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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. sandeepkd · · focus · HN ↗
      AI has its own benefits but its really a bad idea to use it in education as a primary source. LLMs have lots of information, reasoning ability, however they have their own limitations and by the nature these limitations just amplify.

      Few days ago my son was working on a problem which asked if square is a rectangle. Turns out his class teacher and external tutor (who was using AI) had different opinions on it. My wife consulted AI as well and she also came to the conclusion that square is not a rectangle cause AI told her so, AI told the same answer to external tutor. I understand that the context matters and if one probes AI more with additional context it may come up with correct answer, but this depends on the assumption that the person asking AI for something already knows the answer.

      1. maest · · focus · HN ↗
        In what world is a square not a rectangle?

        I don't understand how your wife interrogated the AI to be told a square is not a rectangle.

        And how can two tutors disagree on this?

        1. jacobgkau · · focus · HN ↗
          I read their comment as the teacher (who was correct) and a tutor (who used AI) disagreed, not two tutors.

          With the amount of blatantly false information I've seen LLMs spew out in response to my very simple questions, I can very easily imagine one would get this basic information wrong somehow, although I did just Google it (as Gemini, and particularly the on-search-result-page version of it, seem to be the absolute worst of the common models in my experience), and it did get the answer right.

        2. cesarb · · focus · HN ↗
          > In what world is a square not a rectangle?

          In the world of object-oriented programming: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Liskov_substitution_principle#Violation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Liskov_substitution_principle#...

          1. [deleted] · · focus · HN ↗

            [deleted]

          2. lern_too_spel · · focus · HN ↗
            Real squares and rectangles are immutable. You might as well make a rectangle mutable and turn it into a pentagon.
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