There's a place for AI to help people, but given there's no shortage of humans it's difficult to see why we are so egar to replace them. The constant affirming nature of AI coupled with the restrictive nature of the safety layer makes AI both mentally dangerous and politically dangerous.
Launch HN: Bloomy (YC S26) – AI-powered mastery learning for K-12
11–20 of 112 posts
Re: Launch HN: Bloomy (YC S26) – AI-powered mastery learning for K-12
#12> What evidence or product behavior would you need to trust something like this with a student? I would need the product to not exist. I don't want this anywhere near a child. I want humans instructing humans, teaching empathy, connection, and - most importantly - learning to learn. Anything short of that is just building Brave New World. Electroshock the kids if they reach for forbidden knowledge. I'm sorry to be so…
This position is so extreme, you'd have to have called Reader Rabbit "electroshocking kids" as well.
Re: Launch HN: Bloomy (YC S26) – AI-powered mastery learning for K-12
#13What is your approach to evaluating LLM outputs?
A few things:
First, every BloomyBot response streams through an inline safety classification, and then an independent second-pass audit sweeps every stored message — a deterministic rule layer merged with a separate LLM classifier, taking the highest-severity result. It flags three categories (crisis, distress, inappropriate) across every language we support, and confirmed flags alert the teacher and school. We also constrain what the model is allowed to do: the tutor won't reveal answers, and it's completely absent from Summit assessments — so an LLM output never decides whether a student has mastered a skill. That comes from scored assessment performance against our 90% threshold.
Second, a nightly cron job runs across all BloomyBot interactions to flag erroneous outputs (so far, none) and safety alerts (these happen real-time anyway, but the cron job is a backup).
Third, I sample the interactions manually. I've read most interactions so far (although this will become much harder with more scale).
Finally, we are building structured evals to draw inferences across grade levels, skills, common misconceptions, etc. Ideally we will be able to identify the optimal level of scaffolding to help students achieve mastery, but that will take more data and time.
Re: Launch HN: Bloomy (YC S26) – AI-powered mastery learning for K-12
#14Happy that this is being tried. I find it weird, sad, unfortunate, etc. that everyone in tech thinks about scientific discovery and drug discovery as AIs boon to society over education. Every quality of life metric (life expectancy, income, etc) goes up with better education. I guess it’s because most people in tech grew up in neighborhoods with nice schools and went to college so they don’t think about it. Anyway, g…
Thanks! I think people are rightfully skeptical about EdTech and AI -- esp. with kids. But we also need to try to innovate in this space, and I believe (from my experience as a teacher as well as my experience seeing students learn on Bloomy) that there is great potential here.
Re: Launch HN: Bloomy (YC S26) – AI-powered mastery learning for K-12
#15There's a place for AI to help people, but given there's no shortage of humans it's difficult to see why we are so egar to replace them. The constant affirming nature of AI coupled with the restrictive nature of the safety layer makes AI both mentally dangerous and politically dangerous.
AI is certainly not a monolith. Many aspects and use cases of AI are dangerous -- fully agreed.
As others have commented, it would be better if we could give every student their own personal tutor. Until that's possible, I believe AI can be helpful in education, as long as it's responsibly designed and monitored.
Re: Launch HN: Bloomy (YC S26) – AI-powered mastery learning for K-12
#16> What evidence or product behavior would you need to trust something like this with a student? I would need the product to not exist. I don't want this anywhere near a child. I want humans instructing humans, teaching empathy, connection, and - most importantly - learning to learn. Anything short of that is just building Brave New World. Electroshock the kids if they reach for forbidden knowledge. I'm sorry to be so…
Just because it's computer-assisted doesn't mean the computer is doing the teaching (any more than saying a gun killed someone). The people behind it are the teachers, and the computer-assisting is a way to amplify that teacher's reach (like a YouTube video).
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Re: Launch HN: Bloomy (YC S26) – AI-powered mastery learning for K-12
#17> What evidence or product behavior would you need to trust something like this with a student? I would need the product to not exist. I don't want this anywhere near a child. I want humans instructing humans, teaching empathy, connection, and - most importantly - learning to learn. Anything short of that is just building Brave New World. Electroshock the kids if they reach for forbidden knowledge. I'm sorry to be so…
Just because it's computer-assisted doesn't mean the computer is doing the teaching (any more than saying a gun killed someone). The people behind it are the teachers, and the computer-assisting is a way to amplify that teacher's reach (like a YouTube video).
Great point. The responsibility and consequences of the tech (both bad and good) rest upon the humans who designed it.
Re: Launch HN: Bloomy (YC S26) – AI-powered mastery learning for K-12
#18> What evidence or product behavior would you need to trust something like this with a student? I would need the product to not exist. I don't want this anywhere near a child. I want humans instructing humans, teaching empathy, connection, and - most importantly - learning to learn. Anything short of that is just building Brave New World. Electroshock the kids if they reach for forbidden knowledge. I'm sorry to be so…
I appreciate your honesty! I agree that having a talented human teacher for every student would be ideal. Many of our schools just don't have the teacher headcount to deliver meaningful instruction to their students. Some schools (one non-profit in Africa, for instance) have to choose between having no teacher or having Bloomy. Are you putting forward that you'd prefer the former? No judgment if so, just trying to un…
I would want to solve the problem way upstream. Obviously I want children to receive education.
I would also say that looking at the problem like it's teacher headcount that's the issue is assuming a specific education model. If there is only 1 teacher and 300 students, you can't meaningfully do a lecture-style one-way transmission of information. That's outdated anyway and not what the students need.
Re: Launch HN: Bloomy (YC S26) – AI-powered mastery learning for K-12
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because it's computer-assisted doesn't mean the computer is doing the teaching (any more than saying a gun killed someone). The people behind it are the teachers, and the computer-assisting is a way to amplify that teacher's reach (like a YouTube video).
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Your GP comment was borderline against the site guidelines, since you basically went straight to shallow dismissal, flamebait, and generic ideological battle. I didn't respond with a moderation comment because I understand this topic brings up strong feelings and there's a lot to say on all sides.
Your reply here, though, is flat-out against the site guidelines and it's not ok to post like that to HN, least of all in someone's launch thread (whether it's a YC startup or not).
No more of this please. You're welcome to make your substantive points thoughtfully, but if you'd first review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the intended spirit of this site more to heart, we'd appreciate it.
Edit: your previous comment was a personal attack as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48981467. Please stop this.
Re: Launch HN: Bloomy (YC S26) – AI-powered mastery learning for K-12
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I appreciate your honesty! I agree that having a talented human teacher for every student would be ideal. Many of our schools just don't have the teacher headcount to deliver meaningful instruction to their students. Some schools (one non-profit in Africa, for instance) have to choose between having no teacher or having Bloomy. Are you putting forward that you'd prefer the former? No judgment if so, just trying to un…
I would want to solve the problem way upstream. Obviously I want children to receive education. I would also say that looking at the problem like it's teacher headcount that's the issue is assuming a specific education model. If there is only 1 teacher and 300 students, you can't meaningfully do a lecture-style one-way transmission of information. That's outdated anyway and not what the students need.
I like that you're touching on a bit of Horizon 3 education here! I agree that the model is antiquated and is long overdue for an upgrade.