Have you tried to learn a new topic with ai? Not like, learn the answer to a fleeting question. An actual large topic one might take even a short course on.
I say because most of the experiments I have seen in this space have failed. Chatgpt education was quietly removed not that long ago. Khan academy recently said that their Khanmigo AI tutor was facing challenges because students don't want to use it. Its a long-standing observation in the field of education that the miracle of the internet, computers being ubiqutous, phones etc hasn't clearly resulted in improvements to education (theres some minor evidence for or against it, but no blindingly obvious effect)
I worked at one point in ed-tech and the longer I was there the more I realised that nobody wanted this. Students only used it if they were made to, teachers only did it if admins wanted, admins only did it if they were sold on it, and the sales people seemed to be the only people who actually thought it was helping anyone
People often seem to think that teaching is the process of neutrally presenting facts to a learner. That the better and more clear the facts are presented, the better. But any book can do that. The entire business of education, as it were, is the management of motivation in students. Exams function just as much as a tool in this as the institution of coming to a classroom at all, rather than sitting at home remote learning. You need a clear mind, distraction free - just bored enough to find the content acceptably appealing (content cannot be made more interesting).
The best things for education seem to be:
- getting enough sleep
- getting a good diet
- good exercise
- being around other people you respect who are also learning the content
- being around other people you respect who have already learned the content, and who you want to emulate
- having someone who visibly cares if you learn the content or not, who expresses and reinforces that they expect you to learn it. (both "you need to focus, stop messing around" but also "you are capable of this, its hard but I know you personally can do it")
- having a good reason to want to learn the content
- having time pressure to learn the content
note that literally none of this regards the actual presentation of the content. Books have existed for centuries. A well motivated learner with all of the above will find the content. That is in no way the problem
An argument might be "but why, given all of this, are teachers actually teaching, why arent they standing up and lecturing soley about the importance of learning the content" and to some extent thats fair (although lecturing does satisfy some of the above if you think about it), but they ALSO tend to assign reading, link to further resources etc. Probably half or more of teachers speaking time is given over to procedural stuff working towards the above goals. Explaining the process of upcoming exams, worksheets, homeworks that need to be done (time pressure), demonstrating their love and knowledge of the subject (people you respect who know the content), building rapport with students (people you respect), holding people to account/motivating, explaining why the content is important, and trying to build good habits in their students (organising study groups, project work, dealing with problems and creating distraction free conditions)
AI are a poor facsimile of the above. Though they may try to replicate it, their inherent lack of physicality and humanity makes much of the power lose its effect. I dont care if a chatbot is disappointed in me. I'm not inspired by a chatbot that claims enthusiasm about a subject. I don't care if a chatbot tells me I absolutely must do this by next week else ill be left behind (behind who?).