Thread

1. radiorental · 1790264419 · 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 · 1790288587 · 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. opt_dot_step · 1790289758 · focus · HN ↗

         I am very curious what either person asked that led them to say that AI had told them a square is not a rectangle.

         The obvious question of “is a square a rectangle?” is definitely NOT causing any LLM to say “no”.

         Hallucinations are an issue but they genuinely are no longer a concern for any modern non-tiny LLM for basic facts that you would expect a K-6 course to cover. Maybe you might be able to find a few random hallucinations in knowledge covered at the high school level but I’m quite skeptical even that still happens. Yes, they can still, at times, hallucinate sources but I cannot recall the last time I actually saw this happen. I think it was at least a year ago

         1. epihelix · 1790308556 · focus · HN ↗

            I just tried with Luna, Gemma4, GPT-OSS-120B. All got this correct. (Unsurprisingly.)

            I'd guess that the tutor had a brain-fart, and then blamed AI for their own silliness? No matter what the reason, they clearly shouldn't be tutoring.

            (I mean, seriously, what on earth?)

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