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Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

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Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#71

Post by piker »

7thpower wrote: post #19

I am a high school dropout and who learned math using Khan Academy after never having completed more than pre-algebra in middle school. Sal Khan’s work changed my life and allowed me to build a foundation in not only math, but also finance and economics, that allowed me to feel confident enough to go to college. I did not have a support system or people in my life who could teach me these things, but I had the intern…

> Every time I go to the grocery store to buy something and don’t have to worry about my card being declined, it feels like magic. Even years later.

So this is universal!

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#72

Post by tombert »

nicklecompte wrote: post #65
tombert wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I've found ChatGPT (and its clones) have been immensely useful as a learning tool for me. Having it summarize stuff in different ways and being able to immediately ask clarifying questions has been sort of a game-changing learning tool, at least for me. I don't think they should allow use of AI during tests because yeah, it'd just do all the work for them and they wouldn't learn anything, but I absolutely th…

Incredibly depressing to read this comment when I have tested GPT-4 extensively on simple finite group theory, and it could not reliably distinguish associativity from commutativity, either in prose or in computations, even for very small groups where I gave the multiplication table. The only simple abstract algebra problems it could solve were cliches it almost certainly memorized. I would never use an LLM for learn…

First, just because there's issues with some misinformation with ChatGPT right now doesn't imply that it will always be there.

Second, I know what fuck I'm doing, and I'm sorry to "depress" you, but having a high level summary of something in terms of a cartoon is generally reasonably accurate, and generally any information I learn is also mechanically checked with Isabelle. I agree that it shouldn't be the be-all-end all of everything but if you're a student who's already frustrated with math, having a high-level description of stuff in terms of something you understand can be valuable.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#74

Post by ben_w »

xscott wrote: post #52
GolfPopper wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But sometimes it makes up answers that are wrong but sound plausible to you. You have no way to tell when it does this, and neither does it.

That's absolutely a bug that needs to be fixed, but I think it's possible. Maybe have the network which generates the answer be moderated by another network that assesses the truthiness of it. It's just a matter of priorities for the company designing the models.

It might be possible, but nobody knows for sure, because these models are rather more mysterious than their architecture suggests.

> Maybe have the network which generates the answer be moderated by another network that assesses the truthiness of it.

Like a GAN? Sometimes you can do that, but it seems not always.

If this was simple and obvious, they'd have done it as soon as the first one was interesting-but-wrong.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#75

Post by tangjurine »

Pulcinella wrote: post #70

Background: I taught high school science for half a decade and now I am in tech. This will never take off. One, there is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money in Ed.Tech. What little money there is goes to the obvious stuff like student records databases. Anything that requires an ongoing subscription fee is dead in the water. The only reason those stupid smartboards took off is because…

Idk... My company is doing pretty well (ixl learning)

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#76

Post by Phiwise_ »

falcor84 wrote: post #68
Phiwise_ wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those 5% go on to make an upper-class salary sitting in an air-conditioned office instead of a lower-class salary turning wrenches and stacking boxes. What makes more sense than enabling everyone who can to attain that life? (Plus every one of them who gets out makes life better for the rest at least by reducing downward pressure on wages, and hopefully also by creating new business opportunities that raise wages fur…

Speaking of AI, I wouldn't be surprised if, in the next decade, jobs that involve turning wrenches would pay significantly more than most jobs that can be done fully on a computer.

Perhaps, but only because most jobs done on computers today are by people who also have little if any math or programming ability. Change that and it's a different world to make those predictions in.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#77

Post by [deleted] »

piker wrote: post #71
7thpower wrote: post #19

I am a high school dropout and who learned math using Khan Academy after never having completed more than pre-algebra in middle school. Sal Khan’s work changed my life and allowed me to build a foundation in not only math, but also finance and economics, that allowed me to feel confident enough to go to college. I did not have a support system or people in my life who could teach me these things, but I had the intern…

> Every time I go to the grocery store to buy something and don’t have to worry about my card being declined, it feels like magic. Even years later. So this is universal!

[deleted]

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#78

Post by nothrowaways »

arresin wrote: post #45

I never found the Kahn academy videos good. His teaching style was just totally off. I found some videos by a company called The Teaching Company. Really old school, very early 2000s or late 90s. Incredibly high quality truly gifted teachers—-just less well known online.

Can agree. Did a pretty good PR and first comer advantage.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#80

Post by miki123211 »

ben_w wrote: post #59
tombert wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I've found ChatGPT (and its clones) have been immensely useful as a learning tool for me. Having it summarize stuff in different ways and being able to immediately ask clarifying questions has been sort of a game-changing learning tool, at least for me. I don't think they should allow use of AI during tests because yeah, it'd just do all the work for them and they wouldn't learn anything, but I absolutely th…

> I don't think they should allow use of AI during tests because yeah, it'd just do all the work for them and they wouldn't learn anything, but I absolutely think there's value in being able to use it as a 24/7 instant tutor, particularly since ChatGPT can be coerced into explaining things in basically any style that you'd like. For any test where there's an AI good enough to cheat with and cheap enough students can…

I used to agree with this point, but I actually changed my stance.

Once you hit a problem that an AI cannot solve, it's good to be at least aware of what's going on in the field. You don't necessarily have to remember every formula and every fact off the top of your head, but having an intuition on what facts and formulas there are and where they can be used is immensely helpful.

Imagine you're writing a program in an esoteric scripting language that Copilot doesn't understand, and you need to put a large array of events in order from oldest to newest. If you had to learn this sort of think before, you'll immediately have an intuition that this is called sorting, there are slow (n^2) sorting algorithms and faster (n log n) sorting algorithms and you want the latter, and that quicksort is probably a good candidate to start with. You don't necessarily have to be able to write quicksort by hand, you can look up an implementation online and port it to your weird proprietary language, but the intuition is important.

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