Sal Khan in the past has made his position clear that he supports austerity and private schools in the United States. This, if anything, is continuation of the con he always propelled. Edtech will replace teachers has been a talking point for a decade now. Too bad, there's no reliable evidence it improves learning outcomes. There is not any evidence for the latest "Microsoft figured out how to mine the essence of your child"-migo, either.
Microsoft, Khan Academy Partner to Make Khanmigo Teaching Tool Free
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Re: Microsoft, Khan Academy Partner to Make Khanmigo Teaching Tool Free
#72I’m curious what teachers unions in the United States will think of this. Presumably any successful outcomes with this will result in a culling, starting with aides and specialists. Add declining enrollment and you have strong incentive.
This is a misunderstanding of the purpose of teachers in the US. They exist to babysit students while the parents work, and any learning that gets done is a bonus. You can't replace babysitting with online classes.
I’m not talking about teachers, I’m talking about aides.
Re: Microsoft, Khan Academy Partner to Make Khanmigo Teaching Tool Free
#73Khan - an English loanword from Middle Mongolian meaning "ruler". Migo - in the works of H.P. Lovecraft, a fundamentally alien race that has mastered neuroscience. Seems a little too much on the noise?
The people telling you about Sal Khan's name are being uncharitable, I think. I think you know that was not the intent behind the name, you're just pointing out that the coincidences add an extra layer of meaning to you. Which I think is perfectly valid.
Re: Microsoft, Khan Academy Partner to Make Khanmigo Teaching Tool Free
#74Sal Khan in the past has made his position clear that he supports austerity and private schools in the United States. This, if anything, is continuation of the con he always propelled. Edtech will replace teachers has been a talking point for a decade now. Too bad, there's no reliable evidence it improves learning outcomes. There is not any evidence for the latest "Microsoft figured out how to mine the essence of you…
> Too bad, there's no reliable evidence it improves learning outcomes.
There is no reliable evidence that schools improve learning outcomes either. Maybe it's all just some kids being born with higher intelligence and curiosity. If they attend a school, the school takes the credit for their achievements. If they use Khan Academy (or whatever other website) instead, the website takes the credit.
Re: Microsoft, Khan Academy Partner to Make Khanmigo Teaching Tool Free
#75Does anyone here actually used Khanmigo and can share experience with it? It is still not available in my country. The whole thread is cesspool of AI bad, M$ bad, we are doomed.
On the contrary I got the opposite vibe here of "wow this is great the future is here" vibes and am a bit confused. Do people really want to replace their human teacher for school children?
No I haven't used it. I don't like how it's being marketed though. I very much do not trust GPT 4 on the level where I am ready to have it educate the young.
Re: Microsoft, Khan Academy Partner to Make Khanmigo Teaching Tool Free
#76Sal Khan in the past has made his position clear that he supports austerity and private schools in the United States. This, if anything, is continuation of the con he always propelled. Edtech will replace teachers has been a talking point for a decade now. Too bad, there's no reliable evidence it improves learning outcomes. There is not any evidence for the latest "Microsoft figured out how to mine the essence of you…
> Too bad, there's no reliable evidence it improves learning outcomes. There is no reliable evidence that schools improve learning outcomes either. Maybe it's all just some kids being born with higher intelligence and curiosity. If they attend a school, the school takes the credit for their achievements. If they use Khan Academy (or whatever other website) instead, the website takes the credit.
>There is no reliable evidence that schools improve learning outcomes either.
There's decades of evidence, just compare school results (even the lowest quartile) to homeschooling. I'm sure there's tons of literature in that field.
Despite our repeated attempts to do so, teaching a full k-12 curriculum is in fact not something then vast majority of parents are ready to do. Even this tool isn't vying to replace teachers. If anything it wants to replace the teaching aides (aka tomorrow's teachers who are learning how to manage a classroom). It may be worse in that regard since its eyes are on the future without considering the human element of the future.
Re: Microsoft, Khan Academy Partner to Make Khanmigo Teaching Tool Free
#77Does anyone here actually used Khanmigo and can share experience with it? It is still not available in my country. The whole thread is cesspool of AI bad, M$ bad, we are doomed.
A commenter in a recent thread shared a disappointing experience with Khanmigo. It repeatedly told the user that 6 * 2 was not 12: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40441567
Re: Microsoft, Khan Academy Partner to Make Khanmigo Teaching Tool Free
#78Does anyone here actually used Khanmigo and can share experience with it? It is still not available in my country. The whole thread is cesspool of AI bad, M$ bad, we are doomed.
On the contrary I got the opposite vibe here of "wow this is great the future is here" vibes and am a bit confused. Do people really want to replace their human teacher for school children? No I haven't used it. I don't like how it's being marketed though. I very much do not trust GPT 4 on the level where I am ready to have it educate the young.
Honestly, if there ever exists a web-focused LLM that's hyper-competent in media literacy, I'd be happy to delegate to it the job of teaching my kids. We don't expect the most of our teachers, nor do we effectively compensate them for such an important role, so I'm more inclined to trust an LLM that can capably sift through all the data online and teach from what it understands to be true.
Which essentially means the hallucination problem needs to be solved, which is a ways off.
Re: Microsoft, Khan Academy Partner to Make Khanmigo Teaching Tool Free
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the contrary I got the opposite vibe here of "wow this is great the future is here" vibes and am a bit confused. Do people really want to replace their human teacher for school children? No I haven't used it. I don't like how it's being marketed though. I very much do not trust GPT 4 on the level where I am ready to have it educate the young.
Honestly, if there ever exists a web-focused LLM that's hyper-competent in media literacy, I'd be happy to delegate to it the job of teaching my kids. We don't expect the most of our teachers, nor do we effectively compensate them for such an important role, so I'm more inclined to trust an LLM that can capably sift through all the data online and teach from what it understands to be true. Which essentially means the…
>We don't expect the most of our teachers, nor do we effectively compensate them for such an important role,
If the government spent a fraction of the money tech is using to hype up LLMs on compensating teachers, we wouldnt have this mindset. We shouldn't have such thoughts of "we don't expect the most of our techaers" to begin with. Paying teachers more is a lot easier than solving hallucinations (as you probably saw, even Google is needing To manually edit gemini responses. The kings of automation).
The (sad) state of things in the world right now mean teacher will be seeing your kid almost as much as you will. Maybe even more. So we should be more particular in who that person is, and what lessons they bestow on students. You wouldn't let any ol stranger baby sit your kid, so why the same for teachers?
Re: Microsoft, Khan Academy Partner to Make Khanmigo Teaching Tool Free
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, if there ever exists a web-focused LLM that's hyper-competent in media literacy, I'd be happy to delegate to it the job of teaching my kids. We don't expect the most of our teachers, nor do we effectively compensate them for such an important role, so I'm more inclined to trust an LLM that can capably sift through all the data online and teach from what it understands to be true. Which essentially means the…
>We don't expect the most of our teachers, nor do we effectively compensate them for such an important role, If the government spent a fraction of the money tech is using to hype up LLMs on compensating teachers, we wouldnt have this mindset. We shouldn't have such thoughts of "we don't expect the most of our techaers" to begin with. Paying teachers more is a lot easier than solving hallucinations (as you probably sa…
Teachers should be compensated as much as doctors and held to the same academic rigor, but then we'd run up against the rude reality that those of us who are well off tend to hate the idea of paying for such a feature e.g through taxes.
Grants got me through school, so I'm content being taxed up the nose. But I'm an outlier in my tax bracket for that opinion.