The issue I have is that people are still trying to shove AI into a pre-AI educational paradigm. And yes, if you introduce AI into a world where people are still trying to teach kids the way that they were taught in the 20th century, AI looks like a threat because it allows kids to cheat, both testing and themselves. But we have the option to stop trying to teach kids the way that they were taught in the 20th century, which I think people here are fundamentally not understanding.
It's an old book now, but Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age includes the vision that we should have for education. We literally have the tools today to build his fictional "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer." What he envisioned was not that far off from an iPad with a Claude subscription where Claude has specific goals for the conversation. It's not teachers lecturing a class, it's individualized education where an AI teaches students at their own pace using their own interests. And built into AI is the ability for precocious kids to go beyond the curriculum, either on tangents or to more advanced subjects. This is impossible in a world where a teacher is trying to shepherd dozens of students through a curriculum as a group.
In the 2010s, we got some of the way there with Khan Academy. It was genuinely new that a student could rewatch something until it clicked rather than having to digest a lecture and have any question that didn't immediately spring to mind go unanswered. AI offers the possibility to go a step beyond this. Instead of rewatching the exact same content, AI can present it to the student in multiple ways based on a student's confusion and keep explaining it until a topic clicks. It can find examples of things that a student finds interesting to show how what they're learning isn't just theoretical. If a student likes space, the AI can discuss how the trig concepts they're learning apply to the Artemis II mission. If they like sports, it could apply the same concepts to tennis. Students in literary classes could read different books according to their interests while AI ensures that they understand the same sorts of concepts while discussing them. By customizing based on the specific curiosity of the student, it can make learning far more engaging and actually fun.
To address your #2, schools should be working with Anthropic, OpenAI and Google to shape a new personalized paradigm of educating students. They should be working out deals that give access to AI to their entire district. If I were heading the Department of Education, I would go a step further and get companies to bid on a contract to put their AI in the hands of every public school child in America. A version of the AI where teachers input their curriculum into the AI and students work through it with the AI, either alone or in small groups and the AI reports back to teachers so they can intervene where they are most needed would allow school districts with staffing shortages to serve more students more efficiently and with better results.
Sometimes it feels like our current system of education is only secondarily concerned with students actually learning and the primary concern is testing students to sort them into different tiers to be absorbed into different strata of our workforce. AI does compromise this sorting process to some extent. But if we can get back to the true mission of education and think creatively to deploy AI to best educate students, we have the potential to transform education like never before. What if we don't need to test students? An AI can give an individualized assessment of how well a student has grasped what they're supposed to be learning based on weeks of individualized work. It's as if we can give every student their own private tutor who will report back to the teacher on the student's actual progress. When you have that, stress-inducing exams are a ridiculous substitute.
I've been pretty shocked at how closed-minded the responses to my comment have been. We're supposed to be a community that envisions radically better futures that can be built with technology. And here we have a revolutionary new technology that upends a staid and increasingly problematic part of our society and the majority of the responses are geared towards explaining why that staid and problematic institution should be maintained unchanged. AI is fundamentally a danger to our current education model, but that model can change radically for the better. And I would've hoped that more people here would have recognized that.
It's an old book now, but Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age includes the vision that we should have for education. We literally have the tools today to build his fictional "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer." What he envisioned was not that far off from an iPad with a Claude subscription where Claude has specific goals for the conversation. It's not teachers lecturing a class, it's individualized education where an AI teaches students at their own pace using their own interests. And built into AI is the ability for precocious kids to go beyond the curriculum, either on tangents or to more advanced subjects. This is impossible in a world where a teacher is trying to shepherd dozens of students through a curriculum as a group.
In the 2010s, we got some of the way there with Khan Academy. It was genuinely new that a student could rewatch something until it clicked rather than having to digest a lecture and have any question that didn't immediately spring to mind go unanswered. AI offers the possibility to go a step beyond this. Instead of rewatching the exact same content, AI can present it to the student in multiple ways based on a student's confusion and keep explaining it until a topic clicks. It can find examples of things that a student finds interesting to show how what they're learning isn't just theoretical. If a student likes space, the AI can discuss how the trig concepts they're learning apply to the Artemis II mission. If they like sports, it could apply the same concepts to tennis. Students in literary classes could read different books according to their interests while AI ensures that they understand the same sorts of concepts while discussing them. By customizing based on the specific curiosity of the student, it can make learning far more engaging and actually fun.
To address your #2, schools should be working with Anthropic, OpenAI and Google to shape a new personalized paradigm of educating students. They should be working out deals that give access to AI to their entire district. If I were heading the Department of Education, I would go a step further and get companies to bid on a contract to put their AI in the hands of every public school child in America. A version of the AI where teachers input their curriculum into the AI and students work through it with the AI, either alone or in small groups and the AI reports back to teachers so they can intervene where they are most needed would allow school districts with staffing shortages to serve more students more efficiently and with better results.
Sometimes it feels like our current system of education is only secondarily concerned with students actually learning and the primary concern is testing students to sort them into different tiers to be absorbed into different strata of our workforce. AI does compromise this sorting process to some extent. But if we can get back to the true mission of education and think creatively to deploy AI to best educate students, we have the potential to transform education like never before. What if we don't need to test students? An AI can give an individualized assessment of how well a student has grasped what they're supposed to be learning based on weeks of individualized work. It's as if we can give every student their own private tutor who will report back to the teacher on the student's actual progress. When you have that, stress-inducing exams are a ridiculous substitute.
I've been pretty shocked at how closed-minded the responses to my comment have been. We're supposed to be a community that envisions radically better futures that can be built with technology. And here we have a revolutionary new technology that upends a staid and increasingly problematic part of our society and the majority of the responses are geared towards explaining why that staid and problematic institution should be maintained unchanged. AI is fundamentally a danger to our current education model, but that model can change radically for the better. And I would've hoped that more people here would have recognized that.