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

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#301

Post by KittenInABox » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:43 AM UTC

hparadiz wrote: post #298

tacomagick wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it heavily depends on person, generalizing it as a tool that avoids thinking and learning is also wrong because I have personally used it to tacke some subjects myself and it helped me learn quite well.

I'm honestly jealous of the kids. When I was 13 I was looking at books in the school library from the late 70s and early 80s about astronomy. They had beautiful shots from Voyager 1 and 2 and lots of illustrations but ultimately there was very little math in there and not too much hard science besides some basic statistics. I would have loved to have a conversation with those books.

The thing I think is underspoken in this space is that LLMs will always hallucinate a bit. How will you know as a 13 year old that an LLM is not conversing truth at you?

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#302

Post by hparadiz » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:43 AM UTC

Planktonne wrote: post #114

rootusrootus wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

The United States has always been at the forefront of pushing higher literacy both internally and world wide. We have just had multiple crazy tech breakthroughs, a world wide pandemic, and various other uncontrolled variables like SAT tests no longer being required at some institutions. It's impossible to draw any conclusions with so many moving pieces but ultimately I'm sure we'll figure it out. A slight regression isn't the end of the world.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#303

Post by HKH2 » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:48 AM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #131

solid_fuel wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The traditional schooling system can't stand that they are being outcompeted by AI and are trying to use the government to maintain their monopoly and keep those tax dollars flowing. Learning is a conspiracy by Big Knowing, it's all a myth. Let's just ask an LLM to all our thinking, no need to be a functional human.

LLMs can teach better than the human teacher could. Big Knowing wants to be the one to teach, but that is not the only option.

Students need motivation to honestly and openly talk about their doubts or lack of understanding.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#304

Post by hparadiz » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:48 AM UTC

KittenInABox wrote: post #301

hparadiz wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly jealous of the kids. When I was 13 I was looking at books in the school library from the late 70s and early 80s about astronomy. They had beautiful shots from Voyager 1 and 2 and lots of illustrations but ultimately there was very little math in there and not too much hard science besides some basic statistics. I would have loved to have a conversation with those books.

The thing I think is underspoken in this space is that LLMs will always hallucinate a bit. How will you know as a 13 year old that an LLM is not conversing truth at you?

My teachers were frequently wrong too and spoke with authority on subjects in hindsight they were frankly ill equipped to teach. Part of learning is understanding how to reason through these types of issues. It's a common problem solving problem in the work place just the same.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#305

Post by sillysaurusx » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:50 AM UTC

chalupa-supreme wrote: post #250

raincole wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do 100% support banning voice mode for school. (Again mostly for the socializing... or anti-socializing aspect.)

We need to remember there are going to be human admin tasks that still need human interaction and critical thought into what you read and write. Adult users of these tools already accept AI outputs without too much thought in varying scenarios. As a child, your willingness to question a tool that’s already better then you at most tasks probably isn’t going too high, and if you go through early education without exerc…

Good. My 4th grade cursive writing was a waste of time. Studying anything else would have been more beneficial.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#306

Post by tacomagick » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:50 AM UTC

testfrequency wrote: post #300

tacomagick wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your solution is to deanonymize the whole internet? Also can't teenagers ever vent? I would much rather them use websites such as Reddit or Facebook to socialize instead of Instagram or Tiktok to just scroll endlessly. We should target the social media apps for their predatory algorithms I believe.

Look, I don’t disagree. Kids need a safe space to moan. It would be hypocritical of me otherwise, as I spent much of my time in my formative years on ventrilo and various other niche pockets of the internet. That said, the only cess pool that existed at the time was 4chan - which I avoided, despite actually knowing the founder. The internet has obviously evolved a lot since, and I feel adults unfairly believe that al…

Blocking acess to porn sites is as easy as setting up a firewall, my phone carrier has a feature called family shield, Google Parental Tools lets you see which websites your kid accessed, and restrict them. You do not need to ID everyone in order to let them access the internet. Did the past generations never got their hands on porn back then? Of course they did one way or another. Same with vapes or cigarettes or alcohol. There will always be a website out there that will provide free porn with no ID restriction residing in god knows where. This ID verification is useless and while it appears to be in good faith unfortunately it is not. I'd recommend watching a few videos about this such as this one from Louis Rossmann

https://youtu.be/Xa3-TkHBh90

In the end, yes there is a possibility that this won't happen, but there is a much bigger possibility that it will happen based on the track record of past bills.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#307

Post by beepbooptheory » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:53 AM UTC

hparadiz wrote: post #304

KittenInABox wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I think is underspoken in this space is that LLMs will always hallucinate a bit. How will you know as a 13 year old that an LLM is not conversing truth at you?

My teachers were frequently wrong too and spoke with authority on subjects in hindsight they were frankly ill equipped to teach. Part of learning is understanding how to reason through these types of issues. It's a common problem solving problem in the work place just the same.

Yeah but the teacher says you're wrong even if you're right. The AI tells you you're right either way. The former can facilitate an important lesson, the latter doesn't ever give you the chance to.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#308

Post by runarberg » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:53 AM UTC

tacomagick wrote: post #287

runarberg wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has always gotten better, just like how self-driving cars have gotten better, and how the case for bitcoin is always getting stronger. Many people have stopped believing this lie. Yes AI has gotten better by some metric which AI companies are pushing. It has not gotten good enough to be a qualified teacher, and it never will.

I have never claimed it to be good enough to replace a qualified educator, however for self learning it is a good tool with no hustle. You also consider how qualified some educators are...

Better then what for self-learning though? Better then textbooks? Better then an online course? Better then watching youtube videos from Khan academy, or just better then nothing at all as described some metrics which the AI companies came up with them selves?

I suspect it is the last one. This is a trillion dollar industry and if the AI companies claim this, then they should be able to to show it with quality research, they however have not, and the reason is that this is a lie. AI is not better then anything for self-learning. Go to the library and check out a chess book, go to r/trumpet, join a weekly meetup to practice you Spanish, etc. etc. all of these are vastly superior then AI.

You claim self-learning via is hustle free, perhaps you are right, however I suspect that there is no such thing as hustle free learning. If you want to learn something you have to use your brain, and you have to struggle. AI will just act like you got this, flatter you for a minute, and in the worst cases, you may start to believe the AI when it lies to you about how much you’ve learned.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#309

Post by mattnewton » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:55 AM UTC

testfrequency wrote: post #281

mattnewton wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because banning smartphones in schools doesn’t affect adults not in those schools, whereas age verification does? How you implement these protections matter.

The rhetoric I often see online is forcing children to identify themselves which, obviously leads to adults being required to identify themselves. How do adults declare themselves as adults without teenagers claiming to be adults also? It’s all complicated, but I am exhausted from reading doom articles of how the UK wants adults to not exist online while trying to force children offline for their own existence and lo…

In my view, it’s very simple. There are places like schools, or parents buying phone plans, to identify children. Will some children get access outside of that? Sure. But 100% enforcement isn’t possible even if you thought it was worth destroying privacy on the internet.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#310

Post by tacomagick » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 1:56 AM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #305

chalupa-supreme wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to remember there are going to be human admin tasks that still need human interaction and critical thought into what you read and write. Adult users of these tools already accept AI outputs without too much thought in varying scenarios. As a child, your willingness to question a tool that’s already better then you at most tasks probably isn’t going too high, and if you go through early education without exerc…

Good. My 4th grade cursive writing was a waste of time. Studying anything else would have been more beneficial.

I had to learn regular writing after cursive at the age of 20 eventually when I was forced because my instructors at the university would not let me use cursive. Those times were BAD.