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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

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Amazing that we now have a machine that will answer arbitrarily-worded questions about any commonly-taught topic, and the only education implications people talk about are fake assignment submittions.

Like no, the whole structure of the industry is now obsolete.

The more exciting implication is that future models may be able to act as personal tutors of a pretty high quality, with live audio input and output and visuals to boot. That sounds pretty good to me.

It's made educators no more obsolete than encyclopedias did.

Maybe the technology will improve, but AI is currently quite incapable of educating children despite what any cherrypicked demo might show you.

I have a friend who's a GMAT tutor and he's busier than ever, charging $300/hr. So even in a free market, no one wants to use AI as a teacher. For now at least...

As usual, the argument assumes no improvement in the models or any well-designed and marketed product to gain acceptance.

The unanswered question is whether kids who can't afford 300/hr are seeing benefits from LLM tutors.

I literally said: "Maybe the technology will improve".

So, no, I did not make that assumption.

Do you know how many kids who weren't able to afford tutoring are using it for tutoring?

Its a very strong claim that "AI is currently quite incapable of educating children."