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Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

reuters.com

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Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#111

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #68
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think so too. But we haven’t demonstrated we’ve found how, in kids or in adults. Ask chatgpt or claude, on their highest model (probably unnecessary but I'm sensing a vibe) to explain a simple linear algebra problem, and if you don't understand it, ask about what part you don't understand. And if you truly believe it made something up, prove it. This is seriously the easiest thing to prove out there, you can see f…

Sure. I already know linear algebra. If it’s a new branch of mathematics, this is a terrible way to learn. Again, the research points almost exclusively in one direction when it comes to learning and cognition around AI. You’ll solve more problems more quickly but wind up learning and thinking less.

Honestly, what do you think a teacher does that an llm can't? If you want to learn you absolutely can ask an llm how to _solve_ x and explain the steps and why.

My leaving out the word solve seems to have led some of you astray, I apologize.

Again the problem is you have the option to solve your problem and move on without understanding it. That does not mean you can not use the tool to understand the problem and how to _solve_ it.

I live in fear that instead of learning how to use the tool, some might just vote to ban the tool.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#112

Post by Rapzid »

LtWorf wrote: post #65
lacoolj wrote: post #52

"..ban on smart phones.." "..ban on gen AI.." "..ban on social media.." yes YES YASSSSSSSSSSSS Ban all the things for kids. I don't want to be interviewing people in 10 years and decline every candidate because they can't correctly answer the question "You are 50ft away from the car wash. Do you walk or drive?"

To be fair, norwegian kids would probably fail because they don't have a clue how much 50 feet are.

Got'em! Yes, this one right here officer; that's the clanker!

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#113

Post by solid_fuel »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #62
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think AI could (and by some students probably already is) be used to help a student better understand the material, and faster than you could before I think so too. But we haven’t demonstrated we’ve found how, in kids or in adults. > biggest issue is We genuinely don’t know what the biggest issue is. We just know it doesn’t work. There is zero quality evidence for AI helping with learning or cognition in kids or…

>I think so too. But we haven’t demonstrated we’ve found how, in kids or in adults. Ask chatgpt or claude, on their highest model (probably unnecessary but I'm sensing a vibe) to explain a simple linear algebra problem, and if you don't understand it, ask about what part you don't understand. And if you truly believe it made something up, prove it. This is seriously the easiest thing to prove out there, you can see f…

> And if you truly believe it made something up, prove it.

You seem to be assuming that the issue is around factual correctness, and that may be the case but the evidence we have so far doesn't support jumping to such a narrow cause.

Is the poor performance because the LLMs are frequently wrong? Unknown.

Is it because the LLMs are sycophantic? Unknown.

Is it because the chat interface is a poor one for learning? Unknown.

What we do know is that students who rely on LLMs learn less and perform worse in the long term. And that alone is enough evidence to support a ban. If better tools come along in the future and are shown to aid learning, then the ban can be re-evaluated.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#114

Post by Planktonne »

rootusrootus wrote: post #105
simonw wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kids can read, write, and comprehend text at 8 A sizable portion of the US adult population effectively can't read, write and comprehend text. https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp for 2023: > Between 2017 and 2023, there were increases in the percentages of adults performing at the lowest proficiency level (Level 1 or below) in both literacy and numeracy: in literacy this percentage increased…

[flagged]

The US is a context that is generally relevant to HN, and for which we have lots of data.

Literacy is a worldwide problem.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#115

Post by greggoB »

rootusrootus wrote: post #105
simonw wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kids can read, write, and comprehend text at 8 A sizable portion of the US adult population effectively can't read, write and comprehend text. https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp for 2023: > Between 2017 and 2023, there were increases in the percentages of adults performing at the lowest proficiency level (Level 1 or below) in both literacy and numeracy: in literacy this percentage increased…

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#116

Post by aaron695 »

simonw wrote: post #56

> Pupils from first through seventh grade, aged 6 to 13, should as a general rule not be using AI, while those in lower secondary school, aged 14 to 16, can cautiously adopt tools under teachers' supervision, the government said. Sounds right to me. Kids under 13 need to learn to read, write and comprehend text. Generative AI is not going to help them with those skills. They can play with AI at home, and after 13 the…

[dead]

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#117

Post by geraneum »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #86
solid_fuel wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. AI has no business being used in 1:1 tutor mode before the hallucination and sycophancy issues are completely resolved. As is, I can easily see it being a hindrance to building actual understanding. Just one example - it's very common to see ChatGPT and the like respond with "you're absolutely correct! Great insight" to something that is a complete misunderstanding.

Teachers hallucinate too. I’ve had creationists and communists and tin-foil-hat (chem trails, 5g, etc) teachers. Surely you can imagine an AI tutor that is higher than zero ROI.

That’s rather disingenuous. But it seems nowadays that words have lost meaning… so, I don’t blame you. I blame the LLMs for this deterioration.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#118

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sisve wrote: post #81
solid_fuel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The behavioral issue I see is that LLM users tend to immediately reach for an LLM and do their thinking in concert with it. This tempts users to approach problems by first feeding them into the LLM and then simply following the route the LLM lays out, which does improve task completion time for tasks that the LLM can simply regurgitate, but it stops the user from developing the actual critical thinking skills that sc…

Can agree on that. The description of the paper also said: AI users who maintain similar homework completion time as non-AI users experience small learning losses. This was a surprise too me. I would have thought otherwise. Would love to see some evidence about if more or less people fall behind and have worse results. In my head the AI should be able to get the weakest students a bit highere.

> In my head the AI should be able to get the weakest students a bit higher

I think the evidence so far is all students lose learning and cognition, but the brighter students lose less.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#119

Post by Planktonne »

FinnLobsien wrote: post #53

I think it’s quite tricky. On one side, writing is a form of thinking and cognitive training. Just NOT doing that work by having AI simulate it is not good for anyone’s cognitive development. At the same time, anyone growing up today will be using LLMs for massive parts of the jobs they grow up to do. So they should learn about it. I really feel for teachers/educators right now. It must be hard to remain demanding an…

> anyone growing up today will be using LLMs for massive parts of the jobs they grow up to do. So they should learn about it

Essentially the entire value proposition for AI, particularly as it advances, is that you don't need to learn how to do things anymore.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#120

Post by joe_mamba »

simonw wrote: post #92
irishcoffee wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids can read, write, and comprehend text at 8. I don’t even like LLMs and I’m against this mess. Imagine having regulations rolled out when we were 8 saying “you can’t use the internet!” And I was running my own websites by 10 years old. Let’s stop pretending this tech is as interesting as we wish it was. If we want to ban models in school, ban laptops/chromebooks with internet. I don’t see the difference at this po…

> Kids can read, write, and comprehend text at 8 A sizable portion of the US adult population effectively can't read, write and comprehend text. https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp for 2023: > Between 2017 and 2023, there were increases in the percentages of adults performing at the lowest proficiency level (Level 1 or below) in both literacy and numeracy: in literacy this percentage increased…

>A sizable portion of the US adult population effectively can't read, write and comprehend text.

Yes and AI isn't to blame for that as adults predate AI. It's the governments, schools, teachers, parents, teacher's unios, who taught them(or more accurately didn't teach them) and graduated them out of school anyway regardless just so they don't look bad in statistics. Sorry but if you graduate people out of high school who can't read you should be trialed for fraud. Simple as.

People blaming AI for adults unable to read puts us back to the 90s when Doom was to blame for school shootings or back to 60s when rock music was to blame for juvenile delinquency, all of them being wrong, and they're wrong here too. People always want to blame a third party external scapegoat that isn't' the parents and isn't the government, for the problems of their kids.

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