Peptide style drugs already have clear positive effects on executive function, it's not particularly hard to envision that we'll find other classes of drugs that have similar effects in other cognitive domains. Twenty years is a long time, and we're set up to make absurd gains in our understanding of biology over that time frame. If we additionally are able to mitigate or cure various intellectual disabilities, that's a massive baseline performance boost to the population as well.

If you want some examples in how AI could improve education:

* Alpha School (https://alpha.school/the-program/) reports 2.6× faster learning growth with just 2 hours of AI-driven instruction daily, with students scoring in the 99th percentile nationally.

* Mindspark (https://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/scaling-personal...), deployed in Indian schools, demonstrated gains of +0.22 SD in math and +0.20 SD in language in a randomized trial involving 6,500 students.

* A Harvard study (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12179260/) found more than 2× the median learning gains using AI tutors.

The broader implications are clear: individualized, adaptive tutoring at scale is becoming accessible in ways that historically required expensive one-on-one instruction. This is also going to be possible in places that historically never had access to this quality of instruction, which again, is a massive boost to the human baseline.

I don't think the future looks like Wall-E. I think it looks like insanely healthy people able to pursue their passions with a level of rigour and capability that has never existed before.

Edit: fucked up link 2, fixed

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fcarraldo 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

are you seriously suggesting that the cure to the education crisis is peptides?

for children?

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Rudybega 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah man, that's a good faith interpretation of what I said! You've owned me and scored points, good job!

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fcarraldo 8 hours ago | parent [-]

high five

do you want to expand on what you meant? the rest of your post is fine, but the opening sentence seems to suggest the cure to smartphones and AI having significant negative impacts on critical educational development is giving all kids pharmaceuticals.

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Rudybega 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Imagine a drug that cures Alzheimer's. Does that improve the baseline cognitive level of the population? What about if we manage to find a cure for various intellectual disabilities (Down's, Fragile X, FAS, etc.). Does that improve the baseline cognitive level of the population? What if we mitigate some of the worst effects of aging on a population wide scale?

What if we achieve an understanding of how memories form in the brain and what factors distinguish individuals who have eidetic or near eidetic memory and can synthesize drugs or treatments that replicate that? What if we can find similar distinguishing factors for other cognitive domains (perception, visual spatial skills, etc.) and find drugs or treatments that improve those capabilities?

> but the opening sentence seems to suggest the cure to smartphones and AI having significant negative impacts on critical educational development is giving all kids pharmaceuticals.

You have to be operating extremely cynically for that to be your default interpretation of what I said, but go off.

	▲	fcarraldo 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think I'm operating extremely cynically, but I think you may be misinterpreting what this thread is about. The GP above the comment that I initially replied to referenced the PISA result scores[0] put out in a report by the OECD. Their report indicates that since 2015, there has been a massive drop in scores for reading and mathematics performance. This is a reversal of a longstanding trend - performance had been consistently improving, then it plateaued, and now it is consistently dropping[1]. The problem is that _normal kids_ aren't learning anymore, not that the cognitive baseline of the population is statistically changing. [0] https://www.oecd.org/en/about/news/press-releases/2026/09/pi... [1] https://www.oecd.org/en/data/dashboards/pisa-education-and-s...

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jonahx 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We seriously looked into Alpha School, my impression was strongly "overpriced con". Frankly, I don't believe their marketing material, which is what you're quoting. I am not anti-AI in learning (LLMs have a great learning boost for me personally), but learning especially for children is a complex problem and truly making it more efficient will take more innovation than an ipad with a magic program. I would caution more skepticism with these results, especially self-reported ones.

	▲	Rudybega 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I mean, that's entirely possible. It's definitely less powerful evidence than the other two. The Mindspark RCT in particular seems pretty sound (6500 participants, statistically significant improved outcomes).

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8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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