Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school • Hacker News Board

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#271

Post by tacomagick » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:00 AM UTC

testfrequency wrote: post #264

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…

Why is this the most upvoted comment, yet when the UK repents teens form social media it’s met with “aDulTs arE bEiNg monItoRed”. I agree with Norway here, and it’s slightly exhausting to see people attack any country that’s trying to protect kids as somehow coming for everyone’s supposed sovereignty. I care about the youth and know they are in the midst of a culture war with adults, leave them out of it until we fig…

Is Norway forcing all internet users to provide their ID to access all internet services?

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#272

Post by JimsonYang » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:00 AM UTC

Jakob wrote: post #255

JimsonYang wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facing a broad decline in education test scores, the government in 2024 banned smartphones from schools and has given teachers back more powers to enforce discipline in the classroom. I remember seeing an nyt article where there was mixed results on cell phone bans. While they increased socialization among students, the school didnt see better test scores. We'll have to see if a ban on AI can improve test scores-I…

I would see that as an absolute win. Socialization is the main point I send my kids to school. Socialization leads to discourse which leads to learning.

I agree but unfortunately the US education budget is driven by test scores.

Unless theres strong evidence that test scores will increase, Karen from the PTA insists that her child be given access to their phone

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#273

Post by dev1ycan » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:01 AM UTC

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…

13? there is no reason a minor should use a brain rotting technology like AI, in fact, AI for pretty much most teens is way WAY more damaging than even tiktok ever was.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#274

Post by tacomagick » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:01 AM UTC

20k wrote: post #265

theptip wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generative AI is not going to help them with those skills. I think it's more complex than this. AI is both the best technology ever invented for avoiding learning, and the best technology ever invented for learning. The cat is out of the bag. If teachers are asking for take-home essay assignments in 2026 then students are going to use AI and learn nothing. "AI detectors" are nowhere near reliable enough to be fair;…

AI is a terrible teacher though. It makes stuff up all the time, and for some subjects it has a remarkably low accuracy rate

I would argue it has gotten way better. Depending on the subject it can be really helpful and some tools even have a learning mode built in now that can generate questions and tests. They are often way too easy to solve but it does not demotivate i guess.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#275

Post by BobbyTables2 » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:01 AM UTC

theptip wrote: post #241

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…

> Generative AI is not going to help them with those skills. I think it's more complex than this. AI is both the best technology ever invented for avoiding learning, and the best technology ever invented for learning. The cat is out of the bag. If teachers are asking for take-home essay assignments in 2026 then students are going to use AI and learn nothing. "AI detectors" are nowhere near reliable enough to be fair;…

Learning is also impacted when homework/test questions are created and graded by AI.

The line of 90 degrees north latitude shouldn’t be visible on a map…

Why have teachers?

The AI might as well grade itself.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#276

Post by tacomagick » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:02 AM UTC

dev1ycan wrote: post #273

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…

13? there is no reason a minor should use a brain rotting technology like AI, in fact, AI for pretty much most teens is way WAY more damaging than even tiktok ever was.

Care to elaborate with an example?

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#277

Post by coryrc » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:03 AM UTC

simonw wrote: post #137

joe_mamba wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

AI hasn't had a chance to demonstrate if it helps or hurts education yet. That's the big problem with education in general. If you introduce a new factor to children's education you can't realistically measure the effect it has had for about five years , because you need to wait for a cohort of kids to go through that system and then see how they did. This means that if you introduce something with clear negative eff…

That's not true, it absolutely depends on effect size. I'll give you an obvious example: large lead acetate infusions. You'll notice pretty fast.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#278

Post by tacomagick » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:05 AM UTC

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #275

theptip wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generative AI is not going to help them with those skills. I think it's more complex than this. AI is both the best technology ever invented for avoiding learning, and the best technology ever invented for learning. The cat is out of the bag. If teachers are asking for take-home essay assignments in 2026 then students are going to use AI and learn nothing. "AI detectors" are nowhere near reliable enough to be fair;…

Learning is also impacted when homework/test questions are created and graded by AI. The line of 90 degrees north latitude shouldn’t be visible on a map… Why have teachers? The AI might as well grade itself.

Hard agree. AI generated questions should be absolutely forbidden. In our university I helped a instructor set up a custom Gemini Gem to let students grade themselves in recording because we did not have time to read the final scores in time, It was a nightmare to restrict or get consistent results.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#279

Post by runarberg » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:09 AM UTC

theptip wrote: post #241

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…

> Generative AI is not going to help them with those skills. I think it's more complex than this. AI is both the best technology ever invented for avoiding learning, and the best technology ever invented for learning. The cat is out of the bag. If teachers are asking for take-home essay assignments in 2026 then students are going to use AI and learn nothing. "AI detectors" are nowhere near reliable enough to be fair;…

> and the best technology ever invented for learning.

This has been tested, many times over, and I have yet to see convincing evidence this is the case. In fact, despite this industry being on the scale of trillions of dollars, I bet you have also not seen convincing evidence of your statement.

Because those trillions of dollars aren’t going into research (well they are, but not into good research) it goes into propaganda, and this is one of the lies the industry tells people. The industry tells this lie so often that many people have started to believe it, just because they herd it so often it must be true.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#280

Post by HKH2 » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:09 AM UTC

beejiu wrote: post #108

therealdrag0 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A bit part of education is (should be) independent learning with textbooks and reading. You don't need to be "tutored".

Tutors should be able to approximate the ZPD better than any student can. Most students lack intrinsic motivation and it's a tutor's job to help them get started.