241–250 of 460 posts
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> insane, unproven, unpredictable autocomplete math equation It won IMO, solved Erdos problems. At what point will you stop saying that?
Probably when it stops agreeing with me when I tell it that industrial quantities of garlic salt are an acceptable substitution for coco powder in a chocolate mousse recipe...
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In practice, yes. In theory a machines can do about everything a human can, but better and cheaper. One of the main constraint for education is available tutor time, see e.g. Bloom's 2 sigma experiment. Obviously there are many pitfalls to overcome at the moment, but eventually machines will become better teachers than teachers, and not many parents will send their kids to public schools if the kids can learn much fa…
> In practice, yes. In theory a machines can do about everything a human can, but better and cheaper. If you could time-travel back to your 5y old self, would you prefer to be taught by AI tutor given the current state o/t art, or taught by whatever teachers you did have when you were 5? (with all the existing hallucination, breaking through guardrails etc problems of current AI in mind) If you'd have a ~5y old yours…
I had to choose between my elementary school teachers and something like Claude Fable 5 with a good teaching-focused harness, I would definitely choose Fable 5.
I'm a mom who actually has kids and this thread is insane. 'Just get a tutor'...okay?? Are you paying for it? Because that's not an option for a lot of families. I get that it's more ideal, but the alternative is...nothing? Do you not agree that all kids deserves a chance to read? Are we not seeing the lack of reading proficiency in the majority of American adults nowadays?? Or yall too stuck in your tech bubbles?? T…
Well said. I think many posters in this thread come from a pretty privileged backgrounds..
What makes it worse is that AI is addictive and children naturally gravitate towards the addictive.
I suggest Joe the Camel as a mascot that sold nicotine to teenagers.
Full disclosure: I worked on a small project with Ello / Catalin a few years ago. At the time of writing, the sentiment in this post is that this is a terrible idea, and that kids need human tutors. The latter is 100% true. But also, you might want to know some facts about the state of children's literacy in the US (Ello is a math and reading tutor): 1. We're in crisis. As of 2025, 40% of fourth graders are reading b…
> We're in crisis. As of 2025, 40% of fourth graders are reading below basic levels How much of this crisis is due to the social engineering being attempted in school districts across America? Case in point: San Francisco schools decided a couple of years ago that they would no longer teach Algebra in 8th grade. Why? Because too many kids of a certain demographic were failing it. So let's just not teach it! No class,…
This has nothing to do with this at all. We're talking about 4th grader literacy nationwide and you're talking about algebra in a single area in a different grade!?
The second point where there aren't enough teachers nationwide (10% missing workforce) is probably because teachers are terribly paid, disrespected, and subject to bad working conditions.
Maybe that's why people aren't clamoring to be teachers and the quality of work is low?
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> Ask them how many r's are in strawberry. 2024 called and wants its talking points back. > Teachers don't make confident mistakes because the student asked the wrong way. Teachers can be held accountable. Teachers can learn. Teachers can love their students. All of these can be true, and at the same it can be true that a child tutored by a good quality state-of-the-art LLM with a good teaching-focused harness could…
> 2024 called and wants its talking points back. It's a classic example of the kinds of questions LLMs get wrong. There's plenty of others. Not sure your point here. We can easily find things a 4-9 year old will talk about that an LLM will get wrong, hallucinate, etc. > a child tutored by a good quality state-of-the-art LLM with a good teaching-focused harness could have better learning outcomes than a child without…
My point is that the hallucination rate of modern LLMs, while not zero, is so low that this is no longer an issue in practice.
> There's a lot of work being done in 'could'. And it's entirely ignoring the dangers.
I agree that there are some risks. But for many children, the alternative is not human teacher, but no teacher at all. This considerably changes the risk-benefit calculus, IMHO.
You are not making the world a better place. You've made the world worse with this project.
Full disclosure: I worked on a small project with Ello / Catalin a few years ago. At the time of writing, the sentiment in this post is that this is a terrible idea, and that kids need human tutors. The latter is 100% true. But also, you might want to know some facts about the state of children's literacy in the US (Ello is a math and reading tutor): 1. We're in crisis. As of 2025, 40% of fourth graders are reading b…
Blooms 2 sigma, like many studies that are thrown about, is not as much of a slam dunk as people claim that it is. Have you read the paper or any efforts to replicate?
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> Most critiques of AI are based on experience with the cheapest AI available a year ago, by midwits You don't even need to use AI at all to have valid critiques of it Plenty of other people are showing its flaws daily by replacing their entire personalities with AI slop Oh it can do some impressive stuff sure. It is still bad for society
> You don't even need to use AI at all to have valid critiques of it You cannot rationally criticize something if you have no up-to-date knowledge about it.
I think teaching a child to trust an LLM from a formative age is horrifically irresponsible. If anything, an app should be made where a child learns to correct an LLM's mistakes and learn that it isn't trustworthy. Actually, better, don't put an LLM in front of children. At all. EDIT: If a use case is for children who can't afford good education, then use an LLM to make educational materials for children, review them…
I don't think it's quite as simple as that. LLMs do make mistakes but generally with slightly obscure difficult stuff. They're not going to struggle at all with things a 4-9 year old is learning. Also it's not like teachers never make confident mistakes.
Say what you will about the biases of teachers, but I'll take them any day over the propaganda [1] some foreign megacorporation has inculcated into its AI.