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Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

reuters.com

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Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#551

Post by abyssin »

tgv wrote: post #504
0xpgm wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> without increasing educator workload substantially Isn't this a good thing, employing more educators, building more schools? Any sane society will always invest more into its future well being and incentivize investments into education.

That used to be the case, but it no longer is. Not only are budgets limited, only a few choose for a career in education, leaving schools already understaffed. Expansion is not feasible in the short run.

I would happily make a career switch if I had the feeling my work in a school would be useful and doable. Where I live, I tried it and it was neither of the two. After having experienced efficient companies, schools feel mind-boggingly stupid. And the policy of never failing students and reluctantly enforcing rules generates an serious waste of human energy.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#552

Post by dpkirchner »

somenameforme wrote: post #420
dpkirchner wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do adults declare themselves as adults without teenagers claiming to be adults also? It's pretty much impossible, so we should stop trying. It's exhausting seeing politicians et al continue to push for age verification despite it being impossible to be even remotely effective. (I hedge because technically we could demand photo ID for every HTTP request, I guess, but I don't think that's ever going to happen.) T…

In real life everything from porn to alcohol to cigarettes, and even movies all require ID. And it's super easy to bypass in endless ways, but those efforts have nonetheless been overwhelmingly successful. And I don't really understand the issue people have with social media and ID. You're already required to link your phone which is a massive invasion of privacy, and the sites themselves not entirely infrequently de…

In person ID requirements all rely on punishing merchants if a minor fools them with a fake ID which aligns the incentives pretty well. It's hard to imagine how that would work online. Do you go to jail/pay thousands of dollars if someone hands their phone to their kid while logged in to Facebook or Google? You would if you sold beer to a kid who was given their parent's wallet.

Without an enforcement mechanism that punishes site owners the whole system fails. And you can't reasonably expect site owners to be responsible for checking ID on every request. So, it's (practically) impossible.

> And I don't really understand the issue people have with social media and ID. You're already required to link your phone which is a massive invasion of privacy

Yep, and we* lost that argument and "think of the children" hysteria won.

* I would bet the same folks opposed to ID requirements now were opposed to phone number then

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#553

Post by cmrdporcupine »

Moldoteck wrote: post #528
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Ontario they "banned" phones in class/school and the teens just ignore it and the teachers are unable/scared to enforce it. As parents we've tried over and over with both our kids to lay down the law -- including taking phones away, consequences etc -- but the attitude is intense with both them and their peers and enforcement becomes very difficult once they're out of "child account" parental control range. I…

the next movement would be blocking LTE/5G during courses. No social media = dumb phone

they don't seem to have the courage to do it. they don't even bother closing down the school wifi for a lot of stuff.

there's also parent who would boohoo about not being able to contact their kids all hours of the day

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#554

Post by qsera »

chadgpt3 wrote: post #522
qsera wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because those who are attracted by the high pay might not be the best ones to do the job.

that's true about every job. Even computers were better when nerds ran them.

While true, not all jobs are equally critical in that regard. A bad programmer probably can be detected easily. But the effects of a generation of bad teachers might only show up after many decades!

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#555

Post by qsera »

sethammons wrote: post #519
qsera wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because those who are attracted by the high pay might not be the best ones to do the job.

I left teaching and have, literally, 10x'd my annual income after a few years. While teaching, I couldn't afford to support my family of four. We don't need people stressing and struggling financially for the privilege of teaching our youth. That leaves those without a better option or have a working spouse.

So that is why I said teachers should be compensated well but may be by other means than paying out a large sum as salary.

For example, if you were able to get free education for your children as part of your payment, wouldn't that have made your life a lot easier?

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#556

Post by analog31 »

cornholio wrote: post #391
truncate wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree! For anyone who still thinks kids should use AI, another argument to make is we are still figuring out AI (hence the constant debate on it, hype, uncertainty, boundaries of its capabilities etc etc). I don't think anyone with right mind can disagree with that. Keeping that mind, wouldn't it make sense to at-the-very-least tread with caution when it comes to kids.

The counterargument is that kids will live in a world different from our own. For example, in many countries children lost the ability to write cursive; that used to be a critical skill comparable to literacy itself. But in our current society, that's no longer the case and you can be very successful without it, but there are other skills, such as using technology, that became critical. Any definitive claim to know w…

>>>> Any definitive claim to know what are the right things kids should learn in a moment of rapid technological shift is probably garbage and just a projection of our own biases.

I'd say this is the case in times of technological stability as well.

Education has always been based on heuristics: Teach A, B, and C, with the hope that people will gain X, Y, and Z. Avoid P, Q, and R. The suspicion that some forms of education are fructifying, and others are stultifying, are largely a matter of guesswork and social bias. Attempts to clear things up with "studies" tends to produce results on a par with pseudoscience. Our biases are all we've got.

The reaction to AI isn't the first time that parents have had to decide on the merits of educational technologies: Radio, TV, the early Internet, social media, etc. Even books. There was certainly a suspicion that TV and social media caused brain rot, or a related issue, moral rot.

Regarding your comment below, I was born in the 60s, and was certainly educated for the web era. I'm more adept with technology today, including AI, than most people half my age.

My children were required to learn Microsoft Office in elementary school, "for their careers."

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#557

Post by doctorpangloss »

somenameforme wrote: post #428
doctorpangloss wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a large florida school district banned cell phones in schools, and after two years, the total benefit that was measured to be likely caused by this was +0.9 percentiles on their standardized achievement test. in comparison, if you study ONE HOUR for the SAT, you gain approximately 0.9 percentiles on the test. how do dozens if not low hundreds of hours of time you are not spending on your phone at school translate to…

Just ignoring the flimsy SAT metric, there's something most aren't considering in these sort of data. Cell phones enable and are fairly widely used for all sorts of cheating. Banning them gets rid of that, and so if there was no positive effect from a phone ban you'd actually probably expect a slight decrease on scores because of this effect. So the fact that basically every school region that bans phones is seeing m…

A "million times better," or 0.9 percentiles better? You have no idea.

Of course I don't want kids to be distracted in school. I just think that if things were as easy as a ban, or some other kind of coercion, education would be easy.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#558

Post by theptip »

ifwinterco wrote: post #460
theptip wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generative AI is not going to help them with those skills. I think it's more complex than this. AI is both the best technology ever invented for avoiding learning, and the best technology ever invented for learning. The cat is out of the bag. If teachers are asking for take-home essay assignments in 2026 then students are going to use AI and learn nothing. "AI detectors" are nowhere near reliable enough to be fair;…

The obvious way to square this circle is to go back to how things used to be: less emphasis on coursework and more on old-fashioned tests in an examination environment with just pen and paper. You can cheat on your homework all you like, but you'll completely fail the exams. On the other hand, students who use LLMs to augment their learning will do fine

It’s one dimension, I agree. Though, for essay-based courses I’m a little skeptical about writing under time pressure.

My thinking here is that you might want to also introduce more “viva voce” (verbal defense) style tests. These have been expensive to administer but my hunch is that you can scale these with AI administering the first round, random human review or participation. This feels like a better endpoint than essays under time pressure (but also maybe you can elect one or the other?)

My other angle is to break completely from the past. I want to see more project work. If AI makes it easier to fake or attain any given level of knowledge, we need to ask more of students, ie ask them to demonstrate mastery by building real things. More open-ended projects are harder to grade (use AI to scale grading), but more fun and engaging for students.

This doesn’t just refer to STEM of course; why not ask students to write a play, compose a symphony, etc?

My core thesis is that most students would work harder and engage with things that interest them, and the fundamental problem with Taylorized education is that one-size-fits-all is only interesting to some.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#559

Post by theptip »

IshKebab wrote: post #472
ifwinterco wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious way to square this circle is to go back to how things used to be: less emphasis on coursework and more on old-fashioned tests in an examination environment with just pen and paper. You can cheat on your homework all you like, but you'll completely fail the exams. On the other hand, students who use LLMs to augment their learning will do fine

This is definitely what's going to happen. But there is still a problem - people (not just children) are fundamentally lazy and put things off. People always leave assignments until the last minute. I used to smoothly transition from "I've got plenty of time, no need to start" to "there's not enough time to do it, there's no point starting". They will 100% just use AI for the whole year and then panic and fail the ex…

It’s a good point. I could see a world where exams get cheaper to administer.

I also think we can use project work as an ongoing assessment.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#560

Post by theptip »

amelius wrote: post #505
theptip wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generative AI is not going to help them with those skills. I think it's more complex than this. AI is both the best technology ever invented for avoiding learning, and the best technology ever invented for learning. The cat is out of the bag. If teachers are asking for take-home essay assignments in 2026 then students are going to use AI and learn nothing. "AI detectors" are nowhere near reliable enough to be fair;…

It's the same old argument about knives and technology. But we don't give children knives.

But we do give them bicycles, so the lesson would be “give them technology that is safe to use”.

And then we are back to the discussion at hand none the wiser; what forms of AI are safe to use for kids?

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