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Building a real-time AI tutor for 5-year-olds

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Re: Building a real-time AI tutor for 5-year-olds

#381

Post by UncleMeat »

senordevnyc wrote: post #327
TonyAlicea10 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That's just not true. Talk to an LLM about a subject you know deeply. They make up things all the time.

With stuff that a 4-9 year old is going to be learning? Color me skeptical.

Teaching children is not just about delivering facts to them. The challenge when teaching children is not "do you know the topics that you are teaching them." They challenge is in the pedagogical methods used to get them to learn.

Re: Building a real-time AI tutor for 5-year-olds

#382

Post by UncleMeat »

dcx wrote: post #35

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…

This is not how I want the world to be.

"Wow, our state institutions are struggling in ways X, Y, and Z. Rather than addressing these problems we will shuffle them to an unaccountable third party that will provide a necessarily worse substitute using the hot technology of the day."

Re: Building a real-time AI tutor for 5-year-olds

#384

Post by BatFastard »

pixel_popping wrote: post #378
windexh8er wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I would never allow my kids onto a platform like Ello. My kids are starting to appreciate being shielded from social media and technology in their lives as they watch their friends go down dark paths and stuck in feeling like they have to participate there. I don't think kids, of any age, should be in front of LLMs unless by complete agreement of their parents and only after their parents are made very aware of…

If I may, the argument of "screen" isn't necessarily the right one, the right way might not be the only right way, I have an almost 2-year old daughter and I've bought an e-ink (colored) tablet to show her family pictures, stories and so-on (very sparingly, maybe about 15min a day), we also generate books with images and short stories about what went during this week with the pictures we have and apply a child style…

Love the I {heart} NY in there!

Re: Building a real-time AI tutor for 5-year-olds

#385

Post by pixel_popping »

jplusequalt wrote: post #360
clarle wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a Socratic Method-style AI tutor would work, though. It would be less about the LLM providing direct educational material themselves, but making sure the student is thinking about the right questions to direct themselves in learning the material.

How do you ensure the kid is learning the right material? You want them to stay on topic, but a Socratic Method that starts off on one topic can easily branch into many other topics, and then suddenly your student has spent the whole class learning about something other than what they were supposed to. All learning is good, yes. But a baseline curriculum is necessary to create a ground floor of knowledge for society.

Just run a loop with another agent that watch the transcript and trigger tool to refocus on the main agent or re-run agent entirely with follow up prompt not visible to the user so it gradually goes back to the right topic.

Re: Building a real-time AI tutor for 5-year-olds

#386

Post by hnisfulomrons »

Marha01 wrote: post #271
sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha Do you actually use these things?

> Do you actually use these things? I use them every day for SWE. I cannot remember any hallucination from the last 6 months. It pretty much stopped being an issue from the beginning of this year, if you use top paid models. Free models or lower-tier paid models can still hallucinate, though.

[dead]

Re: Building a real-time AI tutor for 5-year-olds

#387

Post by BatFastard »

TonyAlicea10 wrote: post #312
IshKebab wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are 3 letter *"r"*s in "strawberry." > > Spelled out: s t r a w b e r r y → the r's are the 3rd, 8th, and 9th letters. > Teachers don't make confident mistakes because the student asked the wrong way. I don't see why the mechanism of being wrong matters. If anything it's worse when teachers are reliably wrong independently of how you ask the question. > Teachers can be held accountable. lol no. Have you ever…

> Anyway no learning is needed for 4-9 year old education. This is an extraordinarily naive statement. Learning how to teach well takes a lifelong commitment. A topic being basic for an adult does not mean it is easier to teach to a child. In many ways it makes it harder.

Indeed there are different kinds of learning, which the poster is not aware of.

No booking learning is needed for 4-9 year old's. But learning patience, understanding, empathy are life long pursuits.

Re: Building a real-time AI tutor for 5-year-olds

#388

Post by pixel_popping »

BatFastard wrote: post #384
pixel_popping wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I may, the argument of "screen" isn't necessarily the right one, the right way might not be the only right way, I have an almost 2-year old daughter and I've bought an e-ink (colored) tablet to show her family pictures, stories and so-on (very sparingly, maybe about 15min a day), we also generate books with images and short stories about what went during this week with the pictures we have and apply a child style…

Love the I {heart} NY in there!

We aren't even living in the US :p - little harmless hallucination from model.

PS: Those animals are from her collection of plush toys which I've individually put as a Sprite for AI usage, I got about 50 plush toys (1 a week in average), mostly used to benchmark her to see if she can recognize the animals from the books she is reading, and she does, all of them, it's a very useful purchase.

Re: Building a real-time AI tutor for 5-year-olds

#389

Post by senordevnyc »

imp0cat wrote: post #376
senordevnyc wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is totally false. https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/screen-use-ki... Unless you're also advocating that kids shouldn't read books?

> A 2019 study published in Ophthalmology—the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology—offers more evidence that at least part of the worldwide increase in nearsightedness has to do with near work activities. It’s not just screens affecting eye development, it’s also traditional books and the amount of time spent indoors overall. The study also found that spending time outdoors—especially in early childhood—c…

Did you not read my entire comment? I am extremely skeptical that you’d be here leaving this comment about parents “destroying” their kids vision if we were talking about kids and reading paper books. You’re pushing a narrative that screens in particular destroy vision, and it’s bogus. And I haven’t even looked that study up, but I’m guessing the effect size is pretty damn small, so I’m guessing you’re also being hysterical and over-reactive too. Because this isn’t about vision, it’s a moral panic about screens, and now AI. Yawn.

Re: Building a real-time AI tutor for 5-year-olds

#390

Post by jjav »

mahogany wrote: post #309
jjav wrote: post #138

This is very sad. Just spend the time in person with the 5 year old, no screens, no AI, nothing impersonal. A 5 year old just wants mommy and daddy in person playing with them. No 5 year old (or any age in that neighborhood) should be exposed to screens.

I am skeptical of using AI for a tutor and would not give it to my kid, but I find the staunch no-screens sentiment equally ridiculous and similar to saying no-books. Do you have kids? Are you telling me that you and the other parent spend (or spent) 100% of your time with your 5 year old? We spend a ton of time with our kid but also he watches educational TV. Unless you are privileged enough to have a nanny, having…

> Do you have kids? Are you telling me that you and the other parent spend (or spent) 100% of your time with your 5 year old?

Yes and yes. Always personal interaction (one of us parents, or babysitter or teachers, or friends). This is probably easier to accomplish here in Silicon Valley because most parents are in tech and thus aware of the evils involved. So none of the kids en elementary school ever had phones or tablets, so no peer pressure to have one.

> tinkered with DOS when I was a young kid and learned a lot, which led to my current career

Me too. But the key word is tinker. In those times computers required tinkering and learning if you wanted to accomplish anything with it.

Today they are just passive entertainment and advertising machines.

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