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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

#621

Post by WalterBright »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #612
WalterBright wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be correct! And all the technology added since has resulted in no discernible improvement in educational results. In college, the classes were a lecture with a professor, 9 blackboards and colored chalk. Not even handouts (well, there was one on time dilation). Calculators utterly wiped out slide rules when I was in college, though nobody learned any math from a calculator. Calculators just made for quicke…

So you’re saying that educational technology has no noticeable negative impact on educational results. Since we know it has some practical benefits, such as accessibility, that would be a strong argument for using it.

You are correct that it does help with disabled students. The overwhelming majority of students, however, are not disabled and are not helped by technology.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#622

Post by WalterBright »

KPGv2 wrote: post #600
WalterBright wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be correct! And all the technology added since has resulted in no discernible improvement in educational results. In college, the classes were a lecture with a professor, 9 blackboards and colored chalk. Not even handouts (well, there was one on time dilation). Calculators utterly wiped out slide rules when I was in college, though nobody learned any math from a calculator. Calculators just made for quicke…

"back in my day, kids listened to their elders" > all the technology added since has resulted in no discernible improvement in educational results. I would say it's because it's used stupidly (also I'd take a Millenial's education over a Boomer's any day). One of the best things about technology is that my kids can carry one lightweight tablet instead of 50lbs of back-breaking books. They can look up reference materi…

> instead of 50lbs of back-breaking books

Are you joking? I carried one or two books from the locker to class, if that.

> instead of spending an hour looking at World Books

I had a set of World Books. Looking things up in it usually meant encountering a number of other interesting entries in it. I never ever spent an hour looking up something. It is alphabetized, after all.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#623

Post by asdff »

graemep wrote: post #488
asdff wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tutor mode sucks because even if it was actually accurate and didn't hallucinate, it isn't scoped to what the class is actually covering within a given topic. Best AI is still your own brain, trained on paying attention in class and reading the assigned content.

One to one human tutors are the best way of educating kids and they are not scoped to what a class is covering. They teach the kid as an individual: they are effective because they can adjust to the kids abilities and interests.

It would be a shitty tutor if they never asked to see your textbook and what sort of material you'd work on. You'd legitimately waste time covering stuff that won't ever be tested.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#624

Post by insane_dreamer »

nunez wrote: post #604
insane_dreamer wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it'll start to raise the question of not only is college not worth it, but why should we even have compulsory education through high school? (just think of all the money we could save aka spend on the military instead)

rising tides lift all boats school wasn't compulsory for most of human history. private schooling was the norm, and private school, like now, was very expensive. as a result, most people worked physical jobs and gained limited skills beyond this. the idea of public school where everyone had a fair shot of developing skills for knowledge work was an extremely progressive concept in the beginning. what you're asking is…

> what you're asking is the impact of undoing this

I was being sarcastic. But this could become a serious question: in the (near) future, if academic skills no longer matter for the vast majority of jobs, then the State's responsibility to fund public education will be called into question -- maybe it would stop at 14 when kids can read/write and do basic math. If you want more, do it on your own dime.

I hope not, but we already have the Trump WH trying to chip away at public education - and that's without AI in the picture.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#625

Post by spwa4 »

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

... and teachers will just not do this. So maybe having AI grade a million tests instead can help.

I mean is this being done to help kids? Or to protect the jobs of teachers who have no real interest in teaching?

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#626

Post by bendriv »

lelanthran wrote: post #608
bendriv wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What things do you mean represent critical thinking?

The cold start problem in creating a piece of content requires executive decision-making (planning, design, selection). That's a critical-thinking type of skill (examine existing options, determine relevancy, determine good arguments from bad, etc). Reviewing your own work requires critical thinking, almost by definition! Brain-storming likewise requires some elements of critical thinking. Writing entire speeches and…

Completely agree, and I think outsourcing critical thinking to AI is a bad idea for learning. Here is one study that researched AI assistance in a writing/learning context: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872.

The teachers that have instructed using AI for assistance in our school seems focused on teaching how to technically use specifically ChatGPT (that particular product, not AI in general), and on the courage to speak in front of people. Learning how to speak in front of people is a noble goal, but I believe any person would be better prepared for speaking if they had done the hard work of writing in the first place.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#627

Post by bendriv »

bendriv wrote: post #594
throwaway2037 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the first hand feedback. I am assuming that you did similar assignments at the same age. Yet, you did not have the same tools. When I think back on my own LLM-free educational experiences, brainstorming was a hard mental skill to master. Some might argue it is one of the hardest as it requires some imagination, then critical thinking skills to filter the ideas. Can you comment about this? To be clear, I…

Baiting accepted :-) Well not all types of assignments are alike, I was not required to write nor hold a speech at school, as my eldest was at 13. I would be absolutely terrified to present in front of more than half my class, and they now speak to their whole school. But on the other hand, learning how to brainstorm effectively both alone and in groups is such a rewarding skill to have. And since brainstorming is so…

The post from my feed: https://davidepstein.substack.com/p/how-to-use-chatgpt-witho..., with the corresponding article: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#628

Post by FloorEgg »

erelong wrote: post #490
FloorEgg wrote: post #6

Wouldn't it matter a lot how AI is being used? I would assume if children are allowed to use AI without rails as a shortcut it will undermine their learning, and it's used for feedback and as a patient tutor it would accelerate their learning? It seems like the problem is that they don't have the science and tooling to use it constructively at scale, so the desperate solution is to ban it outright until a scalable co…

I think soemthing ignored in the discussion is that there are "good" students who can make use of AI to further their learning versus "bad" students who use AI as a crutch that prevents them from learning well Acknowledging this divide exists would come down to individual parenting and assessment of a student's use of the tools, rather than a blanket ban of AI tools which punish the "good" students

It's not just being ignored, I was down voted and argued with for trying to make this point.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#629

Post by ndriscoll »

solid_fuel wrote: post #575
ndriscoll wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except I generally do know when I'm wrong because I'm working in a domain I am familiar with, and it will often create experiments on the fly unprompted (well, prompted, but generically in AGENTS.MD) to check itself. My experience actually using it for software is that it almost never makes up answers. The answer for hallucinations is fairly simple: give it facts and tools to ground itself.

> Except I generally do know when I'm wrong because I'm working in a domain I am familiar with, and … My experience actually using it for software is that it almost never makes up answers. Yes I am certain that it feels that way. However empirical testing holds a lot more weight than anecdotes. > The answer for hallucinations is fairly simple: give it facts and tools to ground itself. The entire danger here is that i…

Right now at least, if empirical testing shows poor results and anecdotal usage shows great ones, I'd say that in fact anecdotal evidence holds much more weight. The empirical testing is just bad.

So you make it demonstrate the ground facts. Show formal proofs, link to and reference specific documents and fragments in a document database. It wouldn't really be that hard to build a harness with specific support for these things (e.g. performing a tool call that then has UX to highlight fact-checked claims and link to details/references).

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