71–80 of 460 posts
IMO, tutoring is for when a kid is behind in curriculum and you don't see that until late grade school, if not middle school.
The reality is, most 5 year olds don’t get access to the resources most of us have had while growing up. People are saying, “kids should have human tutors.” Guys, most people in the world don’t have any tutors! What Ello has built and other forms of AI-based tutoring is going to raise the average level of education and literacy in the world. Especially in developing countries. Let individual parents decide what’s bes…
Most of them don't get access. So let's hook them up to an insane, unproven, unpredictable autocomplete math equation and entrust it to their development as a human being. So gross.
If they can't afford a tutor, they deserve nothing.
(Am I doing this right?)
The reality is, most 5 year olds don’t get access to the resources most of us have had while growing up. People are saying, “kids should have human tutors.” Guys, most people in the world don’t have any tutors! What Ello has built and other forms of AI-based tutoring is going to raise the average level of education and literacy in the world. Especially in developing countries. Let individual parents decide what’s bes…
Most of them don't get access. So let's hook them up to an insane, unproven, unpredictable autocomplete math equation and entrust it to their development as a human being. So gross.
It won IMO, solved Erdos problems. At what point will you stop saying that?
> Effective teaching isn't just about answering a child's question quickly, rather making the right move at the right moment. AI is also going to be an integral part shaping how this generation of kids learn to read and think, tackling this responsibly means getting the design right. Can you elaborate on what the experience is like for the child? How does this system help them learn? The article focuses on optimizing…
Elizabeth here, co-founder (and clinical child psychologist). Fair question. Catalin's post was about the engineering (he is my co-founder and our CTO), so the learning side got short shrift :). Here's what it actually looks like for a child. Say a 6-year-old is reading a story out loud (I will use a reading example here). The tutor is listening to every word. When she stumbles on "chick," it doesn't just tell her th…
I really appreciate that (it seems to me) your goal is not to replace human tutors, but to raise the general baseline. You emphasize scaling, how does that work in practice if you're trying to target audiences who may not have access to devices that can run your program? What is your plan from the perspective of funding and resources to scale infrastructure as needed to support these audiences?
Edit: I also think of other learning systems like duolingo and the application of tablets and computers in schools which begin from good places, but I'm curious if you are studying these alternatives and what you have learned from them?
I really think your goals are great, and if you're starting your design of this system from research about effective learning methodologies and working backward from there rather than starting from AI and working backward from there that erodes a lot of my personal skepticism about a project like this. I hope you find a way to make this work.
I wish I had had this when I was a 5-year-old. Few of my teachers really understood the things I wanted to learn, my peers weren't interested in the nerdy things I was, and my parents certainly didn't have the wealth to provide me with private tutoring. There are a lot of negative comments here, but they are shallow... I'm sure those commenters wouldn't want to live without the access to the Internet, and even a bril…
Dear God no. Keep kids away from AI, and keep AI away from kids. Kids need more human contact, not less. The more I think about it, the more I want to ban your entire business model
Personally I would like to see kids learn way way more in much less time, and it’s clear AI is going to make that possible. What you are saying sounds a lot like “I want kids to learn less and be dumber”
Things that help kids learn
- parents who love and care for them
- stable housing
- stable access to food
- stable access to high quality eduction provided by a human being
- stable access to healthcare
None of those are provided by AI, and never can be. The only thing that will is a thorough reimagining of the society we live in.
Note: This is all predicated on living in America, and I pre-apologize to everyone who doesn't.
Sorry, but 5 year olds don't need a tutor, let alone solo screen time. If you're giving your young child screen time, it should be with a parent, and then you might as well spend it offline. IMO, tutoring is for when a kid is behind in curriculum and you don't see that until late grade school, if not middle school.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of them don't get access. So let's hook them up to an insane, unproven, unpredictable autocomplete math equation and entrust it to their development as a human being. So gross.
Heaven forbid we let poor people use software that helps their kids read. If they can't afford a tutor, they deserve nothing. (Am I doing this right?)
Nah. Let's have AI do it
To all the detractors, I would like to point out that your opinion of kids needing a good human teacher is overfit to your experience of having had some of those growing up.
In third world countries like mine, we grow up with absolutely unqualified teachers who were unable to muster anything but a learnt-by-rote understanding of key concepts.
In hindsight these were just desperate adults trying to eek a living for themselves and their family in an impoverished country and resorting to any means by which to do it: gaming the school system or calling in favours to join school faculty. I bear them no ill will. But we as kids were much worse off for it.
I can assure you that no matter what concerns you may have about hallucinations in LLMs, I can bet everything I have that a reasonably modern model (and I'm thinking in the range of gemini-flash, not Fable) in a well designed harness geared towards tutoring would handily and repeatedly outperform every single teacher I had all throughout my schooling.
Don't let a quest for the perfect ruin what is likely already way better than status quo.