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Comment by d--b | Hacker News Reader

Fast-food for education.

In my opinion, the whole AI trend is another round of industrialization making low-quality options for the poor.

- You're too poor for meat? Here is some hyper-processed, growth-hormoned burgers.

- You're too poor for a proper house? Here's a shitty pre-fab with walls so thin you can smash through them with your bare fists.

- You're too poor for fancy clothes? Here's a Bangladesh-sweatshopped T-shirt that won't make it past 3 washing cycles.

- You're too poor for school? Here's a computer with an LLM on it.

You could say that at least poor people have houses, steaks and education, but in the end, it's just a way of paying people less, cause they don't need much to send their kids to college anymore...

In any case, you can be sure that Harvard kids won't get any of that crap.

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Based on my understanding, the cost-quality ratio of most higher education in the US isn't exactly great either. Students from poorer families taking massive student debt to study something that doesn't even get them much better income is not a good outcome, yet it's a reality for many.

In addition to that, think in most fields there's an increasing need for education that is more flexible than multi-year degrees, simply because requirements for skills change so fast these days.

The American model of higher education focuses too much on teaching and too little on self-study. This makes the degrees more expensive and less useful. You need to hire more teachers if you want to cover every required topic in a class. And then the degree only signals that the graduate can learn complex things if properly supervised. It's less certain that the graduate can learn new things on their own, which future employers might want to know.

> The American model of higher education focuses too much on teaching and too little on self-study

As an American in higher education, that has not been my experience. I spend most of my time teaching myself, and honestly, I like it that way. Very rarely has a professor explained anything to me outside of a video lecture.

Do you plan your studies in terms of classes or exams?

Do you have mandatory exams with no corresponding class at all? Just a list of books to read and the name of the professor responsible for the exam. And maybe, if you're lucky, some related lectures every 2 or 3 years.

Do you have regular (monthly?) exam days where you can take any exam offered by the department. Both standalone exams and exams replacing classes.

Education gets pretty expensive, if you need a class with lectures (and maybe even teaching assistants) for every topic you want to offer.

Not every cheap product has to be low quality. In particular, lots of products are used by poor and rich alike.

Everyone uses the same smartphones (the poor people use phones about as good as rich people used less than a decade ago), everyone drinks the same soft drinks, everyone takes the same cold medicine (the generic ones are pretty good), everyone uses the same social media, the same operating systems (even the richest Microsoft customers have to put up with their adware)

Yes, but is there any evidence that this sort of thing would be anything but low quality? I'm friends with an unusual number of college professors. Every single one looks at announcements like this and tears their hair out. "If only I had a chat bot that could act as a TA when students have questions about my lectures" is so far down the list of things they'd like to have to solve problems.

> "If only I had a chat bot that could act as a TA when students have questions about my lectures" is so far down the list of things they'd like to have to solve problems

I care about their problems a little bit, but I naturally care about the problems of the students a lot more. The point of colleges is to make it easier for the students to learn, not for the teachers to teach. The teachers are a means to an end.

If colleges announce that they will use AI as TAs and the students tear their hair out, then I will worry.

Pretty sure, LLMs even at current stage would be better teachers than at least 20% bottom shitty teachers out there. But I like your analogy! Please tell me where to get shirts that last longer then 3 washing cycles

I'm in the UK. I buy the cheapest t-shirts in bulk from Primark. They're still going.

I bought them about 7 years ago for 1 pound each. I think they're 2.5 pounds now.

I really don't like this take. Your aversion to the use of LLMs in education just shows a lack of imagination.

1. LLMs are in their infancy

2. LLMs are better at explaining things than A LOT of teachers.

3. LLMs don't mistreat/shame students for lack of understanding

If I could get a degree just by chatting with an LLM, I'd do it in a heartbeat. School is about gaining understanding and skills, not something else.

I don't need a human to hold my hand along the way, I need an efficient, fair, and cheap system to prove I know 2+2=4.

Is making things accessible bad?

are things really made accessible? or you create worse things so that poor can think they have access to those things but in fact it's totally different with lots of features cut? I mean, some are catching like smartphone features, but having unreliable ai as educational source compared to a teacher... idk how this would pan out but who knows...

In many cases yes. Elitism is often good, and populism is often bad.

Epic fail, right? Or are we getting gaslighted [1]?

I see no reason that chemical molecules and their reactions cannot be transformed into music. Mathematics, programming, physics could turn into songs and registered to memory better than any other way. A.I. could help with that as an assistant.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/harvard-chatbot-teacher-c...

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