Comment by jordanmeyer
2 days ago
The reality is, most 5 year olds don’t get access to the resources most of us have had while growing up. People are saying, “kids should have human tutors.” Guys, most people in the world don’t have any tutors! What Ello has built and other forms of AI-based tutoring is going to raise the average level of education and literacy in the world. Especially in developing countries. Let individual parents decide what’s best for their kids.
5 year old kids should have enough play time with their peers and develop their social skills, instead of being sat in front of a screen with any kind of content. I feel a parallel between this and people defending short form video saying "but sometimes it's educational!" (it's not).
There's more than enough time in a day for a 5 year old to play with other kids and also spend some time learning.
At that age especially, play with other kids is time spent learning.
Most of them don't get access. So let's hook them up to an insane, unproven, unpredictable autocomplete math equation and entrust it to their development as a human being.
So gross.
Heaven forbid we let poor people use software that helps their kids read.
If they can't afford a tutor, they deserve nothing.
(Am I doing this right?)
Your reaction is based on 3 unproven assertions:
* An AI tutor is a net positive in learning for the subject matter it covers.
* An AI tutor does not cause other harms.
* An AI tutor is going to be cheap enough that someone who cannot afford a human tutor will still be able to afford an AI tutor.
I'm mostly willing to give the benefit of the doubt on the first point, but the third point seems unlikely, and history has given us no shortage of reasons to distrust tech companies on the second point, even if we assume this company can be trusted now.
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there's a big universe of solutions between getting nothing versus getting an AI 'educational' software that could do more harm than good.
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Won't somebody think of the poor people's kids?!
Seriously though, it's great they're going to donate all this compute & tokens to the poor (who by definition can't afford to pay for it).
We could encourage parents to take an active role in tutoring their kids but I guess that's just entirely out of the question?
Nah. Let's have AI do it
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> insane, unproven, unpredictable autocomplete math equation
It won IMO, solved Erdos problems. At what point will you stop saying that?
Also encouraged a guy to kill himself.
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Probably when it stops agreeing with me when I tell it that industrial quantities of garlic salt are an acceptable substitution for coco powder in a chocolate mousse recipe...
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I am sure you must have been to many developing countries to make that statement and are not just talking out of your behind.
But the ground reality is that they don't lack tutors or educators. They lack classrooms, they lack infrastrucutre, they lack nutrition. Solving those problems will actually incrase literacy in the world, not an AI bot.
> But the ground reality is that they don't lack tutors or educators.
As someone from a developing country: you are wrong. Lack of teachers (and especially GOOD teachers) is a big issue. Lack of infrastructure is also an issue, though.
"AI-based tutoring is going to raise the average level of education and literacy in the world"
Without exception every claim made to date about tech boosting educational outcomes has been provably false. As in, adding tech to the education process results in measurably less education, and this finding seems to track across all age cohorts. Furthermore, unless parents have significant education credentials they aren't qualified to make informed decisions on what's best for their kids in this context.
In practice, yes. In theory a machines can do about everything a human can, but better and cheaper.
One of the main constraint for education is available tutor time, see e.g. Bloom's 2 sigma experiment.
Obviously there are many pitfalls to overcome at the moment, but eventually machines will become better teachers than teachers, and not many parents will send their kids to public schools if the kids can learn much faster at home while being happier.
>In practice, yes. In theory a machines can do about everything a human can, but better and cheaper.
It cannot be a human, which is a large part of what humans offer to children.
This seems like a large problem to me.
> In practice, yes. In theory a machines can do about everything a human can, but better and cheaper.
If you could time-travel back to your 5y old self, would you prefer to be taught by AI tutor given the current state o/t art, or taught by whatever teachers you did have when you were 5? (with all the existing hallucination, breaking through guardrails etc problems of current AI in mind)
If you'd have a ~5y old yourself, what would your prefer for your kid?
> One of the main constraint for education is available tutor time, see e.g. Bloom's 2 sigma experiment.
Interesting! Also note a caveat (quoted from Wikipedia):
The phenomenon's associated problem, as described by Bloom, was to "find methods of group instruction as effective as one-to-one tutoring".
Perhaps it would be better to focus on that problem?
> and not many parents will send their kids to public schools if the kids can learn much faster at home while being happier.
How do you see peer-to-peer contact in that scenario? Toddlers on a video conference call hours a day? Physical contact is a basic need for humans. Especially kids.
> eventually machines will become better teachers than teachers
Ah yes: WILL (and although likely, not guaranteed). How about re-evaluate our options & stragegies once that's the case?
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