| ▲ | santiagobasulto 5 hours ago |
| I'm on the same boat, negatively affected by AI. I'm the CEO and founder of an EdTech company and our B2C revenue has greatly decreased as a result of Gen AI. But unlike the author of this post (or cited authors) I'm not sore. AI is providing a much better education model for students. So it's us that we have to adapt, not complain that the world is changing. For example, in Machine Learning our projects are sometimes extremely long and repetitive. Because before AI, it was a valuable skill to be able to recall APIs quickly (what is the method to drop duplicates in a dataframe again?). But today that's no longer the truth, and for the better. I am happy students don't have to go over the same repetitive low-value processes that I had to go to.
Students can now focus on more high level valuable tasks: understand the domain, compare evaluation methods, compare models, balance tradeoffs, present solutions/reports, etc. It's like in the 50s when students had to memorize tables of logarithms. Nobody misses that. We are in the process of recreating all our projects to adapt to the new world. We'll see how it goes. |
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| ▲ | danjovich 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > But today that's no longer the truth, and for the better. I am happy students don't have to go over the same repetitive low-value processes that I had to go to. Students can now focus on more high level valuable tasks: understand the domain, compare evaluation methods, compare models, balance tradeoffs, present solutions/reports, etc. It's like in the 50s when students had to memorize tables of logarithms. Nobody misses that. Maybe when it comes to any coding-related learning, I can agree with that point. 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. There will always be those who thrive, but the easier it is to obtain information/knowledge, the less I think people have an incentive to do it. And I don't buy that AI will solve all intellectual jobs anyway. [1] https://www.dw.com/en/pisa-2026-results-reading-math-scores/... |
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| ▲ | palmotea 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > 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? | | |
| ▲ | iforgotmypasswo 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | |
| ▲ | ares623 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Paul Graham would be proud... |
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| ▲ | santiagobasulto 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | | | |
| ▲ | theendisney 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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? | |
| ▲ | alephnerd 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > 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. |
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| ▲ | neya 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What a great perspective to have! Completely agree with you and I want to add on to it by saying mentors will always be valuable because students have always had access to information even before AI, if you think about it. It's organizing and packaging it in the right format that's always been the key issue. |
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| ▲ | e3dd 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | " It's organizing and packaging it in the right format that's always been the key issue." LLms dont help here either. Part of learning is about struggle. Seems many here want to disregard that fact and just run to the LLM lmao. Yeah you can do that - the knowledge won't really stick. |
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| ▲ | johnnyanmac 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| >But today that's no longer the truth, and for the better. I am happy students don't have to go over the same repetitive low-value processes that I had to go to. It's a real shame a leader of an education company doesn't value the actual learning process. Those "low value" processes are the building blocks to understand and master high level concepts. I'm not spending my day to day thinking about the low level memory allocation in my job, but that knowledge and work helps immensely in how I approach the higher level assignments and wider architecture. And I still kick myself because my assembly knowledge is is only 1.5 semester's worth. And yes, I still look up how to construct an array in C++. Not really because my memory is bad (okay, kind of), but more for the practice of reviewing API's and parameters and maybe making new revelations. I probably knew internally some 12 years ago I could set an initial capacity in one of the array's constructors. I didn't really "understand" the value in that until one random work day 4 years later as I was working through some in-house container packages. You can even say that doesn't matter if you know what resize() is, but it's those little bits of learning nuggets that builds you up from a "fine engineer" to a "great engineer". Less the knowledge and more the work ethics built to obtain it. |
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| ▲ | _aavaa_ 35 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > before AI, it was a valuable skill to be able to recall APIs quickly That’a the low value they’re talking about. And all of that stuff is accidental complexity. To use their example, you need to know that dropping duplicates is a good idea (and why). Knowing what the syntax and api calls to do that is, in my opinion, unnecessary. | | |
| ▲ | johnnyanmac 19 minutes ago | parent [-] | | That's not accidental, anymore than human language itself is accidental. APIs are designed very intentionally, and a good API's parameters have architectural reasons behind what they include (or exclude). Even your example has unintentional complexity. A 'duplicate'? What's that? Do we compare the memory it points to? Through use of a custom comparator function?by an id or tag? APIs and entire languages are designed around how we define such seemingly simple terms. Ultimately a language, be it a programming language or human one, is about communication. I find there to be value in knowing how to communicate effectively, even if employers increasingly disregard the value of such knowledge. Without it, we'll quickly find out why it's fundamentall quickly. |
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