Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

oecd.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 163 posts

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#21

Post by Timon3 »

adrianN wrote: post #17
omnicognate wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is doing math at the level of the best mathematics Terence Tao a few days ago [1]: > When we point the AIs at really difficult problems where none of the standard techniques apply, they are still very, very bad, I mean they're just randomly guessing. Please don't reply saying they'll be proving the Collatz conjecture next week. It adds nothing. [1] https://youtu.be/svl_1upFpQo (worth watching on the role of LLMs in…

The best mathematicians are also not very good at solving the hardest problems though. By definition.

Aren't the best mathematicians the best at solving the hardest problems? I don't see how you can argue this without assuming an arbitrary scale for being "good" at something.

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#22

Post by andai »

lordnacho wrote: post #19

The decline seems to have started in the 2010s. Makes me wonder if this is connected to Jon Haidt's ideas about the impact of social media.

Last I heard it started in the 90s. Although a lot of horrifying graphs do have their inflection point the year the iPhone came out.

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#23

Post by getnormality »

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #3

Makes sense. The kids can see that education isn't really going to be a sellable skill when AI ends up coming into full force. AI already writes most of the articles I see posted here, is doing math at the level of the best mathematicians, and is writing a ton of the code out there. Given another decade to develop, the kids will be hitting the workforce with very stiff competition. It's not a shock they're putting th…

> Makes sense. The kids can see that education isn't really going to be a sellable skill when AI ends up coming into full force.

If true, this is a disastrously foolish thing to believe. Education is only going to become more important as supervising increasingly advanced AI agents becomes more difficult. We need people who understand all different domains of human endeavor at the deepest level possible.

I mean, what's the alternative? AI does everything for me and I play Fortnite all day? Might as well plug yourself into the Matrix.

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#24

Post by andai »

squishington wrote: post #8
tokai wrote: post #2

Great. With later and later retirement dates, its important that the younger generations are easier to compete with. /s

That's quite funny, but the new recruits at my work place are super smart and full of piss and vinegar. Much more motivated than some of the older workers. The problem is that they will work lots of unpaid overtime, and they have no idea about work boundaries and being exploited by employers.

Sounds like they're trading excess energy for accelerated development. Where do I sign up?

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#25

Post by omnicognate »

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #16
omnicognate wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is doing math at the level of the best mathematics Terence Tao a few days ago [1]: > When we point the AIs at really difficult problems where none of the standard techniques apply, they are still very, very bad, I mean they're just randomly guessing. Please don't reply saying they'll be proving the Collatz conjecture next week. It adds nothing. [1] https://youtu.be/svl_1upFpQo (worth watching on the role of LLMs in…

Let's see you solve some open problems before you dismiss LLM capabilities. They're working at a level far beyond all but the best of the best. And we're only a couple of years in. Their capabilities aren't going to be getting worse over time. These kids will be hitting the workforce after AI has another decade of improvement put into it.

I quoted Terence Tao. Are you suggesting he hasn't solved any open problems?

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#26

Post by a2ff6eeb0 »

getnormality wrote: post #23
a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #3

Makes sense. The kids can see that education isn't really going to be a sellable skill when AI ends up coming into full force. AI already writes most of the articles I see posted here, is doing math at the level of the best mathematicians, and is writing a ton of the code out there. Given another decade to develop, the kids will be hitting the workforce with very stiff competition. It's not a shock they're putting th…

> Makes sense. The kids can see that education isn't really going to be a sellable skill when AI ends up coming into full force. If true, this is a disastrously foolish thing to believe. Education is only going to become more important as supervising increasingly advanced AI agents becomes more difficult. We need people who understand all different domains of human endeavor at the deepest level possible. I mean, what…

It seems unlikely that we'll be able to keep up with AI in any capacity. Your alternative seems like the inevitable outcome of AI succeeding, and it doesn't sound so bad.

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#27

Post by kmitz »

PISA data show that students who use AI for specific schoolwork tasks, such as summarising texts, drafting or conducting research, attain lower scores in science than students who do not use AI.

See graphs on PISA 2025 homepage : https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results-volum...

So much for all the EdTech startups that want you to use their AI teachers. Seriously, this should be a major signal to keep screens and AI solutions out of classrooms. That's not solving everything but at least students would be given a few hours window of de-brainroting everyday. I'm open to accept that AI can have a positive impact on education but people and tools are apparently not ready and for the moment using it is a net negative.

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#28

Post by a2ff6eeb0 »

omnicognate wrote: post #25
a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see you solve some open problems before you dismiss LLM capabilities. They're working at a level far beyond all but the best of the best. And we're only a couple of years in. Their capabilities aren't going to be getting worse over time. These kids will be hitting the workforce after AI has another decade of improvement put into it.

I quoted Terence Tao. Are you suggesting he hasn't solved any open problems?

Sure, if these kids can all perform at Tao's level, they could likely be able to keep up with the AI capabilities from a decade before they would enter the workforce.

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#29

Post by js8 »

getnormality wrote: post #23
a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #3

Makes sense. The kids can see that education isn't really going to be a sellable skill when AI ends up coming into full force. AI already writes most of the articles I see posted here, is doing math at the level of the best mathematicians, and is writing a ton of the code out there. Given another decade to develop, the kids will be hitting the workforce with very stiff competition. It's not a shock they're putting th…

> Makes sense. The kids can see that education isn't really going to be a sellable skill when AI ends up coming into full force. If true, this is a disastrously foolish thing to believe. Education is only going to become more important as supervising increasingly advanced AI agents becomes more difficult. We need people who understand all different domains of human endeavor at the deepest level possible. I mean, what…

It's not clear if it is foolish.

The situation will probably be like with airline pilots. The plane is mostly an automated system, but we simply don't let automation to work through exceptional situations, without human review. Therefore, lots of pilot training (and their presence) is still required.

But it's also hard to guess what exactly skill should the pilots have. It's clear that lots of things from manual aircraft do not translate well to automated.

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#30

Post by bluecheese452 »

getnormality wrote: post #23
a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #3

Makes sense. The kids can see that education isn't really going to be a sellable skill when AI ends up coming into full force. AI already writes most of the articles I see posted here, is doing math at the level of the best mathematicians, and is writing a ton of the code out there. Given another decade to develop, the kids will be hitting the workforce with very stiff competition. It's not a shock they're putting th…

> Makes sense. The kids can see that education isn't really going to be a sellable skill when AI ends up coming into full force. If true, this is a disastrously foolish thing to believe. Education is only going to become more important as supervising increasingly advanced AI agents becomes more difficult. We need people who understand all different domains of human endeavor at the deepest level possible. I mean, what…

Most people do not have the ability to understand a domain at the deepest possible level.
Post reply on HN