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Tutoring company tells parents to save their money and 'use AI instead'

142 points · 233 comments · theanonymousone

  1. radiorental · · focus · HN ↗
    This isn't binary, teachers have limited bandwidth and supplementing real teaching with AI supported research can work.

    Students need to understand what AI is and is not.

    Something got lost as we transitioned from parents telling their kids to 'go play and do not come back until dinner is ready' to us handholding & driving our kids from one social/sport activity to the next.

    While it causes fights with my kids, I blank refuse to do certain things for them (fix their internet connection, repair a toy or bike) I'll give them the tools and they know to ask when they get stuck.

    The act of learning through failure is a dying art these days. It's 'teach to the test', stressed out teachers, parents having too much to do compounded by taking on second, third jobs in this economy.

    Teaching our kids how to leverage AI is something parents should invest in. Its part of a broader education landscape.

    1. yardie · · focus · HN ↗
      As a parent I agree with you, but watching other kids get a leg up because their parents continue to jump in and save them. And your own get the double harsh reality of learning failure and then being punished for it through loss of placement and status. It's tragedy of the commons since everyone must pass no one can fail.

      > Teaching our kids how to leverage AI is something parents should invest in. Its part of a broader education landscape.

      The same was said for laptops and tablets. Now there is a push to remove them from the curriculum. Having them meant the students didn't retain anything because they were distracting. I feel using AI in place of pedagogy will have similar results. Why bother learning to retain any information when AI knows everything and can recall it in a split second.

      1. csa · · focus · HN ↗
        > but watching other kids get a leg up because their parents continue to jump in and save them

        Can you give us an example to what his looks like in your context (not necessarily you and your kids)?

        > The same was said for laptops and tablets. Now there is a push to remove them from the curriculum. Having them meant the students didn't retain anything because they were distracting. I feel using AI in place of pedagogy will have similar results

        Laptops, tablets, and AI are just tools. If the folks wielding these tools (or ostensibly teaching others to wield these tools) are not using a tool effectively, then we shouldn’t be surprised when the outcomes are unimpressive.

        Simple example — put a hammer in the hands of a skilled builder, and you can get a deck or a house frame. Put the same hammer in my hands, and you will get nothing more than bent nails and sore thumbs.

        All that said, just like I feel confident that I could learn how to use a hammer well if I took the time to learn and practice, I think students and teachers can learn to use their tools (laptops, tablets, AI, etc.) well if they take the time to learn and practice (ideally with some good scaffolding).

        1. Jare · · focus · HN ↗
          > If the folks wielding these tools are not using a tool effectively

          I struggle with this argument when the subject ("the folks") turns out to be "many people", perhaps even a majority of people. If one teacher is an outlier that uses it badly then sure, the teacher is to blame and be judged. But if a collective is using it badly, then perhaps the capability of the collective should have been evaluated before handing the tool to them.

          I don't have an answer - it is bad to withhold a tool from the hands of people who will use it badly. But the overall outcome has to also count.

          1. csa · · focus · HN ↗
            > If one teacher is an outlier that uses it badly then sure, the teacher is to blame and be judged. But if a collective is using it badly, then perhaps the capability of the collective should have been evaluated before handing the tool to them.

            You won’t get any argument from me that most teachers are poorly trained. Money can largely buy someone out of that trap.

            That said, just forbidding a tool that is critical in modern life just because some/many people are bad at using it does not strike me as a particularly constructive solution to the problem.

            > I don't have an answer - it is bad to withhold a tool from the hands of people who will use it badly. But the overall outcome has to also count.

            My “solution” to this is not a popular one. Lower expectations for public mass education.

            Over the last 120 years, we have taken a curriculum that was targeted at elites and forced it onto almost everyone.

            High quality education should be available and cheap or free to everyone, but I really don’t think it should be mandatory.

            If we stopped compulsory education at 8th grade and replaced most high schools with some sort of other skill development program or work/study program, the expectations and outcomes would probably be better aligned.

            Large parts of the tertiary education system would be gutted, but maybe that’s a good thing.

      2. BeetleB · · focus · HN ↗
        I assume they weren't advocating for using AI to just blindly give answers to the students...

        You can argue the same about humans. Growing up, I definitely did encounter people who charged money for tutoring and never taught anything - they just gave the answers. Wasted money.

        As for dealing with kids whose classmates' parents help them a bit too much... I honestly don't have a solution. From my experience growing up, beyond a certain amount of help, you definitely are hampering the kid if you overhelp them. I guess I was just fortunate that none of my peers' parents cared to, so I could still be near the top of the class.

        Oh, and our final scores were heavily weighted on in-class tests/exams, so even if some kid's parents did overhelp, they wouldn't do well overall.

      3. Natsu · · focus · HN ↗
        > The same was said for laptops and tablets. Now there is a push to remove them from the curriculum. Having them meant the students didn't retain anything because they were distracting. I feel using AI in place of pedagogy will have similar results. Why bother learning to retain any information when AI knows everything and can recall it in a split second.

        I remember growing up being told similar things about the internet and how you can't trust anything written on it. There was some truth to that, of course, but how many people will say that of search engines, despite them being filled with utter crap?

        1. yardie · · focus · HN ↗
          When I grew up we couldn’t use the internet as a reference for our research. There didn’t exist a standard for citing articles and blogs as there was for journals and books. Eventually, that was fixed.

          I use AI extensively now, it also cites the websites and electronic documents it uses. It’s a little frustrating in that it cites the URL but not the exact paragraph or chart cited. For that I have to read the entire article. Sometimes it gets it wrong because the context is incorrect. It’s still a great tool, but without my last generation experience in high school and undergrad research, someone without that experience would blindly follow wherever it takes you.

      4. asdff · · focus · HN ↗
        It might look like those kids are having a leg up, but really they aren't learning to stand on their two feet and the wheels start coming off when they aren't under the wing anymore.
      5. singpolyma3 · · focus · HN ↗
        > Why bother learning to retain any information when AI knows everything and can recall it in a split second.

        This is a real question though. One I've been asking since the early 00s. Learning means something different than it did in decades previous. Merely remembering easy to look up facts is not the slam dunk it used to be.

        1. braingravy · · focus · HN ↗
          I think the shift is in part from learning behavior indicating an ability to apply (‘I wanted to do something so bad I went to the library/college/etc.!’), to the free availability of knowledge leading to a delinkage of knowledge v.s. the ability to apply knowledge and get a desired outcome.

          AI can really help the outcome part (by just doing it for you), so for better or worse I see that delinkage continuing.

          People who bother to actually learn while using AI will have an edge on those shovel slop, but there’s clearly a difference from previous eras.

        2. randcraw · · focus · HN ↗
          Don't agree. If you know no facts, you'll be unable to think even the most basic thoughts. The more you know, the deeper your thinking can be as well as the more subtle.

          For every fact you learn there is a necessary context and numerous exceptions when it's applied in other contexts. If you expect AI to spit all relevant facts at you every time you're clueless, you will have no idea when AI is wrong or lying. You will have to trust everything AI (or its owner) tells you.

          1. zhivota · · focus · HN ↗
            Yes. Fact fluency allows higher level of abstraction. This is very clear in the case of mathematics - try doing algebra without having your addition and multiplication tables memorized, kids who fail algebra are often missing these basic facts, along with other basics like order of operations.

            It's not just math either. Try to be an electrician without memorizing the basic principles of electricity and how they interact. You're going to have a bad time.

            By induction we can see how this scales upwards, basically infinitely, to higher and higher levels of thinking.

            1. tru3_power · · focus · HN ↗
              I think this is mostly compounding confidence at play that unlocks your mind to be more fluid when faced with a task to do/problem to solve that actually requires skill (not just following a series of known steps). It’s like public speaking (unless you have really bad stage fright) you generally will give a better presentation if you really know your stuff, or at least will be less nervous allowing yourself to get into that flow state.
            2. fulladder · · focus · HN ↗
              > Try to be an electrician...

              > By induction...

              Well played.

            3. singpolyma3 · · focus · HN ↗
              As someone who never memorized these tables and has a degree in mathematics... I don't agree
              1. camdenreslink · · focus · HN ↗
                You used a calculator every time you needed to multiply or divide simple numbers while reducing matrices to echelon form in introductory linear algebra? Or when doing simple arithmetic necessary to find integrals and derivatives in calculus? I bet you in fact did have those tables memorized, even if it wasn't a conscious effort.
                1. singpolyma3 · · focus · HN ↗
                  I wrote long columns of galloping additions in the margin because calculators weren't allowed.

                  I mean yes, I have some "facts" in my memory because of repeated exposure. I know 2x2 and 5x5 but the whole table? Not a chance.

              2. Sohcahtoa82 · · focus · HN ↗
                I guarantee you that you've memorized these tables, you just didn't put any effort into deliberately doing it. It happened accidentally as you used numbers frequently.

                Of course, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you DO need to use a calculator to quickly tell me what 8 * 6 is. But I would be highly surprised if you got a degree in math and still needed a calculator for that.

                1. singpolyma3 · · focus · HN ↗
                  For 8*6? I definitely don't know either of the 8 or 6 tables by memory.

                  I of course know how to figure it out. Let's see my instinct might be to do 8x2 first because I do know most of the 2s. Then 16x3 I can do in a few steps of addition. 20+12+16 then 48

                  And yes then I checked on my calculator because I'm posting this online and don't want to look like an idiot.

              3. zhivota · · focus · HN ↗
                That's actually impressive, I'll grant you that. You must have a larger than normal working memory to be able to load so many operations onto your memory stack.

                The tables are really not hard to memorize, for what it's worth, and it's very useful in every day life to know them.

        3. wongarsu · · focus · HN ↗
          Was learning easy to look up facts ever slam dunk useful?

          It had its place in the 80s when looking up involved at least finding the right book. But that time was already on the way out in the 00s. My impression was more that education likes to ask for facts because they are easy to test for.

          What you really want to teach are concepts and broad strokes. Nobody needs to know on which weekday the Soviet Union collapsed, but an understanding of the causes of the collapse is useful. Similarly, you don't need to know the speed of light to more than one digit of precision, but knowing the role of the speed of light as the speed at which information can travel through space is useful

          That kind of knowledge also continues being useful in the age of AI. It allows you to see the connections in the world, and know which questions you even have to ask

          1. UpsideDownRide · · focus · HN ↗
            Hey you wrote out my general thoughts on the subject pretty damn well :)
          2. nevdka · · focus · HN ↗
            You need to be able to hold facts in your own working memory while you think about them. If you do this with the same facts, and think through different combinations, they’ll stick in your memory for longer.

            I never sat down to memorise trivia about the Roman calendar, but I know Julius Caesar was assassinated on the 15th, the ides of March, because of repeated exposure while thinking things through.

            It seems like old assessment techniques could luck in to testing comprehension, because the people who understood things would also remember them. This devolved into the recall being seen as the goal, instead of as proxy measure of something harder to test.

            1. singpolyma3 · · focus · HN ↗
              Yes sure. I do remember many things. But drilling facts doesn't seem like the way.
          3. plourens · · focus · HN ↗
            Former teacher here. Your example of the USSR is a good one to demonstrate the importance of a broad base of knowledge. In order to actually understand what "the Soviet Union collapsed" means, you need to know facts about what precipitated the Cold War. What communism means, what democracy means, and so on. Where Russia is on a map, and what "satellite" countries are. These are all concepts, too, but more atomic that build to the bigger idea.

            Any "concept" is composed of interrelated facts, all the way down.

        4. jolmg · · focus · HN ↗
          >> Why bother learning to retain any information when AI knows everything and can recall it in a split second.

          > This is a real question though.

          Is it? Why bother to learn how to add 2 numbers when you can just use a calculator.

          > Learning means something different than it did in decades previous.

          Not really. This is just the acquisition of a new tool. It can possibly be incorporated into education like how calculators were used in the 00s/90s, but you must know how to do the work without the tool.

          1. paul7986 · · focus · HN ↗
            Once smart glasses with displays or just talking to Ai in your earbuds becomes humanly ubiquitious then I believe the game changes. As long as it's 100% correct humans become know it alls.
            1. nik282000 · · focus · HN ↗
              I hooked up my local LLM with zim-tools and a 120GB copy of Wikipedia. With some very strict instruction it's turned into a bar-trivia machine, it can answer factual questions faster than I can look them up and it's all offline.

              The fun starts when you ask it more complicated questions like 'i have a device that communicates with microwaves and draws a maximum of 20mA at 12v, is it safe for use near humans?' It will look up microwave safety, ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, workplace exposure limits and eventually come up with 1/4W is already safe and the device likely is not a 100% efficient microwave transmitter.

          2. singpolyma3 · · focus · HN ↗
            You don't need to know how to do the work without the tool. Knowing how to add two numbers together is not the point. Knowing what numbers to add and why is what you need. Just computing the answer hasn't been an interesting skill in my whole lifetime.
            1. jolmg · · focus · HN ↗
              > You don't need to know how to do the work without the tool. Knowing how to add two numbers together is not the point.

              Would you really raise your kids to not know how to add 2 numbers on their own?

              I wouldn't even raise my kids to not know how to wash their clothes without a washing machine.

              Wouldn't want them to be useless on their own, to be dependent on tools to take care of them.

              It's fine to use tools to augment what you're able to do, but it'd be a kind of failure of their elders / of their environment to not teach them how to live on their own, independent, or at least dependent on as few things as possible. Tools aren't necessarily always going to be available in their lives. Having options for their life's necessities is good.

              It also helps to know when the job's done well. Just because clothes come out of the washing machine doesn't necessarily mean they're clean.

              If we're talking:

              > Why bother learning to retain any information when AI knows everything and can recall it in a split second.

              Kind of scary to think of adults that need AI to do their thinking for them, with the adults not knowing how to verify anything and just trust the output.

              1. singpolyma3 · · focus · HN ↗
                I mean, my kids can both do mental math because it's something they sort of absorbed along the way. But yeah I don't super value it as something to focus on. I've never done laundry without a washing machine nor would I know how to teach someone how. Though I'm sure I could look it up.
        5. somenameforme · · focus · HN ↗
          Memorizing facts was never the slam dunk in and of itself, but just a path to something greater, and I don't think that's changed. Think about the most obvious example - what we're doing right now: language. You can only fluently speak and communicate with others because you've memorized, to the point of complete subconscious mastery, a completely ridiculous amount of information and knowledge - thousands of words, countless grammatical nuances, cultural and contextual connotations/implications, and much more.

          Imagine trying to speak without having this base of knowledge. Even if possible, you'd never be able to use the language in a comparable fashion. And I think this generalizes to basically everything in every domain. If you want to get good at chess, you need to study a ridiculously massive amount of tactics/patterns. If you want to get good at basketball, you need to simple practice dribbling and shooting a ball into a hoop for many thousands of hours, and so on.

          The whole point of the memorization is to make it feel like it's not memorized. Like when you see these words, or come up with your own - it requires absolutely zero effort. There's nothing magical there. It's the exact same way that a master chess player can easily play a competent game of chess with 1 minute on their clock or while blindfolded.

          If, and as, we start doing away with the rote, I'd expect we're going to see worse and worse outcomes. Arguably, this is already happening as Western education is continually 'rethought' while China rockets ahead of everybody with an education system that looks very much like a more centralized version of the US education system of 70 years ago.

          1. plourens · · focus · HN ↗
            You hit the nail on the head. It sounds silly to say, but it simply is useful to know things. And to know things, you &quot;memorize&quot; them. More specifically, you build neural pathways as the information becomes better known to you, and which can be activated quickly. This is why I maintain a massive Anki deck for anything I find curious and want to remember, inspired by Michael Nielsen (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;augmentingcognition.com&#x2F;ltm.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;augmentingcognition.com&#x2F;ltm.html) and others.

            Even if AI is very powerful, it is very obvious that someone actually knowledgable in a given domain can leverage AI more usefully than someone without that base of knowledge. And to be actually knowledgeable, as opposed to vaguely familiar with terms, takes significant effort over time. Luckily we have tools like spaced repetition that make that effort easier.

            The last thing I&#x27;d add is that it&#x27;s useful to know lots of things in various domains. Much like an LLM, our brains draw connections between disparate things which we know well, in the process of diffuse mode thinking.

        6. 7speter · · focus · HN ↗
          Because if you’re well versed at something you can use ai at a more nuanced level.
      6. rockskon · · focus · HN ↗
        And now we have junior programmers that don&#x27;t understand the code being generated and submit pull requests with garbage code.
        1. dosisking · · focus · HN ↗
          &gt; And now we have junior programmers that don&#x27;t understand the code being generated and submit pull requests with garbage code.

          Sounds just like most &#x27;senior&#x27; devs tbh.

        2. yardie · · focus · HN ↗
          We were all once junior coders. We Also didn’t understand the code we had written or what we were being asked to do. I have yet to meet any junior coders who hasn’t written garbage code that hasn’t managed to squeak through unit testing.

          I’m embarrassed by some of my early work and simultaneously impressed it managed to work at all! And someone was dumb enough to pay me money to do it?!

      7. phyzix5761 · · focus · HN ↗
        If parents are stepping in and constantly saving their kids they are not giving them a leg up. They are effectively handicapping them.
        1. brnt · · focus · HN ↗
          Being able to say &#x27;I attended $famous_uni&#x27; counts for much if not most in many circles. Upper classes are beyond merit; being there and staying there is all that&#x27;s needed. In fact, stepping in to save offspring is a way of life for them. School is just the first time it happens.
          1. phyzix5761 · · focus · HN ↗
            Generational wealth usually disappears within 3 generations so real life skills are necessary if the upper class wants to remain there.
            1. watwut · · focus · HN ↗
              That severely depends on legal and social system you operate it. It is not universal truth, that was artifact some concrete historical period. And the loss is frequently result of large war, revolution, violent displacement, that sort of thing.
            2. brnt · · focus · HN ↗
              That&#x27;s an awfully long runway.
            3. yardie · · focus · HN ↗
              Mate, I’m visiting Europe right now. The tail of generational wealth is so long here you can even see it. We can certainly see a few examples of family wealth being squandered. And it makes a great narrative about karma and balance. But I’ve met even more families that while not individually wealthy will never, ever be poor in the foreseeable future for the next 5 generations at least.
              1. phyzix5761 · · focus · HN ↗
                Karma? Do you believe anyone who has wealth only got that way through immoral actions?
                1. RichEO · · focus · HN ↗
                  No, he’s saying it makes us poor feel better hearing stories that generational wealth doesn’t last. It feels _just_, almost analogous to karma. But it’s not really true.
            4. Terr_ · · focus · HN ↗
              Is that summing the wealth of every single person in a (usually growing) group of inheritors, or averaging it?

              If 1 guy with $16 billion turns into 16 grandkids with (inflation adjusted) $1 billion endowments each, it sounds to me like the family fortune was preserved extremely well, the family is simply bigger.

      8. ifwinterco · · focus · HN ↗
        They&#x27;re not really getting a leg up though, it will bite them later in life.

        Young adults are less competent and resilient than ever for exactly this reason

      9. frizlab · · focus · HN ↗
        &gt; I feel using AI in place of pedagogy will have similar results.

        I think it will actually be much, much worse.

      10. kflopcom · · focus · HN ↗

        [dead]

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