Comment by paulsutter
12 hours ago
Nonsense
There will however be a gigantic gulf between kids who use AI to learn vs those who use AI to aid learning
Objective review of Alpha school in Austin:
12 hours ago
Nonsense
There will however be a gigantic gulf between kids who use AI to learn vs those who use AI to aid learning
Objective review of Alpha school in Austin:
> There will however be a gigantic gulf between kids who use AI to learn vs those who use AI to aid learning
yeah, but not the way you are thinking
you think the rich are going to abolish a traditional education for their kids and dump them in front of a prompt text box for 8 years
that'll just be for the poor and (formerly) middle-class kids
In the rosiest view, the rich give their children private tutors (and always have), and now the poor can give their children private tutors too, in the form of AIs. More realistically, what the poor get is something which looks superficially like a private tutor, yet instead of accelerating and deepening learning, it is one that allows the child to skip understanding entirely. Which, from a cynical point of view, suits the rich just fine...
I think what?
This is absolutely not an objective review. The person who wrote this is a very particular type of person who Alpha School appeals strongly towards. I'm not saying anything in particular is wrong with the review, but calling it unbiased is incorrect.
What is the distinction between using "AI to learn" and using "AI to aid learning?"
Imagine a tutor that stays with you as long as you need for every concept of math, instead of the class moving on without you and that compounding over years.
Rather than 1 teacher for 30 students, 1 teacher can scale to 30 students to better address Bloom's 2 sigma problem, which discovered students in a 1:2 ratio with a tutor full time ended up in the 98% of students reliably.
LLMs are capable of delivering this outright, or providing serious inroads to it for those capable and willing to do the work beyond going through the motions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_sigma_problem (1984)
> Imagine a tutor that stays with you as long as you need for every concept of math, instead of the class moving on without you and that compounding over years.
I remember when I was at the uni, the topics I learned the best were the ones I put effort to study by myself at home. Having a tutor with me all the time will actually make me do the bare minimum as there always were other things to do and I would love to skip the hard parts and move forward.
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I don't think this answers the question in the comment you're replying to.
Calling the Alpha school "AI" or even "AI to aid learning" is a massive stretch. I've read that article and nothing in there says AI to me. Data collection and on-demand computer-based instruction, sure.
I don't disagree with your premise, but I don't think that article backs it up at all.