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Raising Children on the Eve of AI

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Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#231

Post by ben_w »

threedark wrote: post #70

What happened to all the people who were saying AI is just a stochastic parrot and aren't worried at all about AI? Is it that this thread only attracts people who are worried about AI or is there an actual paradigm shift that all the nay-sayers are realizing they were wrong? Serious question, don't take it the wrong way if you were a nay-sayer. No offence at all.

There's a few such comments[0], though my assumption is there's some kind of assortative selection going on that means all the bear comments congregate in one set of threads and all the bull comments congregate in a slightly different set.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39408125 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39407263

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#232

Post by ben_w »

keiferski wrote: post #17
aquarkortwo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world where we have personalized tutors and assistants that can pass on knowledge much more efficiently and effectively than human teachers can.

People keep saying this and I don’t buy it. Kids arent going to learn the best by staring at a computer screen eight hours a day. If this happens it’ll be because of reduced education funding, not efficiency.

Is staring at a screen for eight hours a day better or worse than staring at a chalkboard or a marker board?

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#233

Post by ben_w »

sinuhe69 wrote: post #46
aquarkortwo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world where we have personalized tutors and assistants that can pass on knowledge much more efficiently and effectively than human teachers can.

Really? Did you try to learn something seriously with AI and compare the same process with a human teacher? And you seriously believe the parrot is better? Try asking ChatGPT or Gemini about minimax plus alpha-beta pruning then change the cut-off conditions and ask it which one is correct and why and see it for yourself. Lookup the literature to see which one is correct. And that’s only a very simple example of concr…

I have an audio recording of an actual human teacher trying to insist, in the 2005-6 academic year, that motion capture couldn't possibly be recorded for more than a few minutes at a time because that would use "several megabytes" of data.

My laptop was recording audio at 44kHz/16-bit at the time.

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#234

Post by ben_w »

Biologist123 wrote: post #43

The writer says: “[My children] are more viscerally worried about climate change”. I’m not surprised. I recently heard from a friend that her 7 year-old child had, as a class assignment, to create a timeline setting out the impact of climate change over their lifetime. I was gobsmacked, and feel this amounts to a form of psychological child abuse. It’s a serious problem, don’t get me wrong, but having a small child l…

When I was 7, my school had me writing stories where I had to imagine living through the Blitz.

If your friend's kid is anything like I was at that age, this kind of thing is too abstract to really impact them the way you seem to think it does.

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#235

Post by bbor »

bbor wrote: post #217
alumic wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is depressing. I think that this might just be the whole picture. Look, I spent a long while studying evolutionary biology in school (detour into pre-med) and came away with a fairly bleak picture of our place in the universe. I use "worth" in precisely that context. Nature gives us a world in which "he who does not work, does not eat" is a rule of law. Human beings--especially modern ones--assign worth quite diff…

Hey thanks for the thoughtful response. I still disagree of course, but we’re really arguing about the very fundamental worldview divide between progressives and conservatives, so that’s no surprise lol. I’d summarize my retort simply: > Nature gives us a world Humanity makes its own world, especially now. Nature is red in tooth and claw, and rarely compatible with our priorities without some cajoling. More than that…

I can’t edit so I’ll reply. I’m cribbing my opinion from this: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/nature-2

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#236

Post by larodi »

silverquiet wrote: post #152
larodi wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but children pre-12 actually can’t grasp ‘clear terms’ so easy when the terms are about something clearly abstract or existential. They may grasp the idea of death but seldom is it not terrifying to them as genetically it takes a while to overcome the dna-imprinted anxiety of body failure. So perhaps there’s a certain age before which u are advised to be very careful with what actually is being said to a child.

I've been terrified of dying since I realized there was no god when I was about 7. It's not really anything anyone needs to tell you. In fact, the lies tend to expose the problems of belief systems, at least to rather intelligent, skeptical little kids. I'll be 38 next month and I can't say that it's really gotten any better.

Time to reinvent GOD and eternal life then. Perhaps also time to consult and check whether it's a mid-life crisis, or something wrong with sleep cycles or overworking. I really wish u get better soon.

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#237

Post by niemandhier »

ben_w wrote: post #230
niemandhier wrote: post #174

Life changed less than you think: The cobbler down the streets still makes shoes, the butcher next door still cures meat, the carpenter in the neighbourhood still builds chairs. It’s just that the cobblers brother works in a bio-factories clean room, and the carpenters wife is a sysadmin.

I've not seen any "down the street"-scale cobbler outside a museum, and the only trained carpenter I know was literally homeless until they found a chance to be a software tester. There are butchers around, though who knows how long that will last, once vat-grown flesh is both affordable and available.

I guess Europe is just different,I drive past 2 carpentries and one cobbler on my way to work, and there are 7 butchers and 9 bakeries in a 15km radius.
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