The job of the school is to teach and prepare the young children. If kids use things that could be dangerous outside of school, then that is the parents responsibility. Meanwhile, the school should do what they deem as most appropriate to ensure quality education.
It is quite common outside of the US. Actually I think other places are generally better with binge drinking in the late teenage years, but one of the few ways America really did seem to have a lead over the rest of the world in personal health was that we were able to cut down on teen smoking for a while. Then vaping got invented and I’m sure it’s a huge problem again.
I’m sure there are really unique and great ways to utilize AI in the educational setting, however, young children should not be the Guinea pigs. Prove that certain things are beneficial, not just think they are, and then implement with oversight. People need to stop overthinking everything and just take one step at a time, evaluate and then take another step.
If anything, it sounds like (you think that) they need to be more thoughtful and not just throw every new technology and technique at the kids and see if it works.
I’m not trying to nitpick, but slow down, think, and measure before acting seems like clearer advice. Really what you are fighting is assuming that new technology is useful and just trying out various ad hoc ways to discover how to realize that usefulness.
Who is the authoritative voice of reason for the effectiveness of any educational approach or tool? It takes years to sort things out and by then the approach of the day has moved on. Education is an area where everybody feels like they are an expert. In the US, we can't agree on the simplest things impacting our children.
> It takes years to sort things out and by then the approach of the day has moved on.
What? Good approaches, definitionally, have quite a lot of staying power. This is true in most fields but especially in education where, it turns out, we don't really figure out net new approaches that are much better than the last ones very frequently.
New approaches are tried in education all the time. What constitutes "good" is subjective and might take years to really play out. Education is like economics... so many variables and changing starting conditions
Clearly it should, at least, never be the company that stands to profit from selling said technology to the government. Like you I am highly skeptical, the idea of classrooms is an idea that is over 5,000 years old. It's kinda been nearly perfected at this point where pedagogy mostly points toward self-sufficiency as soon as possible.
Also think it's extremely unethical to experiment on school children using tools or methods that can be detrimental to their development (see chromebook debacle, moving away from phonics). We kinda know what works very well in a public education setting, the constant experimentation does not help.
Experiment on adults that can consent, not children.
I would think that AI is a great fit for Marx's goal of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", and as such a Socialist mayor would promote its use it to advance towards Socialist goals. Note: would, not should.
Is AI not in an important way from humanity's abilities, and is it not being used to help meet our needs?
one in five children in the united states lives in a food insecure household. that has more relevancy to the “need” here than whatever you’re suggesting
I'd "need" to know what you see my interpretation of needs as being before I could answer better. But I'll give it a try without a dictionary.
In its most fundamental sense, a need is a requirement for life to continue and reproduce. These requirements typically involve the abilities to compete, to obtain food, to have shelter, to mate and protect the young, etc.
Isn't AI to serve needs? For example, the need to find bugs in software so somebody can compete economically and employees can meet their needs as described above? To buy food, shelter, raise children?
Quite seriously, I think this is an important underpinning of why AI is advancing, and where it's taking us. The fact that it overlaps with Marx, at least to me, is a fascinating and incredible irony, because its success is an application of the very seductive message behind Marxism.
I love that question. It's a great question because it's designed to elicit avenues of attack.
I'd say that Democratic Socialism, today among the general population of the United States the term Socialism has no set definition, no real understanding of its roots, and no real concept of how it would be enacted politically in a Democratic society.
So I'm really not sure what you mean by Democratic Socialist. I think you mean as defined by Wikipedia.
If so, in short I see Marx as being a root among many to Socialism, and so on to Democratic Socialism. The dogma from Marx follows through to an application for people to obtain their "needs": "More of whatever, less expensive, and better evrything! And AI is actually Socialist, so let's do it and vote for me!!!" That kind of cynical approach.
I can't continue the thread to answer your last, more definite, question.
I used an indefinite article on purpose in order to not go to a particular person. The topic I posed was on the relationship, not on persons. So any democratic socialist mayor for that matter.
If you are saying that AI would somehow be contributing to a socialist goal for Mamdani and you use Marx to advance that statement, kind of everything?
I use AI a lot and find it fascinating and probably the most exciting thing since discovering the web.
I’m not sure I disagree with this.
Schools need to figure out how to integrate it well in a way that both helps kids learn and teaches them how to use this new tool productively. I don’t think that’s been done yet. It’s not a bad idea to just keep it out until we figure it out, or there’s a risk of just slathering AI all over everything mindlessly.
At the very least it could be a giant waste of money. Schools don’t need to be spending their often limited funds thrashing around or chasing fads.
The ban should be lifted once educators figure out what to do with this stuff.
The Los Angeles public school system will vastly restrict the use of AI at all grade levels, reported the NY Times and others. The news of the ban — which oddly had to be coaxed out of LAUSD employees (YouTube) at a meeting of the LAUSD School Board Generative AI Ad Hoc Committee — stunningly came as a complete surprise to both the LAUSD Board and K-12 AI usage protestors...
it's fine, really. Kids need to be able to read, write and do arithmetic on their own without assistance from ai. But it's still available at home, obviously.
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 14.2 ms ] threadClearly, laws have not an insignificant effect, even if you could easily ignore them.
But I agree laws have a huge effect.
Don't force seatbelts, those who don't want to wear are not going to
Don't try to restrict $A, it's against personal freedom/liberty that us at $corporate love.
If anything, it sounds like (you think that) they need to be more thoughtful and not just throw every new technology and technique at the kids and see if it works.
I’m not trying to nitpick, but slow down, think, and measure before acting seems like clearer advice. Really what you are fighting is assuming that new technology is useful and just trying out various ad hoc ways to discover how to realize that usefulness.
What? Good approaches, definitionally, have quite a lot of staying power. This is true in most fields but especially in education where, it turns out, we don't really figure out net new approaches that are much better than the last ones very frequently.
Also think it's extremely unethical to experiment on school children using tools or methods that can be detrimental to their development (see chromebook debacle, moving away from phonics). We kinda know what works very well in a public education setting, the constant experimentation does not help.
Experiment on adults that can consent, not children.
Is AI not in an important way from humanity's abilities, and is it not being used to help meet our needs?
In its most fundamental sense, a need is a requirement for life to continue and reproduce. These requirements typically involve the abilities to compete, to obtain food, to have shelter, to mate and protect the young, etc.
Isn't AI to serve needs? For example, the need to find bugs in software so somebody can compete economically and employees can meet their needs as described above? To buy food, shelter, raise children?
Quite seriously, I think this is an important underpinning of why AI is advancing, and where it's taking us. The fact that it overlaps with Marx, at least to me, is a fascinating and incredible irony, because its success is an application of the very seductive message behind Marxism.
I appreciate everyone's time in challenging this.
you seem nice, good luck out there
And why would be relevant to a democratic socialist?
I'd say that Democratic Socialism, today among the general population of the United States the term Socialism has no set definition, no real understanding of its roots, and no real concept of how it would be enacted politically in a Democratic society.
So I'm really not sure what you mean by Democratic Socialist. I think you mean as defined by Wikipedia.
If so, in short I see Marx as being a root among many to Socialism, and so on to Democratic Socialism. The dogma from Marx follows through to an application for people to obtain their "needs": "More of whatever, less expensive, and better evrything! And AI is actually Socialist, so let's do it and vote for me!!!" That kind of cynical approach.
Who is that "Socialist" mayor you speak of?
I used an indefinite article on purpose in order to not go to a particular person. The topic I posed was on the relationship, not on persons. So any democratic socialist mayor for that matter.
So would this suggest we should take and redistribute AI capacity in some way...?
tbh im fatigued of the general public being beta testers for companies.
In my master's they gave me anything I wanted, laptop, internet, whatever. Gave 2 stupid hard problems.
That's the future.
Or maybe there was more to it?
I’m not sure I disagree with this.
Schools need to figure out how to integrate it well in a way that both helps kids learn and teaches them how to use this new tool productively. I don’t think that’s been done yet. It’s not a bad idea to just keep it out until we figure it out, or there’s a risk of just slathering AI all over everything mindlessly.
At the very least it could be a giant waste of money. Schools don’t need to be spending their often limited funds thrashing around or chasing fads.
The ban should be lifted once educators figure out what to do with this stuff.
Students who use it correctly > students who don't use it > students who use it incorrectly
New York City Bans A.I. in Elementary and Middle Schools
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49542443
The Los Angeles public school system will vastly restrict the use of AI at all grade levels, reported the NY Times and others. The news of the ban — which oddly had to be coaxed out of LAUSD employees (YouTube) at a meeting of the LAUSD School Board Generative AI Ad Hoc Committee — stunningly came as a complete surprise to both the LAUSD Board and K-12 AI usage protestors...