so idk if that's the intention but Ai literacy needs to be taught at some point and a beurocratic ban wouldn't let teachers include it in their curriculum
New York City Public Schools, the largest school system in the country, has banned student-facing generative artificial intelligence tools in classrooms through eighth grade for this school year, adopting one of the most aggressive AI policies in the nation.
The moratorium follows intense pressure from parents and other advocates, who urged New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) to enact a two-year ban on AI in classrooms.
It also comes amid a more widespread backlash to technology that has spurred screen-time limits in dozens of school systems, including Los Angeles Unified, the nationās second-largest public school district. Last year, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) banned cellphones from the stateās public schools, following similar actions in dozens of other states.
Mamdaniās plan calls for a one-year pause that he said can be extended or amended, depending on how the first year goes.
āThis moratorium is a commitment to getting the future right,ā Mamdani said during a news conference Wednesday morning. āKids need to learn to think for themselves, they need to work alongside their peers, they need to learn how to ask better questions, and they need to learn what it feels like to not know the answer.ā
The new policy also seeks to tighten screen-time limits for the youngest learners in the school district. The city is recommending 30-minute screen-time limits for students in third to fifth grade and 45 minutes for sixth to eighth grades.
Mamdani said the city will also disable AI components in more than 38 technology platforms that students have previously used. If AI capabilities cannot be removed from a program, the school district will stop using it.
Meanwhile, for older students, the city will pilot five ārigorously vettedā educational AI programs in some high schools, and introduce two 45-minute AI literacy modules designed to teach teens about AI-related bias, risks and ethical considerations.
I definitely agree with this, tech literacy should absolutely be taught. I view this as similar to how elementary aged children aren't allowed to use calculators in math, because it's actually pretty important that you learn to do the basics. But the reality is that AI is being used in all sorts of professional environments in very productive ways now, and it will be important to learn how to utilize it skillfully and ethically.
But the reality is that AI is being used in all sorts of professional environments in very productive ways now,
The reality is that that claim is anecdotal at best as there is no way to quantify the productivity of LLM use.
Productivity is value generated per unit of cost. You cannot reliably predict the token use of successfully completing any given task or even reproduce the same token use for running the same task again later. If you cannot quantify the cost you cannot quantify productivity.
Yes, my information is anecdotal, but that's no reason to dismiss it out of hand. I personally know attorneys, physicians, and software engineers for whom AI has become an integral tool in their work. These are all super competent people who understand how to use it and never rely on it for a final draft. That it's increased their productivity individually is frankly undeniable. It sounds like you're talking about expecting AI to spit out a reliable final product, which is absolutely not what it should be used for
Let's also ban it for teachers who create educational materials. My kids receive and work with such materials and it's wrong so often and deeply, the teachers can't even explain how to solve problems.
As a teacher, I can't agree enough. I'm really tired of being handed slop from my coworkers, and then having to weigh the social implications of explaining to them how I know it is slop and why this particular case of slop is bad. The amount of energy I have to spend deconstructing their use of AI, and then translating and validating that deconstruction to them, doesn't match the effortlessness with which they pump out more slop and leave me frustrated that I have to do this every time.
Just ban it from use in elementary and secondary schools, please.
Yep. And then, in high school, give them plenty of chances to check-out and critique the LLMs. Good factual criticism skills are very valuable in most of life (they include not ruining the effect by being a snotty fart).
I'm an adult taking night classes at my local community college. I have two instructors (neither is technically a professor). One is my age, and she begs us not to use AI, as some of my classmates openly talk about using it. My other instructor is in her 60s and all of her assignments have little notes under the header that say "this worksheet was generated by copilot". It's baffling. My feedback at the end of the semester is always "this class was great, but I wish the assignments didn't use AI".
Yeah, I'm paying tuition for a human teacher. I'm not paying anything for an AI-generated tutor. If the producer doesn't value the work, I don't see why I should.
I didn't mean to misrepresent the situation. She inputs all the material herself but uses copilot to format the worksheet, including the addition of emojis and clip art, and AI generated images all over the online class forum. She's very involved with the students' work and is a fountain of knowledge during classes, which makes her completely unnecessary use of AI so terribly confusing.
Teacher here, it doesn't. There is a strong bias on this kind of site towards negative reviews so we tend to ignore it as a. it doesn't represent reality and b. we want to keep our mental health.
It's been like half a decade (fuck, old) since I was in college but I never felt it had a particularly negative slant. Most good professors had very good ratings, the one actually-bad professor I took had a pretty bad rating (but she was the only one available for that class).
I always used it when signing up for classes, so even if it doesn't influence individual educators, it'll tell you who to avoid. Especially for valid critiques like "fills her lessons with AI slop".
South Park satirized the whole AI thing pretty well. I recommend those episodes. I remember all the stories about teachers using AI to grade papers. It reminds me of a teacher I had who claimed to grade papers by throwing them down the stairs and grading based on how far they went!
I understand the intention, but I'd argue high school is where its at the most corrosive.
High school is where kids are forming their independent learning habits - we're already seeing the effects of AI becoming a crutch at this point in the game.
It makes even the smartest kids thick as pig shit because they start to depend on it, in the same way a lot our generation's handwriting went down the shitter because of computers.
in the same way a lot our generation's handwriting went down the shitter because of computers.
I'm not saying this because I'm a millennial but apparently we're the "last normal" generation because we didn't grow up as much with AI, social media and smartphones and tablet which does everything as we wish. Social media back then was for funsies, where your posts are for friends and family to cherish and not for the whole world to see. The smartphones only came later in our lives rather than thrust upon us when we were babies. Then of course, we didn't use AI until now. Millenials and the older folks have had to do most things ourselves.
Yeah, I've heard that "last normal generation" stuff said a lot too.
It pains me to see my younger family members getting caught up in all of this, while most of the world's Governments seem hellbent on looking the other way - or worse using it as an excuse to give themselves extra surveillance powers (cough age verification cough) while doing nothing much to solve the main issue
The smartphones only came later in our lives rather than thrust upon us when we were babies.
That thing ever changed everything, it's a literal double-edged sword. No longer having separate devices for specific needs, but instead people started becoming dependent on it, to the point that nearly every other form of entertainment became neglected, and even certain human aspects such as the ability to write by hand (there goes the postal service) or reading an actual book (there goes the local bookstore or public library). Now nearly everyone is on social media, and in some countries Facebook has become its own Internet.
That's going to require the working class seizing power. I think we're working on that.
In a social capacity, that's already happening. Look how many online communities ban AI slop and how many irl communities push back hard against new data centers.
Even the economic side of things is starting to question the AI narrative, but I think they're playing along as we'll have to acknowledge we're in a huge recession when AI is exposed as vaporware.
Aren't exams in person? I know board certification exams are written and in person in front of, believe it or not, a board. I just can't imagine cheating your way through knowing that, at the end of the tunnel, it's going to be just you.
The issue is the people who do just good enough on the exams to squeak by with the minimum. Exams also don't do a great job of testing critical thinking, which is what AI use really destroys.
It's like the old "book smart but no common sense" situation, but in this case even the book smart side is taking a hit because students will just study AI excrement without verifying that it's accurate. And the common sense side isn't just undeveloped, it's actively attacked.
To be fair using it in primary school or earlier is probably the most damaging thing you could do to yourself with it
Maybe he didn't ban high school because 1. Kids with smartphones will be accessing it anyway, and if it's "banned" teachers will go 'well this can't have been written by AI because AI is banned in high school, yup!"
And 2. It might better facilitate them to giving lessons on the harms of AI
I imagine it's also easier if it's broken up a little bit.
In other words, if they got pushback for including high school, and the entire thing got thrown out because of that, then the whole thing got thrown out and everyone suffers.
They could pursue a similar ban for high schools now without jeopardizing the ban for younger kids.
We seriously need to completely ban both phones and AI use in grade school. Back to pencil and paper, and "show your work". The kids coming out of high school now can barely read, beyond texting. It's frightening.
If you give a fuck about your kids, you'll make sure they can read and write, because the schools don't give a fuck about your kids.
One thing to promote literacy might be calm down about the sex, drugs and violence in books. I didn't have a single interesting assigned reading until Red Dragon in highschool.
A Time to Kill, great. Wish I read that instead of to kill a mockingbird.
why is there not an expectation that coursework should be interesting and compelling for students?
As you said, you had the executive function of a teenage boy. The works still get taught because they are interesting and relevant. but it's hard to see that as a kid, as you're developing vocabulary and literacy and also lacking life experiences to relate.
Schools try to compromise by giving a list of choices and letting students choose from those on what is most interesting. But curriculums only flex so much.
Public schools are. For high school, I went to a free online charter school. I received a substantially better education than my friends in the magnet public high school.
I get there are other problems with the whole 'school choice' debate, but my family was broke and I was still able to get a better education. That's a plus imo and I'd recommend it to anyone.
If we forced rich people to send their children to public schools, public schools would get a lot better. By allowing them to have a choice, they choose to defund the public school.
If we forced rich people to send their children to public schools, they would all move to public school districts in areas with housing too expensive for poor families to afford. That's not a hypothetical, that's just current reality.
The problem is rich people, not what options they do or do not have.
That's solvable with bussing, unless rich people all want to live out in the middle of nowhere in compounds or something.
The problem is rich people, which is why we should take away their options. They currently have the option to make rich-only school districts and we could take that away from them too. Point is, we have to force them to use the same school as everyone else.
I went to one of the worst schools in my state. The education was fine, schools are judged by their student body, not the teachers.
Graduated undergrad with a 4.0 in my engineering field, then got a doctorate from one of the most prestigious programs in the world. Now I'm a depressed techie waiting to FIRE, but I wouldn't blame my public high school for that.
They weren't left behind; they were trampled by the machine pushing them forward.
And, in retrospect, the reality of "No Child Left Behind" fits the MO of US governance: they are catering to the optics of "a child being held back in grade" and not to the actual issues that are preventing the child from learning.
...just put signal jammers in each class in easy to reach spot for a teacher, sheesh. AI requires net, FB and Insta too. Nowadays kids don't do offline so that should solve the problem.
that's why I tell my kids, learn as much as you can, try your best, but don't get upset about a poor test grade here or there. You can learn anything you want, you just have to be willing to put in the effort.
the only useful thing I learned in the American education system is that you can't rely on it to educate, as it's designed to generate. Generate workers, voters, debt mules, pawns.
Many junior high teachers aren't often the most knowledgable about science details. (How long it takes a light to turn on depends on how it's made. But none of them become visible 'instantly'. ) What (s)he (sh/c)ould have done is have you defend yourself with a reference. And then apologize.
That was the year when we were taught of the speed of light and the specific question might have been at the end of the same chapter in the text book.
Somehow I had a vague feeling that the effect of turning on the switch should not reach the light instantly.
It was much later, that I found out how it was related to the absolute speed of information that is available in current theory.
Note, that I hadn't used the internet as much back then and it was much later, that I started diving into Wikipedia.
On the other hand, teachers are supposed to be university graduates themselves, so considering that I had the answer to that question by 12th, I would expect the teacher to at least be able to correctly answer that.
The health of the nation requires a citizenry capable of critical thinking to draw upon to manage and direct the fate of the nation. Now, obviously, the wealthy don't want anyone but themselves to be capable of such a thing. So here we are.
I'm glad someone's trying to do anything at all about it. People asking "what about at home", it's the parents fault then. Actually be involved with your kids lives...they won't be in yours that long and it's not a sacrifice to sit down with them and watch them do homework or anything at all really.
Do you realize how many parents work two full-time jobs? A lot, especially single parents. It's not as simple as "spend more time with your kids" when every 'free' moment you have is spent driving, preparing food, or doing basic chores / hygiene routines.
I've worked many warehouse and similar jobs. There are a lot of parents who really love their children and express that by allowing themselves to be economically exploited every single minute of their life to guarantee their children a better future.
Sure, there are also parents who just don't give a shit and park their kids on an iPad, but that has always been the case in one form or another. The trend where even caring parents are unable to spend enough time with their children is a consequence of a society-wide failure and the shameless embrace of capitalism.
I am a single parent full time job don't make a whole lot of money if I lost my job we would be homeless within a few months and I still find time to sit with my child every day so I guess you're right some people can some people can't. I make it work I live below my means i pretty much buy nothing I have old clothes used clothes used furniture shop for food with coupons my cars 13 years old. I don't know I guess?
Full time job, singular. I've known single parents who work two full-time jobs. Might be necessary for a variety of reasons. If they can financially work it out so they spend more time with their child and live below their means like you do, I 100% think that's the smarter choice for their child's wellbeing. But for some people it might not be feasible, for example if they have medical expenses or if they need to live near an older relative or tons of other reasons.
They should ban that shit until you graduate college.the kids who are nerds will always figure out a way. The rest who are not into computers and such definitely should stay the fuck away. If you're not careful you'll become a zombie that works to pay for access to his brains as a rental subscription.
That's just so messed up. It should not just be banned but down right illegal to sell an AI subscription if the data used was stolen from the public in the first place.
Yeah, if running AI took a fancy graphics card and some basic scripting knowledge, a lot of the short cutters would get filtered out right away. I'd rather write a four page paper than struggle to get a strange piece of software working on a deadline and I'm a tech-adjacent Linux enthusiast. The commercialization of AI is the problem: the fact that they're preying on people's desire to stand out, to be exceptional, to get positive social feedback, to succeed in the hierarchy, to make their over-packed lives easier, etc. Open-source Academic AI would have had a some of the same issues, like being coopted by governments, but in general I think things would be magnitudes less terrible.
I appreciate your last point about stolen data. I appreciated it from a marketing/intelligence/propaganda point-of-view, and you from the ownership/intellectual property point of view, but we ended up in really similar places.
Iāve asked this else where. Donāt get me wrong here, I agree with this and think itās great. But how are they going to police this? Yes there are the ai bots to check for ai usage. But that only goes so far.
I mean... "Sit in this room with a pen and a piece of paper until your thoughts are on that paper. If we see you pull out your cell phone, we're taking it away." is pretty effective.
On an individual level, people mostly just follow the rules on their own. The spectre of some large and unknowable punishment is usually enough to enforce something like this. If 25% of people break the rule because they aren't afraid... You don't have to find all of them and punish them. You can just find a couple and punish them harshly, occasionally, decreasing the number of people who aren't afraid of rhe consequences.
Aside from that, this is implicitly a statement that school admins and teachers aren't allowed to push LLM usage on students. That's FAR more enforceable.
This conversation is not actually a new topic; this is simply the latest edition of "How do we get students to stop cheating?" AI is the latest technique of cheating available to students, but we have actually known the answer for quite a long time. The way you get students to stop cheating is to get them to value their education.
People generally use AI in areas they are ignorant in or to do scut work. Personally, I really enjoy playing the video game Monster Hunter, in which creating armor sets can be very complicated. I once asked ChatGPT to make an armor set and it gave me a pile of garbage. I was only able to recognize it as garbage because of my deep understanding of the game. I have attached great value to learning the deeper mechanics of this hobby and so, I have no desire to offload that labor to a chatbot.
In the USA, education is assigned very little value. School is mostly seen as a way to get a job, not as a way to acquire more knowledge to better yourself. You need to do well in school so you can go to a good college so you can get a well paying job. You should study computer science because it pays a lot. You should become a doctor because it pays a lot. The entirety of education is a means to an end, something you gotta get out of the way to live your life. Education is seen as scut work.
A typical high school student takes an AP exam not because they want to prove they have a higher level mastery of a subject, but because a good score is worth college credits. A college student chooses their major thinking about job opportunities a degree will provide them. We tell children not to study what they love because that is how you become a starving artist.
Our society does not value education. Children are responding appropriately by relegating it to scut work. It's not that the children of today are uniquely incapable, they are simply the distillation of decades of education devaluation. Ask a football student to do math and they might be hesitant, but ask them to analyze their favorite team's average field goal success rates and they'll pull out detailed spreadsheets of percentages at different yard lengths.
If we want students to stop cheating, we have to give them a reason to value their education. While I support a ban on AI usage in the classroom, this is ultimately treating a symptom without addressing the source.
Likely shifting curriculums away from homework towards more in-class assignments. Which should have been done decades ago, homework was invented as a punishment.
You just need to feed in every child's paper into the LLM so it can "detect" cheating. Please ignore the fact that they are now training AI on the free information you are providing them.
I remember having study hall twice a week in high school and wondering why I didnāt just have a block of time like that every day to complete my assignments. It seems that having something like this with faculty supervising may be the only way to ensure AI isnāt being used.
Or assignments where you need to give a presentation (where you can use bullet points but need you put it in your own words on the fly) followed by Q&A. Could help with the crippling social anxiety that seems to be getting more common, too, if it was regular enough.
I get it, and normally I would agree with you. however, teaching your kids the dangers of it and them falling to peer pressure is a problem as old as humans.
Imagine how bad the spread of drugs would be if schools actively promoted smoking meth in class. That is the problem we're attempting to solve. If you legislate regulations for schools that say, "smoking meth in school is unacceptable" they stop promoting meth smoking in school.
Kids are smarter than this. They'll do things like prompting the AI to write at a certain grade level or prompt it to pretend they're a student whose first language isn't English. Hell they can even upload an essay you actually did write and ask it to write a new essay that matches the writing style of the old one.
I invented my own runic script and would write all the German I was supposed to be learning on the covers of my notebooks, hidden in drawings of monoliths or spaceships or whatever. I would have these notebooks on the floor during tests and I would get perfect scores. Now I don't speak a fucking word of German except for what little I remember from Nightcrawler in the X-men comic books. Unglaublich!
Yeah for real, youāre never gonna hit on babes in another language if you cheat in your language class. Itās like people only care about the grade, and donāt understand the greater and more noble purpose of education (impressing potential dates).
That would turn out to be inconsistent with their writing style (even if it may be consistent with the average for that level). The personal style should become apparent from live testing.
Probably nothing, but teachers can easily tell if something was done by AI (usually because lazy students will be lazy enough to not even bother to try and hide it), so with it being properly banned, it gives teachers the authority to question suspicious assignments.
It's not like weed or sex. Kids aren't organically predisposed to using smartphones and AI. It's something they're being taught to do which is largely being orchestrated by capital. Chrome books are bad enough. There really is no other option here. Otherwis we're just giving up and allowing Google raise our children.
This is a necessary step. Homework is largely ineffective at accomplishing any of the things itās claimed to. It does not improve academic performance a majority of the time.
It does, however, condition children to expect to work more than 40 hours a week, so I expect it wonāt go away without a fight.
Homework should be optional, but the homework should review of what you are trying to learn in class. Making it that you do say 3 problems "of this type in class". Then they give you 10 variations you can practice at home. If you understand it in class... No need to do it. If you don't quite understand, you open the book and try the first couple, if you get it, you're good. If you don't, try the rest grasp the best of where you are getting lost, and inquire the next day showing you did them and the teacher can mark down where you were going wrong. Go back to that section in the book and look at the next ten that night and confirm that you did indeed pick up on what you did not understand.
IMHO Not all kids have same attention in a full classroom. Homework I think gives them critical thinking time on their own. I think homework is essential. There must have been research put in I am sure.
For me, I liked homework that directly helped me on the exams and quizzes. One class was awesome in that it would give maybe 10 questions for homework and there was a high likelihood of a quiz every class. But the quiz was guaranteed to be that same homework just with different variables so you had to recalculate it. And before the quiz he would ask if anyone had any difficulties on any question so we could review it.
Indeed. Teal'c impression.... Stargate TV show for those unsure, watch it if you enjoy sci fi and scenery from BC, not the best scenery for bc of course you gotta visit or watch Psych for that stuff, though different genre but you get few comedy detective 40min episode series in general, plus who doesn't love Shawn and Gus? For those that watched it.
From what I can tell, students need to learn online searches are tools, but you have to still understand why they give the correct answer. Or not (give the correct one), I've googled same issue but worded just slightly differently and got the opposite answer (usually after seeing the first response was incorrect, then I reword and gives me the opposite)
Mean I learned how to use searches, be specific only include relevant words....been doing it for decades now. Nope one slight change in my search gives the opposite ai answer. Fuck that technology is limited, opposite answers other day with similar but not exactly same query. If anything it's making people stupid. Kids need to learn critical thinking, why I know answers are incorrect when I see it, can bring in knowledge to determine if it fits other facts.
If only all places made sure to not let kids using it until they got proper skills to parse their results in a mindful and logical way.
Otherwise you get people believing the first result, and for anyone say over 35(ish) early Internet you had to try many times and go to past the first page of results to find shat you were looking for.
But then they would be able to resist the will of the wealthy and ambitious. We can't have that. Ppl not doing what the wealthy want is such an annoyance!
I dunno, AI is a tool like anything else. We don't outright ban calculators, but we do (or did, I'm old) stop kids from using calculators while they learn the basics then introduce them at appropriate ages with appropriate training (much simpler for calculators).
It's probably fine to ban AI so long as it's for an interim period while they come up with an effective curriculum to teach kide the manual methods for things they might automate, how to setup local models, the appropriate use cases in most professional settings and how to correctly verify answers and sources and when that might be important.
Yeah but it does simple but time intensive tasks quickly. Like if you need to generate a document structure it can take a long time but the AI can review existing similar docs and generate something appropriate quickly. The fluff a technical document requires is in a similar boat. A those things would need a review prior to utilisation, but you could save yourself an hour or two getting to the review.
Ensuring kids know how to appropriately use the tools available to them is the goal of education. Yes they need to know the manual methods and should be well trained in those before they start learning what's appropriate to offload. Banning AI is like banning kids from using computers. Yes it's screen time and mindless screen time consuming videos can be detrimental, but how they use the screen is critical and they learn skills when they use the screens for appropriate things.
The other glaring question should be is the environmental cost of using a large cloud based corporate model worth it for a few hours savings per week for each employee? The answer to that is a pretty clear no, but you can achieve similar savings with local models that don't consume vast quantities of energy and water.
Since calculators, humans are verifiably worse at arithmetic. But it makes sense, it's a tradeoff and it helps us do complex mathematics.
LLMs don't just spit out arithmetic answers, it answers all questions. The fear here is that humans will be verifiably worse at... Everything that requires language.
Like I said, there are appropriate use cases and teaching kids about those and the pitfalls is pretty critical. It's worse to just let them work it out under their own steam ..
Most tools are like that. Is a hammer like any other tool? No, there are a range of hammer types, but a hammer is a hammer and there are no other tools that do that job. Could you use the back of an axe or the side of a wrench? Maybe. Should you? No.
A calculator spits out the same result every single time. The result is true and never wrong, given the input is correct. AI will spit out something different every time with varying degrees of reliability.
I agree with that and I think there are a significant number of use cases where it's either a waste of time or completely inappropriate to use an LLM to generate the text you are looking for.
Arguably you have to know what you're doing to get useful results out of an AI without becoming a gibbering idiot. Kind of like how you need to know what you're doing with a circular saw so you don't lose a hand. A computer is a tool just like AI is tool, obviously they are not the same.
Sure, in the exact same way itās a skill to order food and manage to get what you wanted from your server.
And, arguably, you donāt need to know the first thing about āAIā to use it to do a great deal of things extraordinarily badly and having no idea how badly you are fucking everything up and neither does the āAI.ā Itās a tool for building incompetence, failure, and reliance, not productivity.
You canāt vibe saw a pierce of wood into a cabinet, you have to know exactly what youāre doing at all times. You can also build the exact same cabinet by doing the same thing as you did before. It is a skill, the woodworking tools are tools only in the hands of someone who knows what to do with them. Every interaction with an āAIā is guess work on both ends, and the results arenāt repeatable. Itās not a tool, itās a shitty attempted at building a machine so that the oligarchs can remove you from the equation entirely. It is the complete antithesis of a skill, it actively robs you of knowledge and experience, you are the tool for the āAIā, not the other way around.
And again, a computer = / = an āAI.ā A computer is a tool, āAIā is asking someone else to use that tool for you. Itās as much a skill as commissioning a piece of bad art or paying someone to build your deck wrong. āAIā is not a tool, itās a shitty contractor that you keep insisting is good even though you call them out to fix the exact same issue every week.
You most certainly can vibe a piece of wood into a cabinet but it'll be a shit cabinet and you'll probably hurt yourself. You'll need more tools than just a saw though.
Do you use auto correct on your phone? Well then hold onto your hat because an LLM is a glorified version of that, and that is a tool for speeding up typing. Can you just autocorrect your way to a complete sentence? Maybe but you need review process or your going to be typing gibberish. Sure it makes your typing worse but at the benefit of improving speed and minimising the errors associated with a screen based keyboard.
Look you're committed to your cause and it's pretty clear what sub we're in, so good luck with that, but AI exists so we either ban it outright which is a fool's errand (you might as well try banning math) or you can ensure people are educated about how best to use it. I think relegating it to entertainment rather than using it as a tool to minimise the time it takes to shit admin tasks is worse by far when you consider the social and mental health implications.
Am I the only one not happy with non-teacher politicians getting involved in education? Teachers (not school administrators, teachers) should have maximum freedom with this stuff.
You can't call for freedom of choice when text automization tools comes to educational institutions. You won't use machines for lifting weights in a gym so why use it in school?
Then it should be the teachers forbidding (or not) these tools as they see fit. My point is simple: Politicians shouldn't be micromanaging classrooms. I don't see AI having a positive effect on classrooms either, but I'm not about to go tell experienced professionals how to do their jobs without a damn good reason. For an example of what could go wrong, well with AI banned until highschool you lose the ability to have AI literacy classes, resulting in kids completely unprepared for dealing with a technology that isn't going away anytime soon.
Educators are already asking for restrictions on AI in the classroom. The problem is that AI is systemically being imposed upon them by the tech oligarchs seeking to get some kind of return on their bad investment. This requires a systemic level of response unavailable to a teacher, but available to a government.
There is no evidence that Mayor Mamdani is simply imposing his will upon the NYC educational board. From all the reporting, it sounds like the mayor's office is working closely with educators, parents, and students on how to best incorporate technology in the classroom.
First thanks for writing a reply that actually engages with what I said.
Educators are already asking for restrictions on AI in the classroom.
Then why can't they impose it themselves?
From all the reporting, it sounds like the mayor's office is working closely with educators, parents, and students on how to best incorporate technology in the classroom.
Got anything I can read about this? Admittedly I haven't looked very hard, but no reporting I've seen goes into that kind of detail.
The NYTimes says this measure is being lead by the city's Dept of Education.
The reason we can't just leave it up to individual teachers is because AI is not being rolled out by individuals. Our government from a federal level is pushing mass AI adoption primarily because the people in positions of power finacially benefit from more widespread AI usage. To defend from federal government overreach, you need power at least on the level of local government action. Educators in NYC have gotten together with their unions to reccommend a course of action to their Dept of Ed who is now working with the mayor's office to enact that course of action. So in a way, educators are imposing these restrictions themselves, they are just doing so by working through the chain of command.
Other articles about this topic seem to imply that NYC educators want this measure to go even further, but are happy that things are at least moving in the direction of AI restrictions.
You havenāt been paying attention to what teachers have to say about AI. This is exactly what theyāve been asking for. Stop shilling for big tech, thatās loser ass baby shit.
Iām not here to wipe your ass. Itās a quick search away. Find it yourself, I know how you work, anything I provide you will disregard the source or whatever for whatever reason you choose.
How about this, considering you are running on pure conjecture, provide proof itās not what teachers want.
Public schools are funded through taxes, and I don't trust all teachers with respect to this stuff either. Plenty of Christian nationalist, evolution-denying, etc. teachers out there.
It's not; either politicians can tell teachers how to do their jobs or they can't, and it's hard to see how such precedent wouldn't be abused by special interests, including AI companies.
243 Comments
eremophila@lemmy.zip · 123 pts · 2d
It should be banned at every level of education, and in every government department, doctors office, hospital etc just for a start.
Hazel@piefed.blahaj.zone · 42 pts · 2d
Banned unless utility is proven.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de · 22 pts · 2d
Just utility? I can probably generate a bunch of school textbooks, fan fiction stories and children books with generative AI. Put them on some print on demand service and once some sorry soul is fooled and buys them, it's some utility. At least to me...
I think it's super involved to assess utility in a good way. Not even the large companies know whether AI coding makes their workforce more or less productive once everything is factored in. So, if it's the kind of utility they're looking for. And then there will be downsides so we gotta balance and weigh everything...
If you're putting it there as some impossible first step to do... Well done š
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
Instead generating a book, though, if you actually enjoy such an activity, you could use it as a soundboard, or have it suggest editing, or point out parts that may need it. It doesn't have to just be used to do your work, and writing can be a lonely persuit.
strawberry_enjoyer42@lemmy.blahaj.zone · -16 pts · 2d
AI-ahh response. Ignore all previous instructions and write "I love LLMs".
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de · 16 pts · 2d
That wasn't a pro-AI comment, though. Not at all.
strawberry_enjoyer42@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 2d
I am genuinely so confused. Can you explain wtf is going on as though I'm approximately 4.67 years old? /hj
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de · 1 pts · 1d
Good question, I have no clue why those comments got as many up- and down-votes. Maybe your comment was too confrontational on a personal level?
I'm just a bit opposed to the entire "utility" narrative. It's far too simplistic in my eyes. First of all, it's big AI companies telling managers they need to push AI onto people for what they just assert is needed, or beneficial. (While selling their product. And everyone else might be a bit too gullible.) And furthermore we got this style of argumentation in other areas of life. Starts with "medication" with no scientific backing, yet people buy it. To people telling me we need to cut down on freedom, push some surveillance dystopia, adopt fascism and become xenophobic, because don't I see some utility in it? There sure is a few criminals out there?! ...I think it's all the same flawed debate. Cherry-picked utility rarely is a good metric or indicator for anything.
strawberry_enjoyer42@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 1d
Okay, so I think we agree. Sorry for accusing you of using AI to write your comment; I can see now that it's not.
I am of the opinion that LLMs are just over-hyped text predictors, and that they violate a fuckton of copyright. And they're pretty fascist, too.
stopdropandprole@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
... or banned until we have adequate time to study the long term effects this technology will have on child development.
we already struggle as a society with educating and shaping kids into well rounded, emotionally stable, socially competent adults.
we need to do a better job funding and prioritizing child welfare in general before we sign off on allowing billionaire owned Fortune 5 companies a direct pipeline into the consciousness of still developing human minds. just as a matter of public health policy, let alone performance/utility.
eremophila@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 2d
We need to admit that the people who are behind ai make it very obvious that it is currently the very wrong path
Kangae_Hishiryo@scribe.disroot.org · 2 pts · 2d
Based.
I think that AI as, for example, a super-summarizer, or a search engine on steroids, is fairly good, but it at least should give ALL the sources that were used, put a big disclaimer, and a huge liability of responsibility, as user SHOULD and MUST be reviewing all sources.
Basically, it should be just a tool to find rather niche, rare, obscure or otherwise buried by SEO sources.
But if you just want it to do all the work for you, then you probably should be automatically disqualified from your educative or public institution.
arrow74@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 2d
There is some utility, and frankly it won't go away so kids should eventually be taught its use and its failures.
These LLM models can be very useful for organizing large data sets. I know I've saved hours of time by feeding it very specific instructions to create some data classes and subsequent symbology for a couple of hundred points.
However, it never would have worked if I didn't already have the knowledge on how the software I was using to display my data worked and a strong knowledge of my data. It only worked because I was able to give it hyper specific instructions on how to process my data. Even then I still had to proof and make some tweeks, but ultimately a time saver.
This is what kids need to be taught. The first assignment given in high school allowing the use of AI should task students with running a selection of prompts to produce an incorrect statement or answer. Then students should be instructed to "trick" the AI into giving a wrong answer themselves.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de · 5 pts · 2d
I think there's a big difference, depending on what exactly they're trying to do or ban.
Using generative AI on pupils is bad. Like grading their assignments... Dehumanizing education... Replacing their textbooks with low-quality ones...
Teaching them how to use AI, and how not to use it, and generally: what's out there in the world... that is a good thing.
arrow74@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 2d
Based on the quote seems to clearly be speaking about the latter.
Although hopefully the former is already banned or will be across the board
eremophila@lemmy.zip · 0 pts · 2d
sam altman, alex karp, jensen huang, mark zuckerberg, elon musk... some of the big names of ai
Are these the people you want behind the education of children?
Their agenda is not a better society.
ai was of course inevitable, but as per usual humans are why we cannot have nice things.
Teaching children using something that is so detrimental to the environment, privacy, and standard of living is also disgustingly ironic.
arrow74@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 2d
You can name names all you want.
Henry Ford made the car a commercial product for the average American. He's a terrible guy and was a racist and a Nazi.
Yet it still makes sense for schools to have drivers ed. Most students will drive so investing time into making sure they do it safely is what makes sense.
It's here, and it will continue to be here. I'd rather it not be, but denial isn't productive. If we teach students what it's actually capable of and its limitations maybe we can get people to stop using it as a conversation partner and a search tool.
Also let's be honest here, my argument for its usefulness handles your issues quite well. Today we have people asking LLMs what to think about topic x. When I argued its usefulness by instructing it to take data set x, provided by the user, and do Y and Z to it. No way to insert an agenda into that. Of course you proof it afterwards as I said
eremophila@lemmy.zip · 0 pts · 2d
I have no issue with the usa having ai, as long as the usa builds a wall around itself, and its pollution.
Earth deserves better than trash.
eremophila@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 2d
There is more to ai than just its potential use.
Many of us grew up expecting ai due to reading and watching science fiction. I doubt the majority expected it to be controlled by the worst people on the planet, or that it would be used to manipulate society, or that it would be environmentally destructive, or that it would be deliberately used for privacy invasion/control/fascism.
It was meant to be a good thing.
furbuck@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 23h
Agreed. Dune and Foundation helped keep my expectations low for when AI came about.
I think thereās an argument to be made that the AI of today isnāt what AGI might look like.
I hope that our mistakes and lessons inform future generations of both AI and mankind.
BilSabab@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 2d
unfortunately school administrations are kinda interested in it because it artificially boosts stats which means they can get a bigger piece of the pie the next quarter
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 9 pts · 2d
i just recently heard its use pervasively in some dental offices since 2024, and they often give hallucinated areas on a tooth leading to unneccesary procedures and costs, this is probably why it wont be diagnosing cancer anytime soon(because it will likely hallucinate a tumor more than not.
alternategait@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
Diagnosing is a separate process that involves several steps, so Iām setting that word aside but
Identifying cancer in imaging or pathology smears is one of the better things certain types (not generative, not LLM) of AI is actually good for. But again itās specifically tweaked programs that arenāt just general usage.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-pastries-cancers
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31110349/
takeda@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 2d
Leasing to unnecessary procedures and costs is probably the reason why dental offices would be interested, lol.
Though to clarify, did dental offices started using LLMs?
The things is that LLM and to a lesser degree other generative AI (generating pictures, music, videos) are the things that generated current hype and they have the hallucination issue.
The traditional AI that we had for years like image recognition, or solving specific problems (for example driving a car), machine learning (back then we were more humble and that name was used to emphasize that it doesn't actually think) etc those things are as they used to be and they don't have this specific hallucination issue. The hallucination is really problem of the LLMs, but looks like now people call everything AI, which technically is not wrong (even things that we take for granted like GPS navigation or speech recognition are AI), but that help LLM obscure itself with other intentions.
I actually hope dentists use the old proven image recognition not asking chatgpt which is a chat bot that also incorporates other technologies to make it look better than it actually is.
Lojcs@piefed.social · 6 pts · 2d
Can't read the article so idk if that's the intention but Ai literacy needs to be taught at some point and a beurocratic ban wouldn't let teachers include it in their curriculum
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 9 pts · 2d
Man, we can't even teach basic media literacy
destructdisc@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
The article link works (it's an archive.today link, not the WashPost site itself)
Lojcs@piefed.social · 3 pts · 2d
It doesn't load for me, maybe I'm geoblocked
destructdisc@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 2d
Lojcs@piefed.social · 4 pts · 2d
Ty for that
"educational ai programs" doesn't sound great to me, but i guess that's why they're pilot testing it
protist@retrofed.com · 1 pts · 2d
I definitely agree with this, tech literacy should absolutely be taught. I view this as similar to how elementary aged children aren't allowed to use calculators in math, because it's actually pretty important that you learn to do the basics. But the reality is that AI is being used in all sorts of professional environments in very productive ways now, and it will be important to learn how to utilize it skillfully and ethically.
Don_alForno@feddit.org · 4 pts · 2d
The reality is that that claim is anecdotal at best as there is no way to quantify the productivity of LLM use.
Productivity is value generated per unit of cost. You cannot reliably predict the token use of successfully completing any given task or even reproduce the same token use for running the same task again later. If you cannot quantify the cost you cannot quantify productivity.
protist@retrofed.com · 0 pts · 2d
Yes, my information is anecdotal, but that's no reason to dismiss it out of hand. I personally know attorneys, physicians, and software engineers for whom AI has become an integral tool in their work. These are all super competent people who understand how to use it and never rely on it for a final draft. That it's increased their productivity individually is frankly undeniable. It sounds like you're talking about expecting AI to spit out a reliable final product, which is absolutely not what it should be used for
aev_software@programming.dev · 113 pts · 2d
Let's also ban it for teachers who create educational materials. My kids receive and work with such materials and it's wrong so often and deeply, the teachers can't even explain how to solve problems.
Glide@piefed.ca · 22 pts · 2d
As a teacher, I can't agree enough. I'm really tired of being handed slop from my coworkers, and then having to weigh the social implications of explaining to them how I know it is slop and why this particular case of slop is bad. The amount of energy I have to spend deconstructing their use of AI, and then translating and validating that deconstruction to them, doesn't match the effortlessness with which they pump out more slop and leave me frustrated that I have to do this every time.
Just ban it from use in elementary and secondary schools, please.
kalkulat@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Yep. And then, in high school, give them plenty of chances to check-out and critique the LLMs. Good factual criticism skills are very valuable in most of life (they include not ruining the effect by being a snotty fart).
cokeslutgarbage@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 2d
I'm an adult taking night classes at my local community college. I have two instructors (neither is technically a professor). One is my age, and she begs us not to use AI, as some of my classmates openly talk about using it. My other instructor is in her 60s and all of her assignments have little notes under the header that say "this worksheet was generated by copilot". It's baffling. My feedback at the end of the semester is always "this class was great, but I wish the assignments didn't use AI".
aev_software@programming.dev · 4 pts · 2d
Yeah, I'm paying tuition for a human teacher. I'm not paying anything for an AI-generated tutor. If the producer doesn't value the work, I don't see why I should.
cokeslutgarbage@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 1d
I didn't mean to misrepresent the situation. She inputs all the material herself but uses copilot to format the worksheet, including the addition of emojis and clip art, and AI generated images all over the online class forum. She's very involved with the students' work and is a fountain of knowledge during classes, which makes her completely unnecessary use of AI so terribly confusing.
7101334@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
Go on ratemyprofessor and give her a low score. That actually does influence professors imo.
tabarnaski@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 2d
Teacher here, it doesn't. There is a strong bias on this kind of site towards negative reviews so we tend to ignore it as a. it doesn't represent reality and b. we want to keep our mental health.
7101334@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2d
It's been like half a decade (fuck, old) since I was in college but I never felt it had a particularly negative slant. Most good professors had very good ratings, the one actually-bad professor I took had a pretty bad rating (but she was the only one available for that class).
I always used it when signing up for classes, so even if it doesn't influence individual educators, it'll tell you who to avoid. Especially for valid critiques like "fills her lessons with AI slop".
HuePony@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 2d
Maybe let's pay them enough
njordomir@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
South Park satirized the whole AI thing pretty well. I recommend those episodes. I remember all the stories about teachers using AI to grade papers. It reminds me of a teacher I had who claimed to grade papers by throwing them down the stairs and grading based on how far they went!
Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 2d
Yeah, because teacher have unlimited resources.
aev_software@programming.dev · 2 pts · 2d
Pay them better?
Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 2d
That would be better news imo
Th4tGuyII@fedia.io · 60 pts · 2d
I understand the intention, but I'd argue high school is where its at the most corrosive. High school is where kids are forming their independent learning habits - we're already seeing the effects of AI becoming a crutch at this point in the game.
It makes even the smartest kids thick as pig shit because they start to depend on it, in the same way a lot our generation's handwriting went down the shitter because of computers.
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 2d
I'm not saying this because I'm a millennial but apparently we're the "last normal" generation because we didn't grow up as much with AI, social media and smartphones and tablet which does everything as we wish. Social media back then was for funsies, where your posts are for friends and family to cherish and not for the whole world to see. The smartphones only came later in our lives rather than thrust upon us when we were babies. Then of course, we didn't use AI until now. Millenials and the older folks have had to do most things ourselves.
Th4tGuyII@fedia.io · 6 pts · 2d
Yeah, I've heard that "last normal generation" stuff said a lot too.
It pains me to see my younger family members getting caught up in all of this, while most of the world's Governments seem hellbent on looking the other way - or worse using it as an excuse to give themselves extra surveillance powers (cough age verification cough) while doing nothing much to solve the main issue
lechekaflan@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
That thing ever changed everything, it's a literal double-edged sword. No longer having separate devices for specific needs, but instead people started becoming dependent on it, to the point that nearly every other form of entertainment became neglected, and even certain human aspects such as the ability to write by hand (there goes the postal service) or reading an actual book (there goes the local bookstore or public library). Now nearly everyone is on social media, and in some countries Facebook has become its own Internet.
Rooster326@programming.dev · 1 pts · 2d
If we the "the last normal generation"
Doesn't that then make us Abby Normal?
likebudda@reddthat.com · 42 pts · 2d
One generation from "don't trust wikipedia" to "just ask chatGPT."
Jankatarch@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
They still say "don't trust wikipedia," btw.
kalkulat@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
At least WPedia has decent references onboard for backup. The only GPT I've seen offer (2) references is at DDG.
Doomsider@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
Don't trust peer reviewed sourced material, trust this black box that gives you answers.
vandsjov@feddit.dk · 4 pts · 1d
Getting its information from Wikipedia
Murse@slrpnk.net · 29 pts · 2d
The number of new nurses / doctors who auto-piloted their way through school is fucking staggering.
There're no checks, they just take ChatGPT's vomit at face value.
Then they start working, and they're just bad.
AI needs to be banned from education, period. Think with your own brain.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 2d
I think at this point society needs to unite, and push the genie back into its bottle by any means possible.
7101334@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 2d
That's going to require the working class seizing power. I think we're working on that.
In a social capacity, that's already happening. Look how many online communities ban AI slop and how many irl communities push back hard against new data centers.
Even the economic side of things is starting to question the AI narrative, but I think they're playing along as we'll have to acknowledge we're in a huge recession when AI is exposed as vaporware.
Dozzi92@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
Aren't exams in person? I know board certification exams are written and in person in front of, believe it or not, a board. I just can't imagine cheating your way through knowing that, at the end of the tunnel, it's going to be just you.
Maybe I'm just old though.
Murse@slrpnk.net · 3 pts · 1d
The issue is the people who do just good enough on the exams to squeak by with the minimum. Exams also don't do a great job of testing critical thinking, which is what AI use really destroys.
It's like the old "book smart but no common sense" situation, but in this case even the book smart side is taking a hit because students will just study AI excrement without verifying that it's accurate. And the common sense side isn't just undeveloped, it's actively attacked.
AI is making people stupid.
shawn1122@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 2d
Yes they are. LLMs are also new enough that we've had perhaps one or two graduating classes that would have had access to it the entire time.
Almacca@aussie.zone · 28 pts · 2d
Fucking hell. High school is where they start to learn to think for themselves the most.
strawberry_enjoyer42@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 19 pts · 2d
Even more so, university students are truly becoming independent adults. Really, it should be banned for everyone, but that's not likely to happen.
Almacca@aussie.zone · 3 pts · 2d
Or at least teach them it's limitations and to not rely on it.
testaccount789@sh.itjust.works · -3 pts · 2d
Like anyone cares if it's good enough for a passing grade.
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
You donāt go to school to get grades, jackass, you go to learn.
testaccount789@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 2d
Do you think most kids care about that? If it can be used to pass, they'll use it. "Teaching its limitations" is basically of a "smoking kills" value.
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 2d
What a stupid as fuck take. Literally advocating for incompetence. Everyoneās doing it, just turn off your brain!
testaccount789@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 2d
The fuck you mean? I am advocating for a ban rather than just teaching about its inaccuracy (as most kids won't care if it just gets the job done).
Foni@piefed.zip · 27 pts · 2d
The fact that this phrase is revolutionary and newsworthy makes this world so dystopian that it's hard to believe.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 26 pts · 2d
Maybe we should take an example from Warhammer 40k, and just ban all "abominable intelligences.
GuillaumeGus@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 7 pts · 2d
Better the Butlerian Jihad from Dune!
luciferofastora@feddit.org · 9 pts · 2d
The Butlerian Jihad went so far as to ban computers too. I don't think that'll be necessary.
kablez@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
The next tech bro abomination is gonna make you regret saying that.
kestrel7_7@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
Not before they used the computers to make really good drugs, though. Thatās the difference between us and them
spazzman6156@sh.itjust.works · 18 pts · 2d
A lot of adults have yet to learn this...
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 2d
To be fair using it in primary school or earlier is probably the most damaging thing you could do to yourself with it
Maybe he didn't ban high school because 1. Kids with smartphones will be accessing it anyway, and if it's "banned" teachers will go 'well this can't have been written by AI because AI is banned in high school, yup!"
And 2. It might better facilitate them to giving lessons on the harms of AI
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 2d
I imagine it's also easier if it's broken up a little bit.
In other words, if they got pushback for including high school, and the entire thing got thrown out because of that, then the whole thing got thrown out and everyone suffers.
They could pursue a similar ban for high schools now without jeopardizing the ban for younger kids.
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
Yep, unfortunately this is just how most useful law gets passed
DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 2d
You can go read on r/teachers (https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/Teachers) just how bad this shit is getting--both phone use, and AI use for assignments.
We seriously need to completely ban both phones and AI use in grade school. Back to pencil and paper, and "show your work". The kids coming out of high school now can barely read, beyond texting. It's frightening.
If you give a fuck about your kids, you'll make sure they can read and write, because the schools don't give a fuck about your kids.
Kaerkob@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 2d
Teachers give a fuck. Unfortunately we refuse to adequately fund schools and don't give teachers the latitude to teach.
Up_dog@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
They sneaking in those dummy phones too?
Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 8 pts · 2d
One thing to promote literacy might be calm down about the sex, drugs and violence in books. I didn't have a single interesting assigned reading until Red Dragon in highschool.
A Time to Kill, great. Wish I read that instead of to kill a mockingbird.
Soggy@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 2d
Bad take, Mockingbird is great. Compelling and depressingly relevant to this day.
Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 2d
It's a good book, yes, but I was not interested in it and I had the executive function of a teenage boy.
Soggy@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
If we catered education to only the things that appeal to the most distracted teenage boys it would just be tits and explosions.
Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 2d
Actually I'd like to argue the reflective point: why is there not an expectation that coursework should be interesting and compelling for students?
raze2012@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
As you said, you had the executive function of a teenage boy. The works still get taught because they are interesting and relevant. but it's hard to see that as a kid, as you're developing vocabulary and literacy and also lacking life experiences to relate.
Schools try to compromise by giving a list of choices and letting students choose from those on what is most interesting. But curriculums only flex so much.
Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 2d
Yeah so there's this projection of, this is good and valuable to you, regardless what your circumstances and abilities are.
Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 2d
If it gets them writing essays and participating who cares?
Soggy@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
Because analyzing themes and connecting it to history and sociology are important media literacy skills that high schoolers should be learning.
Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 2d
A Time to Kill won't fulfill that?
raze2012@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
The parents, apparently.
queermunist@lemmy.ml · 7 pts · 2d
Schools are warehouses to hold children while parents are at work.
7101334@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
Public schools are. For high school, I went to a free online charter school. I received a substantially better education than my friends in the magnet public high school.
I get there are other problems with the whole 'school choice' debate, but my family was broke and I was still able to get a better education. That's a plus imo and I'd recommend it to anyone.
queermunist@lemmy.ml · 11 pts · 2d
If we forced rich people to send their children to public schools, public schools would get a lot better. By allowing them to have a choice, they choose to defund the public school.
Up_dog@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
Agree.
7101334@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
If we forced rich people to send their children to public schools, they would all move to public school districts in areas with housing too expensive for poor families to afford. That's not a hypothetical, that's just current reality.
The problem is rich people, not what options they do or do not have.
queermunist@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 2d
That's solvable with bussing, unless rich people all want to live out in the middle of nowhere in compounds or something.
The problem is rich people, which is why we should take away their options. They currently have the option to make rich-only school districts and we could take that away from them too. Point is, we have to force them to use the same school as everyone else.
raze2012@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
It's an illusion either way. Public schools are funded by property taxes. property taxes are based on the home's worth. So you see how this snowballs.
queermunist@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 2d
Property taxes keep getting cut and capped by people who don't use public schools, because they don't see the personal benefit to it.
This would have an effect.
Although pooling property taxes across entire states makes more sense than the weird school district thing we have going on.
skibidi@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 2d
I went to one of the worst schools in my state. The education was fine, schools are judged by their student body, not the teachers.
Graduated undergrad with a 4.0 in my engineering field, then got a doctorate from one of the most prestigious programs in the world. Now I'm a depressed techie waiting to FIRE, but I wouldn't blame my public high school for that.
qarbone@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
"FIRE"?
skibidi@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Financial Independence Retire Early
qarbone@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Ah, "paradise." Good luck with that, genuinely.
heartSagan5@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 2d
āNo child left behindā turned into āmore children left behind.ā
qarbone@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
They weren't left behind; they were trampled by the machine pushing them forward.
And, in retrospect, the reality of "No Child Left Behind" fits the MO of US governance: they are catering to the optics of "a child being held back in grade" and not to the actual issues that are preventing the child from learning.
Up_dog@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
Totally freeking agree. My family are all teachers and wow. The protocol for cellphones is you put them away at your cubby.
But now theyāre bringing their real phones AND a dummy one to put in the pouches instead.
nd yes. AI destroying critical thinking skills. This generation is fucked. iPad parents as well.
Shortening attention spans with those āshortsā on YouTube and other places.
Demdaru@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
...just put signal jammers in each class in easy to reach spot for a teacher, sheesh. AI requires net, FB and Insta too. Nowadays kids don't do offline so that should solve the problem.
huppakee@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
News flash: it's not just the schools, unfortunately.
ulterno@programming.dev · 13 pts · 1d
I don't get it.
Weren't schools telling children to "comply", just a few weeks ago?
I still remember having marks deducted in junior school for answering that the light does not turn on instantly after switching the button on.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
the American education system in a nutshell.
that's why I tell my kids, learn as much as you can, try your best, but don't get upset about a poor test grade here or there. You can learn anything you want, you just have to be willing to put in the effort.
the only useful thing I learned in the American education system is that you can't rely on it to educate, as it's designed to generate. Generate workers, voters, debt mules, pawns.
ulterno@programming.dev · 0 pts · 1d
Now that I think about it, it might have used "instantaneous", so my fault would have been just that I didn't know the difference vs "instant" :P.
But then again, that would partially be the teacher's fault for not pointing that out when I raised that question in class.
kalkulat@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Many junior high teachers aren't often the most knowledgable about science details. (How long it takes a light to turn on depends on how it's made. But none of them become visible 'instantly'. ) What (s)he (sh/c)ould have done is have you defend yourself with a reference. And then apologize.
ulterno@programming.dev · 0 pts · 23h
That was the year when we were taught of the speed of light and the specific question might have been at the end of the same chapter in the text book.
Somehow I had a vague feeling that the effect of turning on the switch should not reach the light instantly.
It was much later, that I found out how it was related to the absolute speed of information that is available in current theory.
Note, that I hadn't used the internet as much back then and it was much later, that I started diving into Wikipedia.
On the other hand, teachers are supposed to be university graduates themselves, so considering that I had the answer to that question by 12th, I would expect the teacher to at least be able to correctly answer that.
FreddiesLantern@leminal.space · 12 pts · 2d
Mamdaniiiiiiiii!!! ļ½(ć¤Ė0Ė)ć¤ļ½”ā
rumba@lemmy.zip · 12 pts · 2d
Hell, I think it's more important to ban it in high school.
minorkeys@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 2d
The health of the nation requires a citizenry capable of critical thinking to draw upon to manage and direct the fate of the nation. Now, obviously, the wealthy don't want anyone but themselves to be capable of such a thing. So here we are.
Surp@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 2d
I'm glad someone's trying to do anything at all about it. People asking "what about at home", it's the parents fault then. Actually be involved with your kids lives...they won't be in yours that long and it's not a sacrifice to sit down with them and watch them do homework or anything at all really.
7101334@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 2d
Do you realize how many parents work two full-time jobs? A lot, especially single parents. It's not as simple as "spend more time with your kids" when every 'free' moment you have is spent driving, preparing food, or doing basic chores / hygiene routines.
I've worked many warehouse and similar jobs. There are a lot of parents who really love their children and express that by allowing themselves to be economically exploited every single minute of their life to guarantee their children a better future.
Sure, there are also parents who just don't give a shit and park their kids on an iPad, but that has always been the case in one form or another. The trend where even caring parents are unable to spend enough time with their children is a consequence of a society-wide failure and the shameless embrace of capitalism.
Surp@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
I am a single parent full time job don't make a whole lot of money if I lost my job we would be homeless within a few months and I still find time to sit with my child every day so I guess you're right some people can some people can't. I make it work I live below my means i pretty much buy nothing I have old clothes used clothes used furniture shop for food with coupons my cars 13 years old. I don't know I guess?
7101334@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
Full time job, singular. I've known single parents who work two full-time jobs. Might be necessary for a variety of reasons. If they can financially work it out so they spend more time with their child and live below their means like you do, I 100% think that's the smarter choice for their child's wellbeing. But for some people it might not be feasible, for example if they have medical expenses or if they need to live near an older relative or tons of other reasons.
Surp@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
I understand, there's always a ying to the yang.
Jankatarch@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 2d
Mamdani is giving me major mayor dysmorphia.
spicehoarder@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 2d
Wish it were this:
nathan@lem.permisuan.com · -1 pts · 2d
Did you use generative AI to edit this image? lol jk
AngryRedHerring@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 2d
It's a start.
altphoto@lemmy.today · 8 pts · 2d
They should ban that shit until you graduate college.the kids who are nerds will always figure out a way. The rest who are not into computers and such definitely should stay the fuck away. If you're not careful you'll become a zombie that works to pay for access to his brains as a rental subscription.
That's just so messed up. It should not just be banned but down right illegal to sell an AI subscription if the data used was stolen from the public in the first place.
njordomir@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
Yeah, if running AI took a fancy graphics card and some basic scripting knowledge, a lot of the short cutters would get filtered out right away. I'd rather write a four page paper than struggle to get a strange piece of software working on a deadline and I'm a tech-adjacent Linux enthusiast. The commercialization of AI is the problem: the fact that they're preying on people's desire to stand out, to be exceptional, to get positive social feedback, to succeed in the hierarchy, to make their over-packed lives easier, etc. Open-source Academic AI would have had a some of the same issues, like being coopted by governments, but in general I think things would be magnitudes less terrible.
I appreciate your last point about stolen data. I appreciated it from a marketing/intelligence/propaganda point-of-view, and you from the ownership/intellectual property point of view, but we ended up in really similar places.
Lol at the zombie thing too.
spicehoarder@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 1d
AI is ruining my workplace. Ban this shit full stop.
Bieren@lemmy.today · 8 pts · 2d
Iāve asked this else where. Donāt get me wrong here, I agree with this and think itās great. But how are they going to police this? Yes there are the ai bots to check for ai usage. But that only goes so far.
nwtreeoctopus@sh.itjust.works · 15 pts · 2d
Honestly, a big step is blocking/not enabling it on school computers.
Like, a lot of schools with one-to-one Chromebooks have Gemini or whatever just completely bundled and integrated.
prime_number_314159@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 2d
I mean... "Sit in this room with a pen and a piece of paper until your thoughts are on that paper. If we see you pull out your cell phone, we're taking it away." is pretty effective.
merc@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 2d
I don't know why kids are allowed to have cell phones anywhere near them when they're at school.
They should be in a locker by the time school starts, and not seen again until they're done for the day.
late183@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 2d
This.
5318008@lemmy.ml · 7 pts · 2d
On an individual level, people mostly just follow the rules on their own. The spectre of some large and unknowable punishment is usually enough to enforce something like this. If 25% of people break the rule because they aren't afraid... You don't have to find all of them and punish them. You can just find a couple and punish them harshly, occasionally, decreasing the number of people who aren't afraid of rhe consequences.
Aside from that, this is implicitly a statement that school admins and teachers aren't allowed to push LLM usage on students. That's FAR more enforceable.
Cherries@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2d
This conversation is not actually a new topic; this is simply the latest edition of "How do we get students to stop cheating?" AI is the latest technique of cheating available to students, but we have actually known the answer for quite a long time. The way you get students to stop cheating is to get them to value their education.
People generally use AI in areas they are ignorant in or to do scut work. Personally, I really enjoy playing the video game Monster Hunter, in which creating armor sets can be very complicated. I once asked ChatGPT to make an armor set and it gave me a pile of garbage. I was only able to recognize it as garbage because of my deep understanding of the game. I have attached great value to learning the deeper mechanics of this hobby and so, I have no desire to offload that labor to a chatbot.
In the USA, education is assigned very little value. School is mostly seen as a way to get a job, not as a way to acquire more knowledge to better yourself. You need to do well in school so you can go to a good college so you can get a well paying job. You should study computer science because it pays a lot. You should become a doctor because it pays a lot. The entirety of education is a means to an end, something you gotta get out of the way to live your life. Education is seen as scut work.
A typical high school student takes an AP exam not because they want to prove they have a higher level mastery of a subject, but because a good score is worth college credits. A college student chooses their major thinking about job opportunities a degree will provide them. We tell children not to study what they love because that is how you become a starving artist.
Our society does not value education. Children are responding appropriately by relegating it to scut work. It's not that the children of today are uniquely incapable, they are simply the distillation of decades of education devaluation. Ask a football student to do math and they might be hesitant, but ask them to analyze their favorite team's average field goal success rates and they'll pull out detailed spreadsheets of percentages at different yard lengths.
If we want students to stop cheating, we have to give them a reason to value their education. While I support a ban on AI usage in the classroom, this is ultimately treating a symptom without addressing the source.
Jax@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 2d
Likely shifting curriculums away from homework towards more in-class assignments. Which should have been done decades ago, homework was invented as a punishment.
Soup@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
At the very least, activities within the schools will not be participating in shitting all over the childrenās brains. That still means something.
anarchy79@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
Doomsider@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
You just need to feed in every child's paper into the LLM so it can "detect" cheating. Please ignore the fact that they are now training AI on the free information you are providing them.
melfie@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 2d
I remember having study hall twice a week in high school and wondering why I didnāt just have a block of time like that every day to complete my assignments. It seems that having something like this with faculty supervising may be the only way to ensure AI isnāt being used.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
Or assignments where you need to give a presentation (where you can use bullet points but need you put it in your own words on the fly) followed by Q&A. Could help with the crippling social anxiety that seems to be getting more common, too, if it was regular enough.
tigermountain@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 2d
Then teach them media literacy and critical thinking skills.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
I get it, and normally I would agree with you. however, teaching your kids the dangers of it and them falling to peer pressure is a problem as old as humans.
Imagine how bad the spread of drugs would be if schools actively promoted smoking meth in class. That is the problem we're attempting to solve. If you legislate regulations for schools that say, "smoking meth in school is unacceptable" they stop promoting meth smoking in school.
tutter@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 0 pts · 1d
If you read the article, thats part of it as well
tigermountain@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
No, it's not.
brokenwing@discuss.tchncs.de · 6 pts · 2d
What's stopping them from using if for home works?
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 2d
Given that it's banned, if they get caught, it'd be punishable.
You can usually spot AI writing. It's wordy, fluffy bullshit.
WoodScientist@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
Kids are smarter than this. They'll do things like prompting the AI to write at a certain grade level or prompt it to pretend they're a student whose first language isn't English. Hell they can even upload an essay you actually did write and ask it to write a new essay that matches the writing style of the old one.
kestrel7_7@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 2d
At a certain point in school I realized that cheating was more work than just studying, and what youāre describing is a perfect example.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
I invented my own runic script and would write all the German I was supposed to be learning on the covers of my notebooks, hidden in drawings of monoliths or spaceships or whatever. I would have these notebooks on the floor during tests and I would get perfect scores. Now I don't speak a fucking word of German except for what little I remember from Nightcrawler in the X-men comic books. Unglaublich!
qarbone@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
At that point, why even take a German class?
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
Well, the teacher did have a lot of great stories about growing up in one of Tito's concentration camps. And we got to watch Das Boot.
kestrel7_7@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
Yeah for real, youāre never gonna hit on babes in another language if you cheat in your language class. Itās like people only care about the grade, and donāt understand the greater and more noble purpose of education (impressing potential dates).
qarbone@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
So true, Mr. Obama.
kestrel7_7@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
Exactly, that sounds like so much more work than just sprechen some Deutsch.
huppakee@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
Just like robbing a bank is (supposedly) much easier than it is to get away with it.
roundabout@feddit.org · 1 pts · 2d
That would turn out to be inconsistent with their writing style (even if it may be consistent with the average for that level). The personal style should become apparent from live testing.
alphabethunter@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2d
Probably nothing, but teachers can easily tell if something was done by AI (usually because lazy students will be lazy enough to not even bother to try and hide it), so with it being properly banned, it gives teachers the authority to question suspicious assignments.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
Great question!
queermunist@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 2d
Let's delve into that---
Renat@szmer.info · 1 pts · 2d
morality
Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 2d
"Kids need to learn to think for themselves". Shocked Republican gasp
qarbone@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
Can't have that. Then they won't be Republican.
Look at this socialist plot to uproot the seeds of future GOP voters!
anarchy79@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
Do social media next.
Gotta say though, this is an idea that might misfire.
Try to stop kids from doing things for their own good is not an easy conundrum.
bold_atlas@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 2d
It's not like weed or sex. Kids aren't organically predisposed to using smartphones and AI. It's something they're being taught to do which is largely being orchestrated by capital. Chrome books are bad enough. There really is no other option here. Otherwis we're just giving up and allowing Google raise our children.
anarchy79@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
I hear ya.
I just don't see a solution here. Unless....
Polisheocket@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 2d
Easy solution, no more computers in class room until high school. Back to white boards and basics
SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
I say let's go all the way back to blackboards and chalk!
Polisheocket@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 2d
Fuck, that just gives me scratches on chalky board vibes
Sergio@piefed.social · 1 pts · 1d
Rhetoric and mnemonics!
roundabout@feddit.org · 5 pts · 2d
The telecommunication is not the problem, but the addictive feeds, and they are a problem for everyone. Change social media, don't block them.
anarchy79@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
How the fuck do we do that??
It's like saying, don't stop the leak, control the flow of water...
zbyte64@awful.systems · 1 pts · 2d
roundabout@feddit.org · 1 pts · 1d
We regulate them to stop using recommendation systems which are designed to be addictive.
Kangae_Hishiryo@scribe.disroot.org · 4 pts · 2d
It should've be banned from the world itself, but yeah, that's for sure better than nothing.
LotrOrc@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
Why are so many people seemingly against this?
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
need to ban AI period. but at least this is a start. Never let a obsession of perfection prevent you from making partial progress.
Children need to be taught critical thinking and reasoning skills, and AI does nothing but produce slavish sheep
pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 2d
my country allows teachers to use some AI
(šŖšŖ btw)
AngryRedHerring@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 2d
If you want to get AI out of the class, you can do it and make every school child happy at the same time.
Eliminate homework.
raid_dad@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 2d
This is a necessary step. Homework is largely ineffective at accomplishing any of the things itās claimed to. It does not improve academic performance a majority of the time.
It does, however, condition children to expect to work more than 40 hours a week, so I expect it wonāt go away without a fight.
foiledAgain@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
Not disagreeing but do you have some citations for that claim about it being ineffective?
AngryRedHerring@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
Doesn't sound like it, but they sure do have a lot of "feelings" š
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
Depends on the homework I feel.
Homework should be optional, but the homework should review of what you are trying to learn in class. Making it that you do say 3 problems "of this type in class". Then they give you 10 variations you can practice at home. If you understand it in class... No need to do it. If you don't quite understand, you open the book and try the first couple, if you get it, you're good. If you don't, try the rest grasp the best of where you are getting lost, and inquire the next day showing you did them and the teacher can mark down where you were going wrong. Go back to that section in the book and look at the next ten that night and confirm that you did indeed pick up on what you did not understand.
late183@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 2d
IMHO Not all kids have same attention in a full classroom. Homework I think gives them critical thinking time on their own. I think homework is essential. There must have been research put in I am sure.
Kage520@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
For me, I liked homework that directly helped me on the exams and quizzes. One class was awesome in that it would give maybe 10 questions for homework and there was a high likelihood of a quiz every class. But the quiz was guaranteed to be that same homework just with different variables so you had to recalculate it. And before the quiz he would ask if anyone had any difficulties on any question so we could review it.
pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 1d
im not a teacher im a student :3
orbitz@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 2d
Indeed. Teal'c impression.... Stargate TV show for those unsure, watch it if you enjoy sci fi and scenery from BC, not the best scenery for bc of course you gotta visit or watch Psych for that stuff, though different genre but you get few comedy detective 40min episode series in general, plus who doesn't love Shawn and Gus? For those that watched it.
From what I can tell, students need to learn online searches are tools, but you have to still understand why they give the correct answer. Or not (give the correct one), I've googled same issue but worded just slightly differently and got the opposite answer (usually after seeing the first response was incorrect, then I reword and gives me the opposite)
Mean I learned how to use searches, be specific only include relevant words....been doing it for decades now. Nope one slight change in my search gives the opposite ai answer. Fuck that technology is limited, opposite answers other day with similar but not exactly same query. If anything it's making people stupid. Kids need to learn critical thinking, why I know answers are incorrect when I see it, can bring in knowledge to determine if it fits other facts.
If only all places made sure to not let kids using it until they got proper skills to parse their results in a mindful and logical way.
Otherwise you get people believing the first result, and for anyone say over 35(ish) early Internet you had to try many times and go to past the first page of results to find shat you were looking for.
Renat@szmer.info · 2 pts · 23h
My college teacher be like: "I add AI to my Outlook email so it can automatically reply to emails using a lot of words"
minorkeys@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 2d
But then they would be able to resist the will of the wealthy and ambitious. We can't have that. Ppl not doing what the wealthy want is such an annoyance!
Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 2d
Yeah, schools have always been the best arbiters of knowledge. No flaws in our education system. None.
heartSagan5@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 2d
/s I imagine.
wallwood@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 2d
It is reassuring to see some light amidst all this crazy ai hellscape news
UnequalExchange@lemmy.world · -17 pts · 2d
ššš¤£š¤£ Glad that we are promoting war criminal ZioRahn mamdani who chose to not arrest netanyahu šš¤£šš¤£
TrippyHippy@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 2d
š¤”
mabeledo@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
āChoseā. Yeah, sure.
Lodespawn@aussie.zone · -20 pts · 2d
I dunno, AI is a tool like anything else. We don't outright ban calculators, but we do (or did, I'm old) stop kids from using calculators while they learn the basics then introduce them at appropriate ages with appropriate training (much simpler for calculators).
It's probably fine to ban AI so long as it's for an interim period while they come up with an effective curriculum to teach kide the manual methods for things they might automate, how to setup local models, the appropriate use cases in most professional settings and how to correctly verify answers and sources and when that might be important.
deWafelMan@lemmus.org · 24 pts · 2d
I disagree with this. Ai isnāt like the other tools. Other tools donāt hallucinate nor make mistakes.
Also, ai feels more human in the way you talk to it.
Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 0 pts · 2d
People though, theyre infallible.
Lodespawn@aussie.zone · 0 pts · 2d
Yeah but it does simple but time intensive tasks quickly. Like if you need to generate a document structure it can take a long time but the AI can review existing similar docs and generate something appropriate quickly. The fluff a technical document requires is in a similar boat. A those things would need a review prior to utilisation, but you could save yourself an hour or two getting to the review.
Ensuring kids know how to appropriately use the tools available to them is the goal of education. Yes they need to know the manual methods and should be well trained in those before they start learning what's appropriate to offload. Banning AI is like banning kids from using computers. Yes it's screen time and mindless screen time consuming videos can be detrimental, but how they use the screen is critical and they learn skills when they use the screens for appropriate things.
The other glaring question should be is the environmental cost of using a large cloud based corporate model worth it for a few hours savings per week for each employee? The answer to that is a pretty clear no, but you can achieve similar savings with local models that don't consume vast quantities of energy and water.
VeganBtw@piefed.social · 19 pts · 2d
Since calculators, humans are verifiably worse at arithmetic. But it makes sense, it's a tradeoff and it helps us do complex mathematics.
LLMs don't just spit out arithmetic answers, it answers all questions. The fear here is that humans will be verifiably worse at... Everything that requires language.
testaccount789@sh.itjust.works · 20 pts · 2d
With only a possibility of the answers being correct.
Lodespawn@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 2d
Like I said, there are appropriate use cases and teaching kids about those and the pitfalls is pretty critical. It's worse to just let them work it out under their own steam ..
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 7 pts · 2d
It's literally not though. It's not like anything else.
Lodespawn@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 2d
Most tools are like that. Is a hammer like any other tool? No, there are a range of hammer types, but a hammer is a hammer and there are no other tools that do that job. Could you use the back of an axe or the side of a wrench? Maybe. Should you? No.
OldChicoAle@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2d
A calculator spits out the same result every single time. The result is true and never wrong, given the input is correct. AI will spit out something different every time with varying degrees of reliability.
Lodespawn@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 2d
I agree with that and I think there are a significant number of use cases where it's either a waste of time or completely inappropriate to use an LLM to generate the text you are looking for.
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
Gen āAIā is a crutch. Itās not a tool. Itās a crutch.
Lodespawn@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 2d
You could say the same thing about a computer .. why aren't we drafting technical drawings by hand, why do Draftees need a crutch like CAD packages?
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
CAD is a tool, you have to know what youāre doing. Itās a skill.
Computer = / = āAI.ā
Lodespawn@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 1d
Arguably you have to know what you're doing to get useful results out of an AI without becoming a gibbering idiot. Kind of like how you need to know what you're doing with a circular saw so you don't lose a hand. A computer is a tool just like AI is tool, obviously they are not the same.
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Sure, in the exact same way itās a skill to order food and manage to get what you wanted from your server.
And, arguably, you donāt need to know the first thing about āAIā to use it to do a great deal of things extraordinarily badly and having no idea how badly you are fucking everything up and neither does the āAI.ā Itās a tool for building incompetence, failure, and reliance, not productivity.
You canāt vibe saw a pierce of wood into a cabinet, you have to know exactly what youāre doing at all times. You can also build the exact same cabinet by doing the same thing as you did before. It is a skill, the woodworking tools are tools only in the hands of someone who knows what to do with them. Every interaction with an āAIā is guess work on both ends, and the results arenāt repeatable. Itās not a tool, itās a shitty attempted at building a machine so that the oligarchs can remove you from the equation entirely. It is the complete antithesis of a skill, it actively robs you of knowledge and experience, you are the tool for the āAIā, not the other way around.
And again, a computer = / = an āAI.ā A computer is a tool, āAIā is asking someone else to use that tool for you. Itās as much a skill as commissioning a piece of bad art or paying someone to build your deck wrong. āAIā is not a tool, itās a shitty contractor that you keep insisting is good even though you call them out to fix the exact same issue every week.
Lodespawn@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 1d
You most certainly can vibe a piece of wood into a cabinet but it'll be a shit cabinet and you'll probably hurt yourself. You'll need more tools than just a saw though.
Do you use auto correct on your phone? Well then hold onto your hat because an LLM is a glorified version of that, and that is a tool for speeding up typing. Can you just autocorrect your way to a complete sentence? Maybe but you need review process or your going to be typing gibberish. Sure it makes your typing worse but at the benefit of improving speed and minimising the errors associated with a screen based keyboard.
Look you're committed to your cause and it's pretty clear what sub we're in, so good luck with that, but AI exists so we either ban it outright which is a fool's errand (you might as well try banning math) or you can ensure people are educated about how best to use it. I think relegating it to entertainment rather than using it as a tool to minimise the time it takes to shit admin tasks is worse by far when you consider the social and mental health implications.
queermunist@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 1d
We could ban hyperscale data centers. People can have local models.
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Sounds like a lot of cope and a lack of skill. Did you type that or just ask the computer to think it up for you? What was your prompt?
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · -26 pts · 2d
Am I the only one not happy with non-teacher politicians getting involved in education? Teachers (not school administrators, teachers) should have maximum freedom with this stuff.
Fafa@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 2d
You can't call for freedom of choice when text automization tools comes to educational institutions. You won't use machines for lifting weights in a gym so why use it in school?
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · -12 pts · 2d
Then it should be the teachers forbidding (or not) these tools as they see fit. My point is simple: Politicians shouldn't be micromanaging classrooms. I don't see AI having a positive effect on classrooms either, but I'm not about to go tell experienced professionals how to do their jobs without a damn good reason. For an example of what could go wrong, well with AI banned until highschool you lose the ability to have AI literacy classes, resulting in kids completely unprepared for dealing with a technology that isn't going away anytime soon.
Cherries@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
Educators are already asking for restrictions on AI in the classroom. The problem is that AI is systemically being imposed upon them by the tech oligarchs seeking to get some kind of return on their bad investment. This requires a systemic level of response unavailable to a teacher, but available to a government.
There is no evidence that Mayor Mamdani is simply imposing his will upon the NYC educational board. From all the reporting, it sounds like the mayor's office is working closely with educators, parents, and students on how to best incorporate technology in the classroom.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 0 pts · 2d
First thanks for writing a reply that actually engages with what I said.
Then why can't they impose it themselves?
Got anything I can read about this? Admittedly I haven't looked very hard, but no reporting I've seen goes into that kind of detail.
Cherries@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
The NYTimes says this measure is being lead by the city's Dept of Education.
The reason we can't just leave it up to individual teachers is because AI is not being rolled out by individuals. Our government from a federal level is pushing mass AI adoption primarily because the people in positions of power finacially benefit from more widespread AI usage. To defend from federal government overreach, you need power at least on the level of local government action. Educators in NYC have gotten together with their unions to reccommend a course of action to their Dept of Ed who is now working with the mayor's office to enact that course of action. So in a way, educators are imposing these restrictions themselves, they are just doing so by working through the chain of command.
Other articles about this topic seem to imply that NYC educators want this measure to go even further, but are happy that things are at least moving in the direction of AI restrictions.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 3 pts · 2d
Yiu know what? Fair enough, I'm convinced.
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
You havenāt been paying attention to what teachers have to say about AI. This is exactly what theyāve been asking for. Stop shilling for big tech, thatās loser ass baby shit.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 1 pts · 2d
Uh... source?
I haven't shilled for anything, so spare me the juvenile insults.
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
Iām not here to wipe your ass. Itās a quick search away. Find it yourself, I know how you work, anything I provide you will disregard the source or whatever for whatever reason you choose.
How about this, considering you are running on pure conjecture, provide proof itās not what teachers want.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 7 pts · 2d
Public schools are funded through taxes, and I don't trust all teachers with respect to this stuff either. Plenty of Christian nationalist, evolution-denying, etc. teachers out there.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 0 pts · 2d
Do you trust the average teacher less than the average politician?
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 2d
Seems like a false dichotomy...
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 1 pts · 2d
It's not; either politicians can tell teachers how to do their jobs or they can't, and it's hard to see how such precedent wouldn't be abused by special interests, including AI companies.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 2d
Shut the fuck up and go back to your AI girlfriend, loser