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> However I think the future of education in general is very bleak. When we have plummeting scores for the PISA exam across the world [1], I fear people will get dumber and dumber.

This is exactly what AI companies need, so that's development should be celebrated. There are two paths to capture the value that's currently wasted on paying people:

1. Build a system that's superior to nearly all people.

2. Make people worse, so even an inferior system is superior to them.

Getting AI into the classrooms and degrading the educational system are important for path #2.

It's good not to put all your eggs in one basket, so I'm glad the AI industry is pursuing a multi-pronged strategy against their competitors. Who cares about the waste and destruction for humanity, as long the investors get good returns?

Paul Graham would be proud...

Ah, yes! The classic Socrates play.

Learning to write will either help all the humans by extending their capabilities, or will make them stupid -and dependent on writing.

Socrates: It will definitely make them stupid, and I am suspicious of this new witchcraft.

Maybe he was right, but I’m kind of enjoying having both writing and AI around.

PISA exam scores are a lagging indicator with many years of lag. I doubt the reason of that is AI. Mobile phones? Social media? Any other multi causal reason (poor eating, anxiety, low testosterone, whatever), most likely, but not AI.

People have been using chatbots to cheat on schoolwork for a few years now

May as well introduce another factor to make it even worse ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Has everyone memoryholed the COVID Pandemic?

That wasn't a proximal cause.

Says who? Children/students effectively lost months of education and socialization in their formative years. They've been warning about this before AI even entered the picture.

I'm sure AI is going to do even more damage but COVID was an important factor here as well.

Months out of years. It shouldn't be as bad as it is. Plus the US had no lockdowns and still has the drop.

We had lockdowns.

If you think that’s a lagging indicator, the many reports from teachers and from self reports from students and even adults trying to learn also point in the same direction. See what’s happening with exams and homework exercises.

Education itself has lost access to the tools that were making it cheaper and easier to teach.

Learning something is a side effect of overcoming friction. AI removes friction.

Doesn’t that depend on the friction?

I’m using ChatGPT to learn German. I can immediately adjust its responses and language level(it says I’m at A2/B1) and tell it how I want to study.

I find it to be a far superior tool than anything else I’ve used.

What happens when the big AI labs go public and must start earning a profit for investors. The price increases 10x¹ and it suddenly becomes excessively expensive for ~80 of society to access.

If education is all dependent on the use of AI, then we're cutting off everyone but the most wealthy from access to education. Seems very regressive to me.

1. This is an assumption but I think it's fairly well established that current LLM prices are far below operating costs of inference, so prices will go up, maybe not 10x but some multiple > 1

Here’s a counter analysis - would you see the difference between your individual, motivated efforts to learn vs the experience of learning at scale, for all other students ?

There’s a lot of individual anecdotal responses that people come up with in these threads, and I’m happy for the positive examples.

I do think people are capable of extrapolating, especially since all of us have the experience of seeing students wanting to escape studies as kids.

It’s identical to the gym problem, everyone wants to be healthy and fit, but the effort sucks and we avoid it.

Education at scale is the same issue. We basically nurture/force crops of students over a 20 year time span.

Education is not for helping a motivated person to learn a language, it's for teaching an entire population on many different subjects.

The people who wanted and could learn by themselves always had the possibility to do it with books, audio and videos, and AI just add a layer of interactivity on top. Self-learning never replaced standard education, even in the high bourgeois class because they answer to different problematics.

There is a massive difference between a person learning a topic they have an actual interest in, and someone who is forced into a learning system alongside their peers. Especially since we're talking about kids.

ChatGPT might work for you learning German because you have a reason to care about learning it, but for most kids the goal of school is getting good grades, not learning.

Sorry for the tangent, but if you don't mind can you explain more how you're using it effectively? Are you speaking using "Live" mode or typing? Is it remembering and planning lessons for you or is that on you to do?

I had already studied German as a teenager(I’m 40 now) and I speak Swedish which is a bit similar.

The first thing I did was ask it to continuously adjust its difficulty level based on my replies(A1-C1), it told me I’m in the A2-B1 span. Then I formalised my training on Akkusativ and Dativ, which is basically A2 level.

I have structured the lessons like this:

Every day I wake up with a new lesson. It starts with the nominativ/dativ/akkusativ table. Now I’ve also added wechselpräpositionen including translation to Swedish. It then gives me 5 sentences for me to fill out. If I have time and energy, I continue the exercises throughout the day.

This allows me to continue the practice at my own pace and at my own time.

I only type and read. I can already pronounce quite well but this may be the next step.

> When we have plummeting scores for the PISA exam across the world...

COVID generation.

The pandemic was barely 3 years ago, and stretched over 1-3 years depending on where you lived.

It will likely have a material impact on most developmental statistics for another decade.

The pitch is learning useful things (if not skills) but we end up using schools as storage for kids, for indoctrination and as a business model. The ratio gradually changes.

We end up with shit results and where they arent shit students are rushed though as if to prevent them from thinking about the materials.

We have libraries full of unused education formulas. Some 2000 years old. Then there is nutrition, sleep and other work/rest ratios, physical health.

How expect results without learning to teach and learning to learn?

Onto what should one anchor learnings if the suroundings are always the same?

I never hear a word about spaced repetition in school. Its so basic i must conclude they knew nothing about what should have been their area of expertise.

When things get bad enough we will [finally] have reason to improve.

Maybe the great work of Salman Khan is merely a hint?

We know about those things and they don’t work the way you have laid out. For example spaced repetition is ideal for memorizing words, but less useful for working through a math problem or creative writing (relatively speaking.)

MOOCs were something I personally hoped were the solution to scaling education. However it didn’t work out, with courses having single digit completion rates.

This is for free, high quality, immaculate pedigree, learning material available at any time and any place.

Years of additional research had to be done to figure out how to raise completion rates, which creates more complexity on systems and delivery.

Unfortunately, that improvement is now moot, because LLMs obviate the friction and effort.

The point of doing a homework exercise is to provide learning friction for students.

LLMs obviate friction.

I would add Bloom’s 2 sigma problem to the mix.

It is possible to learn things. People try all kinds of things without knowing if it is even possible. If you know it is you dont get to pretend it cant be done. You go figure out what has been proposed, what has been tried, you do the research, document the results, you fail and try again.

Not to long ago i wouldnt have believed what LLMs "learned" today, surely we can make a similar effort with humans if we want to.

Im not suggesting we go back to beating kids with a stick but there might be something equally effective. Lots of unskilled labor is practically a life time of torture. If you ask me we shoyld gradually introduce the torture in stead of making it a surprise. There are better people to ask.

About education: the people who need the most a teacher are the person who will be hurt the more by transitioning to AI education