Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

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> these language models don't know anything. The examples of them making up information, or being persuaded by people are all over the place

Sounds just like humans to me.

Primary school, some people showed up to explain blood donation, showed and told us they were putting a bag of fake blood up the teacher's sleeve and would take from that rather than from our actual teacher, and yet when the fake blood went into the collection thingie the kid next to me screamed "they're killing her!"

Same school, show-and-tell, astronomy textbook showing the circular orbit of a moon at two different points of the parent planet's orbit around the star. "This is a picture of a mouse".

Secondary school. Main teacher and replacement teacher cover the same passage of a sort story, one interpreting the word "patronised" as in "patron" the other as in talking down to people whose intelligence you underestimate.

A-levels. Philosophy. What even is knowledge anyway? Tripartite definition. Example given was "shaggy" dog, one of the other students stifles a laugh at the double entendre.

But to your core point:

> the technology we bring in to the classroom has to be well understood and directed in order to be effective

Yes, absolutely.

But it's deeper than that. When this tech is flawless, we will have to ask ourselves: "What is school for?"

After all, being flawless in this context means it already knows all that can be taught, so why not just have it do the work related to those things instead of putting humans through ever longer school years so they can do the same things less well?

This isn't the first time technology has forced such questions; my generation never had to learn how to starch clothes, shoe horses, look after a tinder box, or send and receive Morse code.

It's about scale and reach, 100 teachers/educators will be biased/wrong in 100 ways but you'll average it out by interacting with each over your education.

If an AI is wrong about one thing you'll have the same bias over entire generations, once a full generation is skipped it's very hard to go back

That's why we need diversity, political pluralism, &c. because not many things are inherently "true", it's all about nuance, personal perception, mitigation, ...

> "What is school for?"

Socialisation, experiencing new things, general culture, deciding where you want to go in life, &c. Many things you learn in school aren't used for jobs but for day to day life and for the well being of society

If we take that out and replace it by "kids in front of screens" we're in for a massive and quick change with potential deep and long lasting effects.

By the way keep in mind a shit ton of jobs aren't even close to being automatised, and a shit ton of jobs aren't done by people sitting in front of screens

> If an AI is wrong about one thing you'll have the same bias over entire generations, once a full generation is skipped it's very hard to go back

Sounds like intellectual monoculture? If so, I absolutely agree. Already a problem with respect to many thinking it's unpatriotic to suggest their country is anything other than "the good guys", or blasphemous to ask if their religion is anything less than the actual truth of the divine, and AI can extend that to every single topic.

(Oh hey, another possible Great Filter for the Fermi paradox).

> Socialisation, experiencing new things, general culture, deciding where you want to go in life, &c. Many things you learn in school aren't used for jobs but for day to day life and for the well being of society

Do we need schools for that, or will kids learn the same by messing around in multiplayer Minecraft or whatever the zeitgeist is?

> If we take that out and replace it by "kids in front of screens" we're in for a massive and quick change with potential deep and long lasting effects.

Sure, but that's going to happen regardless. Too many other things are changing also.

> that's going to happen regardless

So why make it worse? Why gives kids tablets for things we know don't need tablets, and where a device is more of a distraction?

Shiny new technology is great for distracting from a failure to perform basic childcare like keeping children physically safe so they can learn. And then it's a rhetorical weapon "We can't listen to parents, they don't even want their children to have state of the art equipment!"

First, that's presuming it's bad.

Second, the parents are mostly buying the tablets anyway.

Thirdly, about this:

> distracting from a failure to perform basic childcare like keeping children physically safe so they can learn

Pretty much the one kind of safety I can guarantee kids have when using a computer is their physically safety.

And learn what, exactly, given the hypothetical scenario you're replying to here is that the only thing left to learn is being sociable which they can ultimately do best by experiencing whatever medium they will be sociable in as adults, and for all other learning you're just being a nerd like me who learns for the fun of it.

Parents are buying the tablets because teachers - pushing shiny new technology in lieu of results - tell them it'll help. There aren't any studies showing the putting screens in front of kids helps in any way, and there are many showing it hurts - from fitness to mental robustness and socialization.

> Pretty much the one kind of safety I can guarantee kids have when using a computer is their physically safety.

I think you're remembering computer lab, or something, where there was a proctor because computers were expensive. Now schools won't expel anyone they label troubled, no matter how much they trouble other students, and they won't protect anyone or let them protect themselves.

> the only thing left to learn is being sociable which they can ultimately do best by experiencing whatever medium they will be sociable in as adults

I don't see social media being so complex that they need all the years of practice to keep up, but I do see forming deep relationships as being essential and social media doesn't do anything to help with that. They'll get there when they do, no worse for not having partaken.

> Parents are buying the tablets because teachers - pushing shiny new technology in lieu of results - tell them it'll help

Funny, I'm remembering a summer holiday job 20 years ago, working on a HVAC production line. One of the others there bought a plasma TV for his infant.

It's not all about what teachers are pushing.

Heck, from what I've heard the teachers don't like the tech any more than you do.

> I think you're remembering computer lab, or something, where there was a proctor because computers were expensive. Now schools won't expel anyone they label troubled, no matter how much they trouble other students, and they won't protect anyone or let them protect themselves.

I have literally no idea what this is supposed to be about. Computers themselves are not part of any of the things you just said are bad.

And as I'm asking if the schools are even going to still be relevant, expulsions would carry as little meaning as being banned from owning horses does today.

> I don't see social media being so complex that they need all the years of practice to keep up, but I do see forming deep relationships as being essential and social media doesn't do anything to help with that. They'll get there when they do, no worse for not having partaken.

I didn't specifically say social media, I said "medium they will be sociable in as adults". That might be the traditional forums of the 2005 interwebs style; or soc med; or group chat apps like IRC, Slack, MS Teams as various of my employers have had us using; or video group chats like many of us got used to during the pandemic; or VR environments, be they games like WoW or roleplay environment like Furcadia or Second Life or VRChat, or "serious" metaverse things like whatever it is FB is trying to do.

It can also be going to parks and gyms, art galleries and graffiti walls, cafés and nightclubs. How much of that is part of school anyway?

But even for text, what counts as polite, friendly, professional, intelligent, serious, or severe is absolutely a moving target, so…

that means knowin when they need to be all like yo and emoji wif spellin' that confuses ol fogies like me and missin all the full stops coz that be rude yo yo lol

And of course the fact that such cultural idioms shift arbitrarily and I've stopped caring means that actual real young people will cringe as much when reading that last paragraph as I did when writing it, in exactly the same way I told my mum to stop trying to be hip and with it back in the late 90s.

> Heck, from what I've heard the teachers don't like the tech any more than you do.

The school district found the ones who'd push it. If teachers aren't fond of this I hope they fight it themselves.

> It's not all about what teachers are pushing.

Sure, I bought my child a laptop. But I spent time teaching computer skills under the guise of game design, etc, and it wasn't for classwork but for everything else. It wasn't a one-size-fits-nobody cash grab.

> I'm asking if the schools are even going to still be relevant, expulsions would carry as little meaning as being banned from owning horses does today.

I don't care if the violent kid thinks he wins, as long as he's not allowed to spend more time with the non-violent kids. His failure isn't my problem, my kids happiness and success is.

> what counts as polite, friendly, professional, intelligent, serious, or severe is absolutely a moving target,

Not so much, I think, that it needs practice over the years. I've seen people pick up social media with no practice whatsoever and right away seem to fit right in.

> I have literally no idea what this is supposed to be about. Computers themselves are not part of any of the things you just said are bad.

Yeah, it seemed to be a bit of an unguided post. I'm not sure if you don't like that I don't like excess tech in schools, or what. I don't think computers are bad, I think teachers and schools pushing them uselessly is bad.

A monolithic AI also becomes a single point of epistemic and pedagogical control.

Whichever side or instance you care to consider, think of the capabilities of someone hell bent for leather on defining what is, or is not, included in an educational curriculum, at the primary, secondary, post-secondary, graduate, or professional degree level, and their ability to influence, overtly or covertly, through persuasion or coercion, what that is.

Even under present conditions of proscribed curricula and textbooks, individual instructors, libraries, librarians, and others can go against some imposed dogma to some extent. A world in which only a small handful of AI originators provide the direct interfact between each student and their education is a grim prospect.

I've noted several commentators in recent months discussion a similar situation in terms of popular culture and entertainment, most notably the influence China now exerts over cinema and sport. The notion that AI will continue to be largely a product of Silicon Valley, and subject to US or even generally Western influence, may not be a valid one.

I think that's a perfectly reasonable fear, but I am here mostly focusing on the idea that school itself stops being important when the AI can do whatever it is teaching the students.

(I don't think that fundamentally changes any of your actual arguments here, it just feels like we're talking about slightly different aspects of how this can go wrong).

Sure, I was taking your concerns and extending them.

Both share a common root, however. And there's reason for concern.

> Do we need schools for that, or will kids learn the same by messing around in multiplayer Minecraft or whatever the zeitgeist is?

You don't read facial expressions, body language, use your body, exchange bacteria/viruses, have body contact, &c. in minecraft

You can't go against hundred millions years of evolution and expect minecraft to replace real life. (see loneliness epidemic, obesity epidemic, depression epidemic), we're smartish apes, not AIs or computers. We're not designed to seat all day, we're not design to interacts with screens

If you can entirely replace education you don't need _school_ per day but you need long term group socialization with people who have different and similar opinions and backgrounds, physical activity, mental entertainment and challenges

The end goal is to live in healthy and collaborative societies, not to be mienscraft basement dwellers

You're being a bit too bogged down in the specific example there; I never got into the game myself and only used it as an example because a relative used it to socialise pre-pandemic.

I mean, VRChat can do the facial expressions, video games don't prevent exercise, and there's plenty of ways to share germs if you find vaccines too clinical and high-tech.

And of course, I'm currently using my glowing rectangle to group socialise with with people who have different and similar opinions and backgrounds, for example yourself.

What makes you think that they will only interact with a single AI over their entire school career?

> Sounds just like humans to me.

I love when tech people reveal that they have no idea how other humans act and behave.

I gave a bunch of examples. I can give many more.

A middle aged woman who said I had to be lying about being vegetarian because she couldn't believe it was possible for humans.

A coworker who insisted it was impossible to speed up some code in a daily standup, for me to come back to on the next stand up and announce I had sped it up from 15 minutes to 0.2 seconds.

Basically every time I hear the cliché "common sense", the claim being made is somewhere between totally wrong or just misleading in various situations.

My mum was a firm believer in homeopathy, Bach flower remedies, magic of crystals, called herself a Catholic, and had a statue of (IIRC) Vishnu with her collection of books on how to tell your fortune with viking rune stones.

At one point her dislike of "chemicals" came up, so my brother and I riffed on the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide for a bit; she was engaged with the list of issues until we told her what that is, and never took on board the lesson that "one atom away from being bleach" means "is not bleach".

I was exactly the right age for Wakefield's claims about the MMR vaccine to convince me not to get it, and I only got around to doing the sensible thing several years after he was struck off the UK medical register and (if I understand right) downgraded from Doctor to Mr.

Compare what the British public as a whole say about Boris Johnson with what specifically the members of the Conservative Party say about him.

One of my friends in middle school was completely convinced that all gay men hospitalised each other from every sexual act.

I vastly overestimated my German language skills when I first got here, and my self-estimate of my skill level hasn't changed no matter how much better I get.

My brother was convinced that Captain America was the first MCU film to be released.

My father took several years to realise Google search results had a scroll bar and it wasn't just the top 3 that fitted onto his 640x480 screen. (He became a software developer almost as early as was possible, so that wasn't merely a case "old person can't use computer", unlike my gran who held the mouse at 90 degrees and expected it to still move as if she hadn't).

He also believed that water drained in particular directions due to the Coriolis effect, thanks to (what he didn't realise was) a magic trick performed somewhere near the equator some time when he visited Kenya.

Someone who got on a train from somewhere in London to Liverpool Lime St instead of to Liverpool Street station, and who only dared ask me when we'd arrive as we were half way through the country.

There was a young-Earth-creationist fundamentalist Baptist who I wasted half an hour arguing with on his microphone. Too many mistakes to count, and not just the mistake I made by wasting time engaging with his nonsense.

Every exam question I ever get wrong, every personality I misjudge, every scam I fall for, every troll I am baited by… even a few April Fool's jokes I didn't realise were jokes until years later.

I know the LLMs aren't human, but that specific flaw of "can be wrong without realising it, can be convinced by nonsense"? That flaw is very human.

It can't cringe over its mistakes like we can, so at least we've still got that.

This isn't a discussion about if humans have flaws in their thinking.

It's me making a comparison between humans and AI and you obliquely insulting me for suggesting the humans are guilty of the same flaws as the AI.

Yes, I understand what you're trying to say. It's not unique or new, everytime a tech bro is told how an LLM actually works this is the goalpost they immediately move to. I've seen it a dozen times a day on every thread. It's hilarious to me that the immediate response is to delve into something that requires significantly more education and experience on to meaningfully pontificate.

If you're not developing tools for human teachers to evaluate the learning of their students (eg summarizing what was presented/discussed/learned) then you're going to have preventable failures. And you can't just rely on simple metrics (Goodhart's Law). The kinds of failures you can have teaching kids are pretty bad.

Yes, and we were explicitly taught how to maximise our test results.

Alignment failure is still a problem when it's organic brains doing it, regard of what anyone tries to hand-wave with the cliché "common sense". :)

Humans can know nearly everything that any other human knows (hence...teaching). AI can't know anything (right now). The youth who are critical of capitalism certainly have turned a wary eye on the school system -- after all primary education has been designed to create money makers for corporations. Is a new tool the answer? Likely not. Will it help to change the philosophy of education? Maybe not independent of the change that is already occurring.

> AI can't know anything (right now).

Only for very specific (and IMO useless) definitions of the word "know". Does it matter if the thing a submarine does is called "swimming" or not?

In any practical sense, even obsolete ancestors of this model definitely "know" more French than I learned in 5 years of mandatory school lessons.

That said, regardless of the definition of the word "know"…

> The youth who are critical of capitalism certainly have turned a wary eye on the school system -- after all primary education has been designed to create money makers for corporations.

I don't know what you're talking about here.

The soviet bloc countries were very proud of their schooling system, rightly or wrongly; and conversely corporations don't really get much out of primary education, which is often described as being essentially no better than daycare for slightly older kids.

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