A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

This take from a Hermione-type High School senior shed next to zero new light on the subject. Yes, we know AI is redefining school and jobs and daily life. The perspective of an obnoxious A+ type student isn't helping, especially because you kind of can read between the lines that she isn't friends with these kids using AI, which would give her a deeper perspective of why and how they are using AI.

Is this what The Atlantic has come down to, publishing a complain-y piece by the class president?

EDIT: For anyone struggling with my criticism of the article, I very much agree that there is a problem of AI in education. Her suggestion which is "maybe more oral exams and less essays?" I'm sure has never been considered by teachers around the world rolls eyes.

As for how to tackle this, I think the only solution is accept the fact that AI is going nowhere and integrate it into the class. Show kids in the class how to use AI properly, compare what different AI models say, and compare what they say to what scholars and authors have written, to what kids in the past have written in their essays.

You don't have to fight AI to instill critical thinking in kids. You can embrace it to teach them its limitations.

Well said. There are kids who're struggling no matter how hard they try, because the teacher's explanation was miserable, or because they have to actually work part-time for a living. These kids need AI. Without AI they could risk being on the street when they turn 18.

Later in life, when their life is more stable, these same kids will be the first to actually use AI to learn the then necessary concepts properly.

You can't imagine the revolution over anything arbitrary on the horizon? Kids will have to overthrow the lame Pleistocene technology we base AI on in order to survive. This tech is already DOA as a general tool, she's telling us this. If there's no excitement or joy in learning, the sector is moot.

The lack of imagination in CS is stunning and revolting. Symbols and causality are broken records, chuck them asap and move onto the next idea of what a PC is. It ain't binary.

ANY real kid that is unpretentious would do. A "I use AI to cheat at school" article would be far more interesting that this "Oh my God, my peers are hopeless but not me" piece.

Struggling to understand what you're saying but it sounds like you're making two points:

* We should dismiss the concerns in TFA because the author is... A good and conscientious student? Who is both unpopular and also the class president?

* The students who are outsourcing their thinking, or at least their work, to LLMs, have good reasons for this and the reasons are not addressed in the piece

The first point is at best a pure ad hominem and at worst a full blown assault on conscientiousness and actually doing the work. I think the class president and good student is a better authority than the cheater. I'm very disturbed by the recent trend on HN and the wider world to justify any shortcut taken for personal advancement. We need people to value substance, not just image...

The second point is irrelevant -- we don't have do both-sideism in every piece. But also even if they do have good reasons to cheat, this creates an instant race to the bottom where now everyone must cheat. This is why they do doping checks in professional sports, except this is much higher stakes

If you're judging without even knowing the content of the hypothetical alternative then is the difference just that one premise offends you while the other supports you?

I agree we should create the kind of society that allows kids to focus on learning in school. I think just giving up on learning in school and turning it into pretend time where teachers pretend to teach while students pretend to learn is not a solution to any problem

I'm wondering why is this being published in the first place. It's not an interesting or illuminating perspective, it's a pretentious student telling us nothing new.

I gave no opinions on AI, yet I do think it's very much a problem. This article presents neither good ideas to tackle it, nor an insightful perspective on the problem.

Huh? I'm questioning the point of this pretentious article, that's all.

The point of publishing it seems to me to be "kids in classrooms also think this is a problem". The subject matter is often talked about in the upper echelons and among adults, it's good to see a kid's prospective. It's equivalent to an essay by a kid saying they also struggle with the effects of social media -- it creates a broader consensus environment, helping to build buy in for a shared paradigm

Her parents know someone at the Atlantic, and she needs publications to pad out her Harvard application :)

Right, except what I'm saying is that the perspective of a this A+ kind of student is off-putting and not contributing to the discussion in any meaningful way.

What I'm saying is precisely that the take of a more genuine, less pretentious kid, would be far more insightful.

It's a weak editorial choice.

can you highlight the pretentious bits i totally missed them

This does feel like a personal preference has been inflamed here, and is overshadowing your interpretation of the message.

There will be interviews done with non A+ students.

No one is going to be put on the streets because they lacked AI.

Bad teachers and a bad economy are no reason to let kids outsource all their thinking to a machine when they’re still learning to think themselves.

I think this is a good point because "cheating at the work I have to do, as quickly as possible, well enough to not get fired" is the actual use case for AI for 99% of people.

All the stuff you see in this thread about how kids are going to use AI to bootstrap an education for themselves even better than what their teachers give them (not sure why there's so much hostility towards teachers) is a fantasy.

HN obviously overrepresents kids who were interested in tech things who may do something like that. The vast majority of kids will use AI as a tool to blurt out essays and coursework they don't read, so that they can get back to their addiction to TikTok and Instagram.

As will, of course, everyone using it at work. This is already the case. This is what AI is for. "Do this for me so I can scroll more".

Don't outsource your thinking to the one article. Different kids use AI in different ways. Many use it to help them learn. We still are in the very early stages of kids using AI to learn.

It's the role of the teacher to be a good explainer and to assign written exams that are doable only in class and only without any electronic help. The kids should not share blame for the teacher's shortcomings.

the only pretentious thing here was your original comment :)

Why does learning have to come only or even primarily from school? What sort of brainwashing is it that mandates it? Why can't a student also learn independently, made more possible by excellent books, online resources, peers, and of course AI? In dollar value terms, schools are an absurdly inefficient way to learn.

You seem to be projecting some issues onto this student from your own childhood experience. Maybe look into that

It’s a good student writing the piece, which is somehow fundamentally pretentious

are those kids writing articles? because i would read them if they were.

plenty of straight-A students are in those same classes with miserable explanations or have jobs. plenty of kids who flunk out of expensive private schools and don't work. always have been since long before AI. nobody "needs" these tools. they're conveniences. it sounds more like your issue is with the timing and structure of impersonalized childhood education.

in the US, education is compulsory but every state has options for homeschooling. all you have to do is pass equivalency tests. your parents just have to be willing to jump through the hoops.

If you are in effect asserting that the quality of the instruction offered in class is considered pretty good, that is a failed assertion right from the get go. AI helps the student to make up for common failures in the quality of education.

you're operating from two assumptions that are not universally true, and the second only hypothetically addresses a symptom of the first but not the cause.

they get “AI” to write the articles for them ;)

It is not the student's business to fix the education system. It is the student's business to use all available resources of any kind.

ok, essentialism much?