Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again • Hacker News Board

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#131

Post by nicce » Wed, May 22, 2024, 3:49 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #107

xhkkffbf wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way to look at it is to recognize that all teachers have limitations. Humans often convey misinformation too.

Yeah, and I actually think that there can be some value in students being challenged to find some misinformation. I maintain that one of the very best teachers I ever had was my 9th grade biology teacher, purely because she understood absolutely nothing about biology and appeared to just be making shit up. You could argue that in a vacuum this might be benign, but part of the issue is that she would use tests provide…

> Yeah, and I actually think that there can be some value in students being challenged to find some misinformation.

The future generations do not have the same background as we do. For them it is very difficult to teach what is "misinformation", or have a thinking model like that, unless we make them read proper books and compare the content for the output of the AI.

But if the AI is soon correct enough, they don't get it, and they don't feel it important, and they just take the output from AI as fact.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#132

Post by Jtsummers » Wed, May 22, 2024, 3:51 PM UTC

nextworddev wrote: post #117

Jtsummers wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Khanmigo isn't, it's $4/month.

Khanmigo is free for teachers I believe

Who are not the learner which is the context of this particular writeup. Gates is talking about using LLMs to assist students as tutors, and that is not offered for free ($4/month, $44/year).

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#133

Post by welshwelsh » Wed, May 22, 2024, 3:51 PM UTC

MajimasEyepatch wrote: post #118

Myrmornis wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure it can generally put words in grammatically correct order and is passible for writing no one is going to read anyway (like marketing emails). But the moment it requires actual domain knowledge all these AI models completely fall down because, again, they don't actually understand anything, they just are really good at guessing what word comes next. Many of us are frequently using it to obtain answers requiring…

I can ask ChatGPT to write code and assess myself whether it's correct or not. (It's frequently not, but it can still be useful for certain tasks.) I can ask it to explain something about the industry I work in or adjacent fields and have a pretty good sense of whether it's leading me in the right direction. But if I asked it to teach me about, say, Chinese history, I would have very little ability to assess whether…

While these are all valid concerns, they also apply to human teachers. Humans spew bullshit all the time.

But that's OK. A teacher's knowledge doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be better than the student's.

If ChatGPT explains Chinese history in a way that is 80% accurate, to a student whose understanding of Chinese history is 10% accurate, the student will walk away with a better understanding of Chinese history.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#134

Post by megaman821 » Wed, May 22, 2024, 3:52 PM UTC

diddypiddy wrote: post #105

doctoboggan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impressive! You should give yourself more credit as it takes more than just internet and patience to teach yourself enough to get into college. I am also excited for society. However I am worried as well. While an AI tutor who is able to understand the child's current knowledge and gear the lessons toward what will make the most sense will be very powerful, it could also be used for brainwashing, propaganda, misinfor…

We live in a world where wealth is increasingly being concentrated at the top, social mobility for the average person is trending downwards, suicide rates in the US are at all-time highs, drug abuse rising, general deaths of despair rising, mental illness rising, climate and ecological catastrophes mounting by unchecked greed and all of this AI crap is mostly in the hands of the powerful who will use it to solidify t…

The average person has a higher standard of living and more wealth than ever before. Suicide rates are not at all-time highs, they were much higher during the World Wars and Great Depression. Drug abuse is down too, but newer drugs are more potent. Mental illness is a hard stat to compare over time since it is very sensitive to the collection mechanisms. The growth of carbon-free technologies has been exponential over the last few decades. Open(source?) AI models trail the leading closed models by 6-12 months, it's hard to say they are only in the hands of the most powerful. The world is better than ever before, but it could be even better. The internet is filled with too many doomerist takes.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#135

Post by tombert » Wed, May 22, 2024, 3:52 PM UTC

nicce wrote: post #131

tombert wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and I actually think that there can be some value in students being challenged to find some misinformation. I maintain that one of the very best teachers I ever had was my 9th grade biology teacher, purely because she understood absolutely nothing about biology and appeared to just be making shit up. You could argue that in a vacuum this might be benign, but part of the issue is that she would use tests provide…

> Yeah, and I actually think that there can be some value in students being challenged to find some misinformation. The future generations do not have the same background as we do. For them it is very difficult to teach what is "misinformation", or have a thinking model like that, unless we make them read proper books and compare the content for the output of the AI. But if the AI is soon correct enough, they don't g…

I agree with all that, and that's why I think we should still keep using traditional books for the foreseeable future. I think that AI can be a terrific supplement, particularly if the students are told to challenge it a bit.

I think that just like human teachers, it'll be impossible to completely solve the misinformation problem, but I do think it'll get asymptotically close to being solved.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#136

Post by RandomLensman » Wed, May 22, 2024, 3:52 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #126

RandomLensman wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does ChatGPT give you good exercises in set theory to work through as well on that or is that back to other material?

I've never really had it do exercises in set theory, so tough to say. Usually the thing I like about it most is getting it summarize stuff at a high level, and then giving me keywords than I can independently search for and play around with in Isabelle. Like, for me I think part of the value to ChatGPT is simply figuring out some of what I don't know that I don't know. When I was a lecturer I would use ChatGPT to gen…

I always thought it tough to really learn math without doing exercise to really understand how things work.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#137

Post by kody » Wed, May 22, 2024, 3:55 PM UTC

tangjurine wrote: post #75

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)

My students LOVED IXL. I couldn't believe when I found out the kids kept using IXL after school and on weekends to compete with each other.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#138

Post by tombert » Wed, May 22, 2024, 3:57 PM UTC

RandomLensman wrote: post #136

tombert wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never really had it do exercises in set theory, so tough to say. Usually the thing I like about it most is getting it summarize stuff at a high level, and then giving me keywords than I can independently search for and play around with in Isabelle. Like, for me I think part of the value to ChatGPT is simply figuring out some of what I don't know that I don't know. When I was a lecturer I would use ChatGPT to gen…

I always thought it tough to really learn math without doing exercise to really understand how things work.

It is!

In my case, that's why I usually try and figure out something to do in Isabelle. Trying to prove some kind of property based on something I learned from ChatGPT. I also will occasionally grab exercises from "real" textbooks once I know the keywords to search in Kagi.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#139

Post by pnathan » Wed, May 22, 2024, 3:58 PM UTC

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…

At this point, I am surprised that LLMs _can_ do code, given the volume of incorrect information they give on specific topics.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#140

Post by bryanlarsen » Wed, May 22, 2024, 3:59 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #115

tripdout wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet Khan Academy is free.

But Khanmigo isn't, it's $4/month.

I'm willing to bet that it will be in the future. Maybe a free version that can run locally on Copilot+ level NPU's or GPU's, perhaps taking advantage of software & hardware cost reductions to get it down to a level that they can talk Gates into paying for it.