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Mamdani bans AI in NYC schools

nytimes.com

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Re: Mamdani bans AI in NYC schools

#81

Post by lukeschlather »

tw04 wrote: post #74
pj_mukh wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so we're clear, phones were already banned in classrooms. "Personal" use of AI within a classroom to help someone like a personal calculator or a personal "cheating aid" was already banned. This bans it from all teaching tools and materials as well.

Good? The amount of just flat out wrong information the average LLM spits out makes it unfit for education IMO. I can’t imagine asking teachers to have to personally vet every single lesson plan to ensure an AI wasn’t hallucinating when producing the content.

Frontier LLMs with Internet search are different beasts than what you're describing as an average LLM. In 5 years I don't think you're going to be able to get away from LLMs if you care about correctness, and we're already to the point where if a calculation matters I want an LLM to check my math.

Re: Mamdani bans AI in NYC schools

#82

Post by delichon »

There are some truly excellent initiatives leveraging AI as teachers, rather than as cognitive crutches, and it's important that they are not tossed out with the bathwater. Math Academy is one. I hope for a Cambrian explosion of variations of this approach. Imagine a resourceful and infinitely patient tutor guiding you through the most difficult concepts of your education, deeply attentive to your signals about flaws in your mental model, and feeding you carefully crafted clarifying challenges with engineered timing.

AI feeding students the right answers is damaging, but feeding them the right questions at the right moment is the way forward.

Re: Mamdani bans AI in NYC schools

#83

Post by wildzzz »

charcircuit wrote: post #65
Zetaphor wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that a human teacher is equivalent to an LLM is derogatory to the teachers and exaggerating the capabilities of the LLM. I say this as someone who uses these things daily in my work and personal life. Let's not murky the waters with complete falsehoods

LLMs have been better than many teachers I've had in my life. To no fault of the teachers, it's hard to compete with something that has understanding of every subject, is hooked up to the internet, and is given 1:1 time with the person learning at any time of the day, answering promptly.

Sure, classroom sizes can be a detriment to those that require more hands on instruction time. But that's not everyone and not every school suffers from overcrowding.

Re: Mamdani bans AI in NYC schools

#84

Post by orwin »

anonymars wrote: post #43
protimewaster wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's limited to "younger students", and keeping younger students away from computers also isn't a bad idea IMO.

I think young exposure to real computers (where you create, and have to figure things out; not consumption machines) provides access to a level of fluency that is otherwise difficult or impossible to achieve, just like many other skills (language, music...)

I'm pretty sure we ran these experiments in France in the late 80s/early 90s, it was pretty clear that exposure to real computers was useless in elementary school, and even in middle school technology teachers weren't a big fans of teaching computer skills before 14 (basically around the same time as they taught tin soldering).

Re: Mamdani bans AI in NYC schools

#85

Post by manquer »

legitster wrote: post #26

Even if you're pro-AI, there's a reason calculators are banned from math classes until a certain point. It seems like a no-brainer to have people learn on hammers before moving them to nailguns. I can't help but think of this Chesterton Quote: "It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's own love-letters or blowing one's own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly…

> calculators are banned from math classes

Not all math classes yes, if your are learning basic arithmetic yes calculators should not be allowed, but if am learning say applied statistics I would be wasting time adding numbers by hand and not learning what I am actually supposed to be taking the course for. A tool is just a tool[1].

Even when it was not allowed, schools would still teach you how to use a calculator correctly and your peers that 80085 looks like BOOBS. Effective AI usage education specifically as an aid to learning is important for children today. There is no avoiding the fact that generative models will part of their whole lives .

The instructor or the school board with inputs from professional experts in learning pedagogy should be taking this kind of call at individual course level. IMO it shouldn't be the mayor doing a blanket ban

[1] There were time when instead of calculators, you would need to carry Clark's Tables booklets you weren't expected to learn numerical analysis to just use value of ln(n) , Clark's tables were a tool, so was the calculator, or a computer or now a machine learning model.

Re: Mamdani bans AI in NYC schools

#86

Post by PunchyHamster »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #35
legitster wrote: post #26

Even if you're pro-AI, there's a reason calculators are banned from math classes until a certain point. It seems like a no-brainer to have people learn on hammers before moving them to nailguns. I can't help but think of this Chesterton Quote: "It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's own love-letters or blowing one's own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly…

I can’t imagine how many shortcuts I would have taken as a kid/teen or stressed uni student if AI were an option. I can see even a well-meaning student stuck in this aspirational cycle of “I’ll do it myself next time, but right now I just want to catch up.”

The kid motivation is not the knowledge but the grade, in all subjects but the few that interest them.

Until that will chance the any and all shortcuts will be used, because the goal of the kid is to:

* get grades high enough to keep parents happy * do fun stuff

The motivation to get knowledge for something other than your own hobbies/curiosity only comes when you need to start paying the bills and get a job

Re: Mamdani bans AI in NYC schools

#87

Post by quickthrowman »

bugbull wrote: post #47
hombre_fatal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t imagine how many shortcuts I would have taken as a kid/teen or stressed uni student if AI were an option. I can see even a well-meaning student stuck in this aspirational cycle of “I’ll do it myself next time, but right now I just want to catch up.”

There were certainly integral solving validators online when I took calculus in high school. At some point I gave up and just used that, because “the money is in web application development, I don’t need that calculus stuff”. Big regret. Edit: For reference, the regret came when I tried to do some RF related projects on the side. Those projects would likely have gone somewhere if I put some effort into even the basic…

I use simple algebra and occasionally a bit of geometry estimating and managing construction projects, but I’ve never found it necessary to find an exact solution for an area under a curve or the rate of change of a function at a specific point.

I don’t know how to solve an integral, but I understand that an electricity meter or flowmeter (gas and air) is performing continuous integration to keep track of total power usage or fluid flow. That’s good enough for me, and if I had to I could approximate a solution with a piece of paper, a pair of scissors, and a reasonably accurate scale; or trapezoids and graph paper.

Re: your edit, calculus would definitely come in handy if you had an interest in RF. The good thing is, you could still learn it :)

Re: Mamdani bans AI in NYC schools

#88

Post by UtopiaPunk »

charcircuit wrote: post #65
Zetaphor wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that a human teacher is equivalent to an LLM is derogatory to the teachers and exaggerating the capabilities of the LLM. I say this as someone who uses these things daily in my work and personal life. Let's not murky the waters with complete falsehoods

LLMs have been better than many teachers I've had in my life. To no fault of the teachers, it's hard to compete with something that has understanding of every subject, is hooked up to the internet, and is given 1:1 time with the person learning at any time of the day, answering promptly.

LLMs are also more flattering

Re: Mamdani bans AI in NYC schools

#89

Post by orwin »

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #63
GlacierFox wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There's nearly zero AI zealotry on here. As of the time of my posting, almost every comment here on Hacker News is both supportive of the measure and largely against AI. This is now a neo-Luddite messaging board.

You should try to read books on the luddite movement (or use an AI to dive into the specifics I guess) before trying to use it to disparage someone. As it stands, to me the luddites were pragmatic workers who stood up for themselves, so it is quite a compliment.

Re: Mamdani bans AI in NYC schools

#90

Post by Gigachad »

summermusic wrote: post #12

I can see the 2040 study already: “Schoolchildren who did not use AI in primary school show higher outcomes”

There are so many things as a kid I did not agree with or understand but was forced to do anyway, and now as an adult am glad. Right down to being forced to wear a hat and sunscreen (in Australia).

If I had ChatGPT as a kid I would have learned nothing.

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