We should be wary of all new technology until it’s proven to be a benefit to society.
Nope. Any nation that thinks like this will be outcompeted by more tech-positive nations in the long-term. It's on the luddites to demonstrate evidence of harm, if they want some use of technology banned.
But then we're told we can't put the genie back in the bottle, it's too late, so we just have to suck it up and deal with it.
There's nothing preventing us from taking a more measured approach to new technology other than choice.
Here's one study from last year (1000 students) [1]. They showed that improved outcomes with AI are short term, and likely a result of AI doing the work for the student. Their methodology involved a test without the use of AI at a later date, and one of the groups who used AI tested much worse than the control group who did not use AI during learning.
Moreover, a tertiary group that used a specially trained AI for tutoring showed no improvement in testing outcomes over the control group.
[1] Bastani, H., Bastani, O., Sungu, A., Ge, H., Kabakçı, Ö., & Mariman, R. (2025). "Generative AI Without Guardrails Can Harm Learning: Evidence from High School Mathematics." PNAS, 122. PNAS
That's awfully reductive there, champ. Most critiques of AI are based on some combination of observed failings of the technology, observed failings of the tech industry writ large, and healthy skepticism in the face of Yet Another Tech Industry Hype Typhoon. Anyway, the burden of proof isn't on skeptics, it's on the technology and it's proponents, so let's see some receipts before we agree to squander limited public resources on unproven systems yeah?
Most critiques of AI are based on experience with the cheapest AI available a year ago, by midwits unable to recognize that AI's performance on the Putnam, IMO and bar exam makes it far smarter than they are by almost every metric that was traditionally used to measure intelligence.
You don't even need to use AI at all to have valid critiques of it
Plenty of other people are showing its flaws daily by replacing their entire personalities with AI slop
Oh it can do some impressive stuff sure. It is still bad for society
You cannot rationally criticize something if you have no up-to-date knowledge about it.
https://fortune.com/2026/03/14/america-math-and-reading-scor...
They're doing it wrong, just as the incentives in the classroom are wrong (to increase a number showing how many children meet some artificially low standard of competency). The rational debate comes from the hundreds of people who are doing it right on their own. These days, all the top chess players practice with an engine. All the top mathletes use AoPS tools. It's the same across every academic field, and the level at which the top is performing is far beyond what it was before computers were introduced. The amount of effort it would take to teach a barely two year old to read is far beyond what most parents have to give, but with an electronic device patiently saying letter sounds whenever an infant interacts with letters, it's trivial.
Correlation does not necessarily mean causation.
And despite the hype, the jury is still out for how the results are for adults using AI
It is clear that a personal human tutor can achieve incredible results, and almost everybody who has revolutionized any field you might think of is a product of such a system. Scaling that would be immensely valuable to society.
We shouldn't do questionable shit just because it's easier