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

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#411

Post by somenameforme » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:35 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.

Hallucinations aren't going anywhere. So you're having a conversation with a stochastic parrot that occasionally says something completely wrong but completely viable and in a highly compelling fashion.

The net outcome there is going to be highly negative.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#412

Post by Squarex » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:36 AM UTC

tacomagick wrote: post #312

dools wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers generally are stupid for schools. There should be a computer room and computer classes, but all other learning should happen offline. Computers are far too distracting.

Half of my classmates in university failed Compsci, they could not use a computer but they somehow could install Instagram, do basic video edits there and doomscroll. It is NOT conputers! Phones should be the main target.

But computer usage proficiency is not computer science either. These skills should be teached in a separate class. Agree with the gen z lack of computer skills though.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#413

Post by vasachi » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:36 AM UTC

qsera wrote: post #392

alchemism wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, make the teachers on $25-35K annual salaries do /more/ work for no extra money. I'm sure that will fix education.

I am conflicted on this. One part of me think that they deserve a lot more compensation. But I am not really sure if that should be in the form of a salary rise.

Why not?

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#414

Post by scotty79 » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:37 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.

Socialization goes out of fashion at a rapid pace. If I were to guess, technology deprived kids will quickly catch up with the trend when they age out of the ban.

Also use of technology anti-correlated with alcohol and drug use so there might be unwelcome side effects.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#415

Post by somenameforme » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:42 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.

I think this is a false equivalence, by some extreme margin. Teachers may occasionally have some fact or whatever incorrect, but especially at lower levels it's going to be exceptionally rare, and often based on a logical foundation that is otherwise invalid for some reason, like whether 1 is a prime number or not.

By contrast LLMs constantly get things wrong and once they get something wrong will begin weaving that into everything create entirely fake realities of the sort that is more akin to a schizophrenic than somebody being mistaken on this fact or that.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#416

Post by varjag » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:43 AM UTC

coryrc wrote: post #277

simonw wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

OK so you can consider it was noticed.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#417

Post by hgomersall » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:46 AM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #401

cornholio wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counterargument is that kids will live in a world different from our own. For example, in many countries children lost the ability to write cursive; that used to be a critical skill comparable to literacy itself. But in our current society, that's no longer the case and you can be very successful without it, but there are other skills, such as using technology, that became critical. Any definitive claim to know w…

I went through a Steiner school from pre-school to end of high school. It’s highly opinionated and very controlling initially . When you paint, you start with one colour. Then another day you get the next (there were only primary colours, because of course). You eat at your desk, then you’re allowed to play. This was dropped after a year or so. You don’t learn to read until you’re 7, etc etc. However, by the end of h…

Yeah, I we considered a Steiner school because I think that extensive play is a super critical part of a good education. The problem is you also need to be able to be part of the mainstream system at some point, and it felt like it didn't necessarily quite meet that goal.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#418

Post by varjag » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:49 AM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #239

bebe83939 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many kids in Norwegian schools do not speak Norwegian or English. Kids need "computers" just to translate what other kid is saying.

This is true for many children of non-English speaking immigrant parents anywhere in the developed world. Schools will use language immersion and extra help to get these kids up to speed very quickly. Computers are sometimes used for educational games and activities, but these can be done just as well without. Can I guess that you are (native/ethnic) Norwegian and upset by the recent waves of immigration to Norway? Y…

It's very unlikely he's Norwegian because he has no clue how education works here.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#419

Post by weregiraffe » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:49 AM UTC

vixen99 wrote: post #397

darlachaps wrote: post #211

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[flagged]

Relevance of 'magot - a seated oriental figurine, usually of porcelain or ivory, with a grotesque form' to someone who criticizes the US? The allusion is too esoteric for me I'm afraid.

They meant MAGA

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

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Post by somenameforme » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:49 AM UTC

dpkirchner wrote: post #395

testfrequency wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> How do adults declare themselves as adults without teenagers claiming to be adults also? It's pretty much impossible, so we should stop trying. It's exhausting seeing politicians et al continue to push for age verification despite it being impossible to be even remotely effective. (I hedge because technically we could demand photo ID for every HTTP request, I guess, but I don't think that's ever going to happen.) T…

In real life everything from porn to alcohol to cigarettes, and even movies all require ID. And it's super easy to bypass in endless ways, but those efforts have nonetheless been overwhelmingly successful. And I don't really understand the issue people have with social media and ID. You're already required to link your phone which is a massive invasion of privacy, and the sites themselves not entirely infrequently demand ID from accounts at their own arbitrary and whimsical discretion.