I have to confess to be torn about the use of AI in education.

The current AI cannot compete with the good teachers I had and it is not even close. Those gave me inspiration and changed my life far beyond the knowledge they imprinted on me. Even with the improvements I believe to be possible in AI, I see the good human teachers significantly ahead of AI.

But compared to the bad teachers I had, already a pure ChatGPT prompt has a kind of demigod status. The knowledge is a lot more current, the patience is unbeatable and the sexism/racism doesn’t exceed the residual level of our society. And I never had the impression the AI actually hated me. And boy, those teachers could hallucinate like an AI in hot mode and they reacted far less positive on any correction from me.

Unluckily the number of bad teachers exceeded the good ones (and I picked courses rather by teacher than by topic).

Also I think the technology is there to produce an AI much better suited for teaching than ChatGPT or Claude, but alas it doesn’t have a business case.

So here I am, foreseeing that we will probably rather combine the worst of both worlds (uncontrolled AI usage to solve tasks and handing them to bored teachers who only see AI output in their pupils) than really work on a modern educational system.

@masek Purely on a knowledge basis, there are good point here.

There is more to teaching than being right about the curriculum, though.

When people credit their old teachers, it's not because they were super smart, but because they helped them personally.

Think of the teachers who listened, who supported, who provided a safe place when the student needed it.

Or even on an informative basis, good teachers find innovative ways to inspire their pupils and transfer knowledge.

If we ever reach the point where an AI could replace all that, we might as well declare humans redundant.

@mahryekuh If every teacher were like that, I would say “Forget about AI in education” in a second.

Did you have the impression even most of the teachers them were of that kind?

I had a lot of teachers who just suffered through existence in hope of reaching retirement. They were neither interested nor invested in the children (safe occasional favorites).

And they hated every child who made their life more difficult. And I was such a child par excellence. I wanted to learn, I wanted discussion, but I was messy and easily distracted from anything resembling work.

@masek Never gonna happen but if I had the charge, I'd return back on using pen and paper at schools :-) I think that gives the tools for thinking, or grows mind in positive manner, for solving the "big issues" in this world. Disconnection and limitations are great for learning because it enforces you focus only to the core of a problem.

@masek I've met several, yes, even if not all of them are there.

But that doesn't change the fact that AI will (probably) never be able to achieve that.

AI is not the solution to the problem of uninterested or stressed teachers. That is a policy problem and a lack of respect for teaching from multiple directions.

I hated school. Some people I know have their kids in schools that I honestly think are terrible for children (yay for the Dutch education system), but I've also seen the counterpoint.

I've had students at vocational studies for whom our classroom was the safest place they'd been in years, or the place where teachers believed in them for the first time.

AI will not solve deeply human problems. We cannot solve a disregard for the teaching profession by reducing it even further.

Yes, education and teaching need significant improvement, but that should be in the hands of policymakers, not CTOs.

@mahryekuh I need a proper keyboard for the reply, so it will come later. I don’t think though, we’re very far apart.

@jarkko I can only warn against “This is the way”-thinking.

It may greatly help one part of the children and totally demolish the chances of others.

With “writing by hand” I have personally seen both. Assuming “it worked fine for me, it will work for others” is one of the biggest fallacies in education and the source of immense suffering.

I will write a longer description in another part of the thread tomorrow and ping you.

@masek Sure :-) Please also be aware that this was not exactly "this is what i stand for no matter what" type of opinion. I'm happy to learn new viewpoints so please do...

@mahryekuh Training people is an extreme complex task.

There are deeply cultural issues:

• Application first vs. Principle first
• Direct vs. indirect feedback
• etc.

I sincerely recommend reading this book for more in depth description: https://erinmeyer.com/books/the-culture-map/

Then you have more technical aspects:

• Visual learning, haptical learning, theoretical learning
• Writing competence vs. verbal competence
• Domain knowledge vs. Local knowledge
• etc.

There are a lot more dimensions to learning and teaching. I am just a curious person, I have not gone through the full curriculum.

The problem is, that not every pupil can work with every method and not every teacher can apply each method equally well.

So with people we are often stuck with sub-optimal pairings. A lot of teachers never reach the meta level to even recognize these things. Therefore they cannot recognize that the pupil isn't stupid but just cannot adapt to the method in use. And as a result, the teacher does not adapt.

There is a curse in the system and it is called "It worked for me". Most people, even intelligent people think, that because one method worked well for them, it will work well on their child or pupil. This is a source of tremendous suffering.

Just one example: I had a teacher who thought that only something written down by hand in a clean handwriting symbolized learning. I did not have a good handwriting (lack of inherent dexterity) and therefore by his definition was deserving of bad grades.

With AI i see the chance (only the chance) that we can per child recognize which is the best way to get certain content across to it.

I also see dangers. E.g. if every children is taught according the principles it works best with, what happens when they later have to collaborate.

Imagine an indirect feedback, principle first young person with writing competence has to work with a direct feedback, application first person with verbal competence for the first time.

I still remember meeting that young woman while hiking in Japan. She had spent her teenage years in the U.S. (her parents worked there) and now reflected that the cultural imprint there made her unsuitable for the Japanese job market. She looked and spoke like a typical Japanese woman, but she gave feedback like a U.S. person. That was a huge problem.

I don't think that AI will ever reach the level of an excellent teacher. I believe that AI could be better at teaching than most current teachers are. But I doubt the necessary changes to AI will be made because of other economic incentives.

I hope this explains why I am torn about the use of AI in education.

@jarkko See https://infosec.exchange/@masek/116554637096032335

@masek "We had (do we still?) too many teachers that were so bad, that even an AI could replace them" is how I would have put it, although I don't completely disagree with you.

But I'm also leaning more towards trusting the people and not trusting the computer on this topic. My opinions on AI should make me disagree, but they don't.

@wink I see a lot of problems with AI in education. But I don't want me to let that blind me against other problems.

Often it is not the teacher itself but how he/she was trained/educated. In education, errors tend to replicate itself.