This seems a likely scenario for the 2030s, college & high schools and … prisons. (Many feel govt schools are already prisons).
Ai tutors helping home schoolers, and cramming for higher SAT scores, seems more likely, first. I’m already asking grok (free X ) rather than googling stuff, my son like chatGPT.
I would first invest in English as a Second Language for a personalized tutor, for the user interface teacher-student experience. More folks spend more personal cash on learning English than any other subject.
Ai that supports humans committing suicide or other crimes, and who pays, will be an increasing problem, until resolved, and then we’ll be living with the bad & good of that legal resolution.
I work in this area in real life (AI and education), and based on my experience the project described in this post sounds like the second wave of AI penetration, but we're still in the beginning of the first.
The low hanging fruit for AI right now is in scaling help for teachers and admins, and less so for students. The first reason why is that using AI in the educational sector with student information has a lot of thorny PII issues that are especially difficult if you are trying to anonymize visual and audio data. And many schools have data sharing agreements that prohibit the use of student facing AI tools so any new product there is no bueno until existing contracts get re-worked, which usually happens in 2-5 year cycles.
The second reason is that A LOT of school districts have boards where there's a minimum viable minority that can veto the use of AI tools because they disagree with its premise. A lot of these districts will eventually come around, particularly when its seen that they reduce overhead and improve outcomes at low cost, but they're going to wait and observe other school districts winning before they jump on board. These changes happen one local election at a time.
And the third reason is that the unit economics for something like this just aren't there yet. AI video generation can't be done at a scale that would support this in a way that schools can afford. Funding for software in schools right now is at a big trough because the COVID money just ran out, so EdTech is going through a bust cycle right now.
HOWEVER.........
Your typical school district is overworked and understaffed, and there's lots of time-consuming operational problems that they face that off-the-shelf AI can handle quite well if it's built into existing infrastructure. Scheduling, lesson planning, content creation, learning measurement and teacher feedback are all areas that (charitably) operate at 1/2 of what they could be because there's no time or capacity for schools to do it very well and AI simply creates capacity for these tasks where it did not exist before.
And using AI to assist with operational problems avoids almost all of the political issues that would slow it down if you stuck it in front of students, so schools are much more eager to embrace solutions in these areas than direct teaching.
I wish I was either younger, or a billionaire. I would invest my time and money in using AI to completely reform every aspect of education. Thanks for leading the way, Arnold.
So we’re in a classroom with pretend classmates? I am excited about AI for learning but I would hate this world of pretend people. That’s just me though.
Agree. And human students are not so easily classified. Why not have a small group of human students interacting with each other guided by an AI tutor?
AI is amazing right now, as bad as it is, as easy as it is to mistrust it and disbelieve it. It's going to be incredible in a few years, more transformative than the Internet was in the 1990s, or railroads and telegraphs were in the 1800s.
Just as porn was some of the first uses for photography and movies and the internet, so it will be for AI. The big puzzle for me is, will it put OnlyFans out of business?
3D printed guns are going to render most anti-gun laws superfluous. Will AI treat obscenity laws the same?
Ai will be a wonderful tool for learning for students who have intention to learn. Ask Claude what he recommends for using Ai to teach students who have no intention to learn, students who really just want a credential, or students who are just marking time because they are college age.
Give them a four year Rip van Winkle pill, and when they wake up, give them a certificate. Let the market determine its worth.
I have some sympathy for students who have been led astray by the system. But four years is plenty of time to have learned of their mistake. I remember reading of someone who had borrowed some outrageous sum — $140,000 springs to mind — to get a graduate degree in puppetry, and was outraged that he couldn't get a job. Naturally he blamed the system, but he was only half right.
I believed my recruiter, had a great time spending 3½ years on a carrier, but I knew within six months the military was not my cup of tea. I didn't blame the system for it. All the warning signs were there, my friends told me don't do it, but I'm the one who made the mistake. If I could have quit after six months, maybe I would have, but I didn't have the choice. Students do. My sympathy dwindles after the first year. It dwindles even faster when they support "Queers for Palestine."
I only had 6 weeks on a carrier, 3 of which were in port at Yokosuka, Japan, in 1975, as a part of midshipman training (Naval Academy). It was great, but 24/7 under USCMJ was far harder for me to be happy. I could and did get out after 2 years, before my Commitment.
I’m pretty sure porn and first person shooters can be gamified enough to get 10-20% of edu lesson, 4-10 minutes worth, every hour of play. So those uninterested in learning might well spend hours inefficiently learning, per hr,. But actually getting a lot each week.
Plus ai tutor / companions / baby sitters.
Society needs to segregate the disruptive kids away from the others.
Must have been my ship, USS Midway, 73-76. One set of midshipmen went on mail buoy watch and came back with the buoy and mail.
One of the worst aspects of government in schools is confining all kids in school until 18, by law, then putting so much effort into convincing them to stay in school for four more years and racking up so much debt. I doubt I retained more than 10% of what I learned K-12 after the tests were over, and I suspect the only real benefit from most of it was practice in reading. I remember when my parents bought an encyclopedia. I started reading the first volume, probably never made it to the Bs, but I wanted to read, and learned more on my own than the schools taught. Other kids probably learned more from delivering papers or working in their family stores, but The Law takes a dim view of a lot of that.
Our current factory-style mass production schools treat kids as all the same. Most kids aren't stupid, but when the system doesn't give them much choice, they take out their frustration on the system and clog the process for everyone else. If AI can individualize learning and adapt to different abilities and interests, it will teach more, faster, and just might teach more independence and self-respect too.
The worst thing government can do right now is suffocate AI in the name of protecting us from it. So of course that is what they will try to do. Luckily, government is slow enough that they will always be reacting, and new tech generally moves fast enough to stay one step ahead.
Pretty sure it was the Midway, tho I think other middies were on the Kittyhawk.
One of my strongest memories was of the jets taking off, full power basting while held and then the catapult making them rush forward. To the end of the carrier flight runway, then dipping below out of sight for a second before rising up, kinda majestically.
One time the jet took off, dipped, but then was gone. Sunk. I’m not sure but I don’t think they recovered the body. This was summer ‘75.
324 Yen-USD exchange rate.
Those who do a lot of reading get most of what a good K-12 Ed gives. I read all the time. Rob H read a lot and still reads a lot. AK clearly reads a lot, often by the time I’m done reading his linked stuff he’s already got a new day’s worth of links.
Personalized ai might be especially good for introverts, and likely good for non-normal learning, faster or slower.
I too remember watching takeoffs. F-4s with their afterburners were like looking into a pizza oven.
Summer 75 was right after Frequent Wind, the evacuation of Saigon. Being young and dumb, we kept hoping the North Vietnamese would shoot at the evacuation helos so we could get combat pay ($10/month, tax-free pay, and free postage!). What made it suddenly real was having 3000 refugees sleeping in the hangar bay, and some were trying to give away paper money they’d brought in suitcases; it brought home how unprepared they were, made them human, not just refugees.
I remember one F-4 takeoff which disappeared off the bow, but did recover and climbed like a scalded cat. The only losses I remember were an A-6 crashed, then the helo sent after it crashed. Not a good day, but when they brought the six bodies back, they kept them in the meat reefer until we got back to port. The jokes would not stop. “This must have been a chief, it’s so tough.” “Mystery meat” took on new meaning.
The only thing I miss about the military was the humor. Thin skins did not survive long.
This seems a likely scenario for the 2030s, college & high schools and … prisons. (Many feel govt schools are already prisons).
Ai tutors helping home schoolers, and cramming for higher SAT scores, seems more likely, first. I’m already asking grok (free X ) rather than googling stuff, my son like chatGPT.
I would first invest in English as a Second Language for a personalized tutor, for the user interface teacher-student experience. More folks spend more personal cash on learning English than any other subject.
Ai that supports humans committing suicide or other crimes, and who pays, will be an increasing problem, until resolved, and then we’ll be living with the bad & good of that legal resolution.
I work in this area in real life (AI and education), and based on my experience the project described in this post sounds like the second wave of AI penetration, but we're still in the beginning of the first.
The low hanging fruit for AI right now is in scaling help for teachers and admins, and less so for students. The first reason why is that using AI in the educational sector with student information has a lot of thorny PII issues that are especially difficult if you are trying to anonymize visual and audio data. And many schools have data sharing agreements that prohibit the use of student facing AI tools so any new product there is no bueno until existing contracts get re-worked, which usually happens in 2-5 year cycles.
The second reason is that A LOT of school districts have boards where there's a minimum viable minority that can veto the use of AI tools because they disagree with its premise. A lot of these districts will eventually come around, particularly when its seen that they reduce overhead and improve outcomes at low cost, but they're going to wait and observe other school districts winning before they jump on board. These changes happen one local election at a time.
And the third reason is that the unit economics for something like this just aren't there yet. AI video generation can't be done at a scale that would support this in a way that schools can afford. Funding for software in schools right now is at a big trough because the COVID money just ran out, so EdTech is going through a bust cycle right now.
HOWEVER.........
Your typical school district is overworked and understaffed, and there's lots of time-consuming operational problems that they face that off-the-shelf AI can handle quite well if it's built into existing infrastructure. Scheduling, lesson planning, content creation, learning measurement and teacher feedback are all areas that (charitably) operate at 1/2 of what they could be because there's no time or capacity for schools to do it very well and AI simply creates capacity for these tasks where it did not exist before.
And using AI to assist with operational problems avoids almost all of the political issues that would slow it down if you stuck it in front of students, so schools are much more eager to embrace solutions in these areas than direct teaching.
I love this project and any like it aimed at creating interactive, stimulating tutoring. “Diamond Age” here we come…
I wish I was either younger, or a billionaire. I would invest my time and money in using AI to completely reform every aspect of education. Thanks for leading the way, Arnold.
This sounds terrible. Here’s an idea - get 15-20
students in a room and have them talk about interesting books. I do it twice a year!
I am already building AI into my home schooling and micro school project under development. It can’t be any other way.
So we’re in a classroom with pretend classmates? I am excited about AI for learning but I would hate this world of pretend people. That’s just me though.
It's not meant to replace the outdoors, it's meant to replace the ChatGPT text box
Agree. And human students are not so easily classified. Why not have a small group of human students interacting with each other guided by an AI tutor?
The way I see it you could easily make it multiplayer and still keep some of the AI students for demonstration and roughly structuring the seminar.
Fantastic! (Not literally). Realistic. (Literally). Please keep us posted on your progress.
AI is amazing right now, as bad as it is, as easy as it is to mistrust it and disbelieve it. It's going to be incredible in a few years, more transformative than the Internet was in the 1990s, or railroads and telegraphs were in the 1800s.
Just as porn was some of the first uses for photography and movies and the internet, so it will be for AI. The big puzzle for me is, will it put OnlyFans out of business?
3D printed guns are going to render most anti-gun laws superfluous. Will AI treat obscenity laws the same?
Great idea, is anyone working on this?
Ai will be a wonderful tool for learning for students who have intention to learn. Ask Claude what he recommends for using Ai to teach students who have no intention to learn, students who really just want a credential, or students who are just marking time because they are college age.
Give them a four year Rip van Winkle pill, and when they wake up, give them a certificate. Let the market determine its worth.
I have some sympathy for students who have been led astray by the system. But four years is plenty of time to have learned of their mistake. I remember reading of someone who had borrowed some outrageous sum — $140,000 springs to mind — to get a graduate degree in puppetry, and was outraged that he couldn't get a job. Naturally he blamed the system, but he was only half right.
I believed my recruiter, had a great time spending 3½ years on a carrier, but I knew within six months the military was not my cup of tea. I didn't blame the system for it. All the warning signs were there, my friends told me don't do it, but I'm the one who made the mistake. If I could have quit after six months, maybe I would have, but I didn't have the choice. Students do. My sympathy dwindles after the first year. It dwindles even faster when they support "Queers for Palestine."
I only had 6 weeks on a carrier, 3 of which were in port at Yokosuka, Japan, in 1975, as a part of midshipman training (Naval Academy). It was great, but 24/7 under USCMJ was far harder for me to be happy. I could and did get out after 2 years, before my Commitment.
I’m pretty sure porn and first person shooters can be gamified enough to get 10-20% of edu lesson, 4-10 minutes worth, every hour of play. So those uninterested in learning might well spend hours inefficiently learning, per hr,. But actually getting a lot each week.
Plus ai tutor / companions / baby sitters.
Society needs to segregate the disruptive kids away from the others.
Must have been my ship, USS Midway, 73-76. One set of midshipmen went on mail buoy watch and came back with the buoy and mail.
One of the worst aspects of government in schools is confining all kids in school until 18, by law, then putting so much effort into convincing them to stay in school for four more years and racking up so much debt. I doubt I retained more than 10% of what I learned K-12 after the tests were over, and I suspect the only real benefit from most of it was practice in reading. I remember when my parents bought an encyclopedia. I started reading the first volume, probably never made it to the Bs, but I wanted to read, and learned more on my own than the schools taught. Other kids probably learned more from delivering papers or working in their family stores, but The Law takes a dim view of a lot of that.
Our current factory-style mass production schools treat kids as all the same. Most kids aren't stupid, but when the system doesn't give them much choice, they take out their frustration on the system and clog the process for everyone else. If AI can individualize learning and adapt to different abilities and interests, it will teach more, faster, and just might teach more independence and self-respect too.
The worst thing government can do right now is suffocate AI in the name of protecting us from it. So of course that is what they will try to do. Luckily, government is slow enough that they will always be reacting, and new tech generally moves fast enough to stay one step ahead.
Pretty sure it was the Midway, tho I think other middies were on the Kittyhawk.
One of my strongest memories was of the jets taking off, full power basting while held and then the catapult making them rush forward. To the end of the carrier flight runway, then dipping below out of sight for a second before rising up, kinda majestically.
One time the jet took off, dipped, but then was gone. Sunk. I’m not sure but I don’t think they recovered the body. This was summer ‘75.
324 Yen-USD exchange rate.
Those who do a lot of reading get most of what a good K-12 Ed gives. I read all the time. Rob H read a lot and still reads a lot. AK clearly reads a lot, often by the time I’m done reading his linked stuff he’s already got a new day’s worth of links.
Personalized ai might be especially good for introverts, and likely good for non-normal learning, faster or slower.
Kittyhawk was there later.
I too remember watching takeoffs. F-4s with their afterburners were like looking into a pizza oven.
Summer 75 was right after Frequent Wind, the evacuation of Saigon. Being young and dumb, we kept hoping the North Vietnamese would shoot at the evacuation helos so we could get combat pay ($10/month, tax-free pay, and free postage!). What made it suddenly real was having 3000 refugees sleeping in the hangar bay, and some were trying to give away paper money they’d brought in suitcases; it brought home how unprepared they were, made them human, not just refugees.
I remember one F-4 takeoff which disappeared off the bow, but did recover and climbed like a scalded cat. The only losses I remember were an A-6 crashed, then the helo sent after it crashed. Not a good day, but when they brought the six bodies back, they kept them in the meat reefer until we got back to port. The jokes would not stop. “This must have been a chief, it’s so tough.” “Mystery meat” took on new meaning.
The only thing I miss about the military was the humor. Thin skins did not survive long.
For students who don’t actually want to learn, Claude recommends a nice video game to play.
Sad, isn't it?