Very happy to see a reference to The Diamond Age. Even in that story, AI goes haywire, because (spoiler) the Primer is stolen by a street urchin and given to his sister, and it adapts accordingly. Great story, whatever you think of AI.
Henderson's advice to imitate those one rung up from you on the ladder is good for those one rung up, too: it gives them the useful discipline of being a role model for someone they can still easily empathize with, because the memory of being at that stage is still fresh.
This is why Lancastrian teaching is so good and important to do more often. Not only does teaching what you just learned cement the mastery of it in your own mind, but you may be a more effective teacher of the material than someone who mastered it long ago, because you still remember what it was like not to know that material, and the old master may not.
'So why not have a plush chatbot teddy bear that converses with the child 24-7? '
Why not just stick your kid in front of the TV all day? I'm sure those kids will have great vocabulary skills.
The most revealing issue with AI right now is the hubris of wildly ignorant social commentators. Who actually thinks that the most important part of a parent/child relationship is building basic vocabulary? apparently some people do because they can't distinguish marginal gains from core gains.
'In practice, that means energy and key commodities, including the metals used in batteries and semiconductors.'
So AI is going to disrupt everything!!!! (note except resource extraction and use, that will totally be unaffected and you can just get free rents by buying generic stuff now and holding it- which would entirely violate the EMH that is cited in another portion of the piece as a reason to behave a different way).
The economics of this piece gets an F. There is no consistency to the analysis, and no understanding of price action. If education flattens the curve then that means marginal differences will increase in price, not decrease. If you can't differentiate between an employee who would have scored well without doing 300 repetitions of the same vocab test and one who desperately needed every last one to get a higher mark then you will be stuck with random (at best, the bottom if your competition can sort them any better than random) employees. Any proxy that correlates with better outcomes will be fought over tooth an nail, not ignored.
The plush toy chatbot is fine, but it's the smartphone with all known answers that will make kids dumber. Instead of remembering most facts, the kids will just google/ask HAL (or Teddy), and get an answer good enough to be called right by vast majority of teachers.
They don't learn to know the answers. They don't even learn to ask good questions - they wait for teachers or bosses to tell them the questions.
On the other hand, a far more active English as a Second Language tutor app could really help those non-native speakers who want to go to college. Most colleges in the world support English, and many college students speak English, all over the world.
I'm still missing the HAL level of conversation, but chatGPT is getting much closer. Some tweets estimate it's costing open.ai some $3 million/day, like a billion/year.
A smart chatbot certainly has merit to fill in some gaps or learn a new language but 24/7 seems exaggerated in many ways. I would hope a kid was with other people most waking hours. A bit of downtime might be good too.
I agree we often forget or discount the importance of copying but ranking the importance of innovation vs copying seems a bit like deciding whether the chicken or egg came first.
I can't say how Rheingold thought it would work out but I'd say the benefits of smart mob are present and strong. Now if you want to argue the harms and hazards are greater, that might also be true.
"And your young lady’s illustrated Primer won’t be feeding your child Critical Race Theory unless you ask it to!"
That depends on who programmed it!
Very happy to see a reference to The Diamond Age. Even in that story, AI goes haywire, because (spoiler) the Primer is stolen by a street urchin and given to his sister, and it adapts accordingly. Great story, whatever you think of AI.
LOL! I honestly did not see your comment until I had posted mine.
Henderson's advice to imitate those one rung up from you on the ladder is good for those one rung up, too: it gives them the useful discipline of being a role model for someone they can still easily empathize with, because the memory of being at that stage is still fresh.
This is why Lancastrian teaching is so good and important to do more often. Not only does teaching what you just learned cement the mastery of it in your own mind, but you may be a more effective teacher of the material than someone who mastered it long ago, because you still remember what it was like not to know that material, and the old master may not.
'So why not have a plush chatbot teddy bear that converses with the child 24-7? '
Why not just stick your kid in front of the TV all day? I'm sure those kids will have great vocabulary skills.
The most revealing issue with AI right now is the hubris of wildly ignorant social commentators. Who actually thinks that the most important part of a parent/child relationship is building basic vocabulary? apparently some people do because they can't distinguish marginal gains from core gains.
'In practice, that means energy and key commodities, including the metals used in batteries and semiconductors.'
So AI is going to disrupt everything!!!! (note except resource extraction and use, that will totally be unaffected and you can just get free rents by buying generic stuff now and holding it- which would entirely violate the EMH that is cited in another portion of the piece as a reason to behave a different way).
The economics of this piece gets an F. There is no consistency to the analysis, and no understanding of price action. If education flattens the curve then that means marginal differences will increase in price, not decrease. If you can't differentiate between an employee who would have scored well without doing 300 repetitions of the same vocab test and one who desperately needed every last one to get a higher mark then you will be stuck with random (at best, the bottom if your competition can sort them any better than random) employees. Any proxy that correlates with better outcomes will be fought over tooth an nail, not ignored.
“ warns not to over-imitate the most successful people”, not to mention survivor bias reasons.
The plush toy chatbot is fine, but it's the smartphone with all known answers that will make kids dumber. Instead of remembering most facts, the kids will just google/ask HAL (or Teddy), and get an answer good enough to be called right by vast majority of teachers.
They don't learn to know the answers. They don't even learn to ask good questions - they wait for teachers or bosses to tell them the questions.
On the other hand, a far more active English as a Second Language tutor app could really help those non-native speakers who want to go to college. Most colleges in the world support English, and many college students speak English, all over the world.
I'm still missing the HAL level of conversation, but chatGPT is getting much closer. Some tweets estimate it's costing open.ai some $3 million/day, like a billion/year.
I'm a data scientist, and I wrote a post about ChatGPT and AI in order to organize my thoughts on the topics. I think I disagree with Sam Hammond, and I'd be really curious to see what folks here think: https://ipsherman.substack.com/p/an-opinion-about-ai-chatgpt-and-more
Before Neil Stephenson there was Harry Harrison, and Harrison made a point about AI-tutor-toys for kids* in a short (truly short) story: https://www.deviantart.com/aegiandyad/art/I-Always-Do-What-Teddy-Says-259013944
*Two different endings to this story were published, one of which was forced by an editor and disliked by Harrison, but I'm not sure which is which.
A smart chatbot certainly has merit to fill in some gaps or learn a new language but 24/7 seems exaggerated in many ways. I would hope a kid was with other people most waking hours. A bit of downtime might be good too.
I agree we often forget or discount the importance of copying but ranking the importance of innovation vs copying seems a bit like deciding whether the chicken or egg came first.
I can't say how Rheingold thought it would work out but I'd say the benefits of smart mob are present and strong. Now if you want to argue the harms and hazards are greater, that might also be true.
"And your young lady’s illustrated Primer won’t be feeding your child Critical Race Theory unless you ask it to!"
That seems a bit naive to me.