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Three Years from GPT-3 to Gemini 3

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Re: Three Years from GPT-3 to Gemini 3

#291

Post by wing-_-nuts »

Herring wrote: post #286
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you actually look at the data: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp... We spend far more than most countries per pupil, for much poorer results https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scor... It's pretty clear that while spending is a factor, it's probably not the biggest one. The countries that seem to do best are those that combine adequate funding with real rigor in…

I posted elsewhere you can't just compare across the globe like that. You have to think about cost of living and especially opportunity cost. In the US, teacher pay lags behind similarly educated professionals, which means they get stretched thin and the best with options will leave.

Ok, so then look at teacher salary by country:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/teacher-s...

We're higher paying than a number of countries with higher cost of living that (whether fairly or unfairly) pay lower than us.

I stand by my assertion. I don't think our per pupil spending is the major bottleneck in our performance. I think our educational system needs fundamental reform (just like everything else in this country)

Re: Three Years from GPT-3 to Gemini 3

#292

Post by wing-_-nuts »

akavi wrote: post #278
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top 10% of households already account for more than half of consumer spending in the US

Hmmm, that doesn't seem right. I'm having a hard time finding an actual consumption number, but I am confident it's well below 50%. The top 10% of households by wage income do receive ~50% of pre-tax wage income, but: 1) our tax system is progressive, so actual net income share is less 2) there's significant post-wage redistribution (social security/medicaid) 3) that high income households consume a smaller percent o…

https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/09/17/top-10-of-earne...

Re: Three Years from GPT-3 to Gemini 3

#293

Post by dickersnoodle »

ammbauer wrote: post #183
tsss wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth I have been using Gemini 2.5/3 extensively for my masters thesis and it has been a tremendous help. It's done a lot of math for me that I couldn't have done on my own (without days of research), suggested many good approaches to problems that weren't on my mind and helped me explore ideas quickly. When I ask it to generate entire chapters they're never up to my standard but that's mostly an issue…

> It's done a lot of math for me that I couldn't have done on my own (without days of research), Isn't the point of doing the master's thesis that you do the math and research, so that you learn and understand the math and research?

Apparently not. This is the most perfect example I've seen of "I can recite it, but I don't understand it so I don't know if it's really right or not" that I've seen in a while.

Re: Three Years from GPT-3 to Gemini 3

#294

Post by Izikiel43 »

Herring wrote: post #284
Izikiel43 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In WA they always pass levies for education funding at local and state level however results are not there. Mississipi is doing better on reading, the biggest difference being that they use phonics approach to teaching how to read, which is proven to work, whereas WA uses whole language theory ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_language ), which is a terrible idea I don't know how it got traction. So the gist of i…

I almost agree, but too many people will take that to mean “we need to do more with less”. It’s a feature of capitalism. Teachers are stretched thin in most places, that’s always the main problem. Are WA teachers compensated about the same as other similarly educated professionals? As cops? Hire smart motivated people, pay them well, leave them alone, they’ll figure this one out. It’s not hard, anyone can google what…

> WA teachers compensated about the same as other similarly educated professionals

WA teachers are among the best salaries in the country for being a teacher (within top 5). You start at around 84k$ I think, 90k$+ if you have a masters degree, at least in Seattle, and it can scale up to 150k$ with enough seniority, as well as pension plan.

> Hire smart motivated people, pay them well, leave them alone, they’ll figure this one out. It’s not hard, anyone can google what Finland does.

The problem is not the teachers themselves, it's what the system tells them to teach. You can have the best teacher in the world, but if they use BS curricula students will unfortunately learn BS.

Think about it, you can have brilliant engineers, but an idiot ceo, and the company will fail despite the engineers.

Re: Three Years from GPT-3 to Gemini 3

#295

Post by Herring »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #291
Herring wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted elsewhere you can't just compare across the globe like that. You have to think about cost of living and especially opportunity cost. In the US, teacher pay lags behind similarly educated professionals, which means they get stretched thin and the best with options will leave.

Ok, so then look at teacher salary by country: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/teacher-s... We're higher paying than a number of countries with higher cost of living that (whether fairly or unfairly) pay lower than us. I stand by my assertion. I don't think our per pupil spending is the major bottleneck in our performance. I think our educational system needs fundamental reform (just like everythin…

You need a different analysis. Maybe more like this

https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/te...

Or this:

> While U.S. teachers make 58% of their counterparts’ salaries, Finnish teachers make 92% of the salaries of similarly educated professions. This trend follows with other countries ranked highly in the World Happiness Report. Teachers in Denmark (ranked #2 in World Happiness) make 81% of their counterparts’ salaries and teachers in Sweden (ranked #4) make 74% of their counterparts’ salaries.

https://www.ednc.org/perspective-how-the-worlds-happiest-cou...

Re: Three Years from GPT-3 to Gemini 3

#296

Post by hermitShell »

gallerdude wrote: post #5

It is interesting that most of our modes of interaction with AI is still just textboxes. The only big UX change in that the last three years has been the introduction of the Claude Code / OpenAI Codex tools. They feel amazing to use, like you're working with another independent mind. I am curious what the user interfaces of AI in the future will be, I think whoever can crack that will create immense value.

If you are interested in UX a youtube series I found enjoyable and thought provoking is "liber indigo" (sorry, on mobile)

What comes after the desktop metaphor and mobile? There is VR but... no one is sure it will get anywhere. It's cool but probably won't supplant tradition.

Maybe the ability of AI to accept somewhat imprecise inputs will help us get away from text. Multimodal gesture, voice, and touch perhaps?. So we would all be sort of body acting like players on a stage, in order to convey to a machine what direction you wish to turn its attention

Re: Three Years from GPT-3 to Gemini 3

#297

Post by Humorist2290 »

gowld wrote: post #150
Humorist2290 wrote: post #12

> Again, we have moved past hallucinations and errors to more subtle, and often human-like, concerns. From my experience we just get both. The constant risk of some catastrophic hallucination buried in the output, in addition to more subtle, and pervasive, concerns. I haven't tried with Gemini 3 but when I prompted Claude to write a 20 page short story it couldn't even keep basic chronology and characters straight. I…

I got a 3000 word story. Kind of bland, but good enough for cheating in high school. See prompt, and my follow-up prompts instructing it to check for continuity errors and fix them: https://pastebin.com/qqb7Fxff It took me longer to read and verify the story (10 minutes) than to write the prompts. I got illustrations too. Not great, but serviceable. Image generation costs more compute to iterate and correct errors.

Disappointingly, that is an exceedingly good story for a high school assignment. The use of an appositive phrase alone would raise alarm bells though.

It's nitpicking for flaws, but why not -- what lens on an old DSLR, older than a car, will let you take a macro shot, a wide shot, and a zoom shot of a bird?

In any case I'm not surprised. It's a short story, and it is indeed _serviceable_, but literature is more than just service to an assignment.

Re: Three Years from GPT-3 to Gemini 3

#298

Post by brightball »

krainboltgreene wrote: post #283
brightball wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US already spends more per student than almost any other country (5th globally) and the outcomes are getting constantly worse. It’s not a funding problem.

It's incredibly unfair that you get to just lie online or worse that you actually believe what you're saying.

What exactly is the lie?

US is 5th globally in spending per student. I actually thought it was #1 and initially said that but then corrected it after double checking.

Re: Three Years from GPT-3 to Gemini 3

#299

Post by brightball »

Herring wrote: post #245
brightball wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US already spends more per student than almost any other country (5th globally) and the outcomes are getting constantly worse. It’s not a funding problem.

That's half true. You have to think about cost of living, you can't just compare across the globe like that. And especially opportunity cost. In the US, teacher pay lags behind similarly educated professionals. But you're right after a certain point other factors matter more than simple $ per student. Unfortunately one of those factors is teacher pay teacher quality.

From the teacher's I've talked to, it's teacher work conditions related to student behavior that are creating more problems than anything else.

Disruptive students in particular who negatively impact everyone around them but for whatever reason, are frequently not removed from the environment. It's also driving a lot of good teachers into retirement.

When you see clusters of poor performance, my guess is that it's associated with regional policy creating a poor environment rather than a total absence of quality teachers.

Re: Three Years from GPT-3 to Gemini 3

#300

Post by Herring »

Izikiel43 wrote: post #294
Herring wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost agree, but too many people will take that to mean “we need to do more with less”. It’s a feature of capitalism. Teachers are stretched thin in most places, that’s always the main problem. Are WA teachers compensated about the same as other similarly educated professionals? As cops? Hire smart motivated people, pay them well, leave them alone, they’ll figure this one out. It’s not hard, anyone can google what…

> WA teachers compensated about the same as other similarly educated professionals WA teachers are among the best salaries in the country for being a teacher (within top 5). You start at around 84k$ I think, 90k$+ if you have a masters degree, at least in Seattle, and it can scale up to 150k$ with enough seniority, as well as pension plan. > Hire smart motivated people, pay them well, leave them alone, they’ll figure…

What I'm hearing is "teachers just outside Seattle are doing great, but inside Seattle and the rest of America, they're really not." That's the local cost of living set by the tech sector.
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