Parents Fell in Love with Alpha School's Promise. Then They Wanted Out

Related:

Unbound Academy hasn’t replaced teachers with AI

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45443004

Education is HARD. There's problems with the existing system, but much like democracy it feels like every other wholesale revision of education is so much worse.

In the meantime software is hard too, it shouldn't be, but as far as humans producing it and the right people having input, it's really hard. Most of the education software I interface with or see that my kids use is barely "ok" and at times absolutely garbage.

Education and software... what a mess.

> Jessica Lopez learned midway through her older daughter’s second year at Alpha. The girl says she remembers sitting on her bed one night working on schoolwork when she received a notification that she’d been flagged for an anti-pattern. She says Alpha’s system sent a video of her in her pajamas, taken from the computer’s webcam, that showed her talking to her younger sister.

That’s a hard task for a VLM. I’m not sure how you would do that without manual review of the footage.

“Anti pattern”. “Guides”. I want to be sick.

It’s worth listening to the tech billionaire came up with this idea on the recent Peter attia podcast. An unbelievably smooth and convincing talker.