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I think that’s the problem with AI discourse online, most of the fervent anti-AI people are throwing in machine learning with chatbots as if AI is a synonym for ChatGPT

We know computers in the classroom hurt educational outcomes (or, at least, provide no benefits) so unsurprising that AI is negative overall too. Of course, that doesn't mean AI is bad overall, any more than it means we should abandon computers in business and society.

Not to the graph, but to teaching needing humans. If you're self motivated now you can find one information already, but it's a lot harder to find the right order to learn those things, know if you got it or know something wrong, and let's be honest, have you met a kid excited about addition

😎👍 Philosophers better watch 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 butts too as Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy made so clear!

Seen too many "computers will never x" to agree

Maybe at some elevated level but I wonder whether good teachers really understand how many students go through the entire system without ever having a single teacher who takes a personal interest in them. Most of it can be replaced by videos and books.

Some schools are (finally) making the argument to add cursive back to the curriculum because people need to be able to read historical documents, and the easiest way to learn to read it is by writing it.

AI for students could be very helpful to explain things and direct reading but you can't use it to answer exercise questions and do your work, the process of doing the work is the learning bit. The temptation to just do this one report is probably very high though.

(I use Sheets for some tasks, but don’t know the ins and outs of it well enough to go beyond basic tables).

Sheets hurts my brain because I'm so used to excel keyboard shortcuts that I end up using them by instinct and unfortunately those are ALSO Google Sheet shortcuts, just assigned to different functions.

A few years back, I started as a part time college professor to share my many decades of experience in engineering, math, and physics. I quit this past spring. I was wasting my time because most just turned in AI slop. Same teaching 4th year engineering at university. The institutions didn't care.

I am not sure people will care what works for the working class. It'll be sold as a way to solve underfunded schools and improve outcomes for poor kids and ESL students.

This is where I land basically - LLMs might do weird shit for physics as a discipline but I really don't think there will ever be a substitute for an actual lecturer standing in front of a blackboard, no matter how good the voice models get.

I’ve come to recognize education as “reshaping the brain”; something that starts at a microscopic level and gradually builds. Very much like exercise gradually reshapes the body. Graduates are expected to *think* differently. AI often leads to students avoiding the necessary mental exercise