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Comment by peppertree | Hacker News Reader

If you have ever worked with children you will realize vast majority of them lack the willpower to learn new things and seek out answers. A good teacher can provide the social accountability and guide them, but it's not something you can put on auto pilot with AI.

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This is the crux of the problem in my opinion.

Children look to adults as role models for what to learn and why. We already know that children respond better to role models who have similar ethnicities and backgrounds to them, let alone being the same species.

AI cannot and will never be able to provide this motivation to learn, which is what kids actually need, because it is not human.

> AI cannot and will never be able to provide this motivation to learn, which is what kids actually need, because it is not human.

We hear all the time about digital addiction, gamification, FB, Tiktok, etc. Addiction is arguably more difficult to achieve than motivation. AI will be able to motivate people just fine

Using modern digital gamification to reinforce learning outcomes, a-la TikTok , will probably produce a generation of absolutely brilliant, weird psychopaths.

At the same time, I think asking a person or a parent requires much more will power than asking a computer (for whatever reason -- but part of it is just that a teacher might not have as much time as a child needs/wants). I do agree the social accountability of a good one-on-one teacher is the most ideal -- for me I got that from my parents/siblings. But lots of folks don't have access to that, and school systems don't have the resources to supply that, so maybe AI might be a good middle ground.

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