22 ms·

Designing a 'Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer' from Diamond Age

153 points by arthurjj 8y ago

bmcusick 8y ago
For mature learners, a prototype they might find useful would be a research assistant. The AI could work at making sure it understood queries better over time, then get better at finding answers, then get better at summarizing why its findings are useful, and finally work on explaining/teaching what it found.
- hprotagonist 8y ago
  this is more like "the Librarian".
mgleason_3 8y ago
Wow, for a mature mind :), that was a lot to absorb. It’s interesting to see an overview of the current state of art. Still, its too bad the conclusion is that only the big 5 have a chance (Google, Facebook, ...)
jillesvangurp 8y ago
I love this book. Still very current despite the fact it was published in the nineties. I re-read most of Neal Stephenson's stuff every few years. Just finished Anathem, again ;-).
- MrMember 8y ago
  I like Stephenson's writing a lot but i don't know if I could re-read his books. The frequent, lengthy digressions put me off of reading them again.
  - smogcutter 8y ago
    IMO Diamond Age feels way less like a recap of Stephenson's reading list than some of the others. Worth a second look if you're on the fence and looking for a good story.
    - eponeponepon 8y ago
      It's always felt like the most disciplined of his books to me - Snow Crash is almost there, but just a little too formulaic as a story. I enjoy the digressions and length in his other work, but they can get a little dull after the first reading.
      - Avshalom 8y ago
        I agree as far as the novel/ridiculously-long-essay dichotomy goes. That said Snow Crash is usually called a satire of (post)cyberpunk and as a satire it needs to adhere to the formula more than just another entry in the genre.
        asteli 8y ago
        That explains a lot about my impressions of Snow Crash specifically. I felt that Stephenson wasn't being serious with his writing (contrast to, say, William Gibson's original treatment of cyberpunk). A bit toward the Terry Pratchett side of the writing spectrum. I found it to be a slight turn-off, but if what you say is true, I'm more inclined to give Stephenson's other work more attention.
        hinkley 8y ago
        I wonder how that lines up with people who hate the first chapter and think it’s a nonsequitur versus people who enjoy it for its absurdity, versus people who think it is perfectly in keeping with the rest of the book. Is it Gene Wilder doing a front flip in his first scene in Willie Wonka so you never quite trust him again?
        Avshalom 8y ago
        >> Gene Wilder doing a front flip in his first scene in Willie Wonka so you never quite trust him again? ... ... Oh SHIT.
        8y ago
  - intrasight 8y ago
    I've only re-read "snow crash" - but that was actually a listen to audiobook on a roadtrip
  - criddell 8y ago
    If I were to re-read Snow Crash, I would skip all the talk about ancient Sumer and the Sumerians. IMHO, that book would be greatly improved by eliminating all of that.
    - dfox 8y ago
      It serves to build and explain the neo-scientologist motivation of the antagonists. And in my opinion it is somewhat more sane than real scientology mythology.
  - CobrastanJorji 8y ago
    Those are frequently my favorite parts. When I think of Cryptonomicon, I think about the Cap'N Crunch problem.
  - laurentl 8y ago
    I’m currently re-reading Seveneves, and will probably tuck into Cryptonomicon (for the third time) in the next few months. Neal Stephenson’s books are rich enough that I usually get a different vibe from them when I read them again. For instance, on first read I liked the second part of Seveneves better than the first part, and now it’s the other way around. Maybe it’s due to the fact that on first read I get sucked in by the plot twists and on later reads I can enjoy the scenery and pick up different themes.
    - Avshalom 8y ago
      Seveneves was deeply traumatizing to me; I don't think Stephenson really grasps what 5000 years means to some isolated populations. I don't think I'm ever going to re-read it.
      - hideo 8y ago
        Yeah, I was/am a huge fan of his books. Anathem is just an incredible work of art and deserves every bit of recognition it got if not more. But REAMDE and Seveneves were just terribly disappointing and a huge letdown to me. They both seemed shallow and flat compared to the depth of story in his other books. I don't think I can think of any other author whose books I both adore and loathe.
        Avshalom 8y ago
        It's not necessarily that Seveneves felt 'flat' so much as the second half presents people as basically un changed after millennia which in some cases is over-lookable and in other cases deeply deeply lacking in empathy.
        toasterlovin 8y ago
        But hadn’t the pingers started to develop adaptations to ocean life? And both the diggers and the pingers would have a hard time generating novel adaptations because they were severely population constrained (smaller population = lower total generation of mutations). And anyway, 5000 years is enough time for subpopulations to diverge, but it’s not enough time for subspecies to emerge.
teachrdan 8y ago
"Scaling one-on-one tutoring is seen by many experts and researchers as the silver bullet for human cognitive development" While I admire the author's intentions, this is completely the wrong approach. There are multiple reasons why having actual human tutors is important: 0. The creation of a deep, long-lasting relationship between tutor and tutee 1. The benefits to the tutee: the feeling of pride in helping the younger generation, building empathy and understanding of what the younger generation is doing 2. The tutee is inspired to pass along their knowledge to others later in life; they learn how to tutor by being tutored, thus continuing the cycle That last point is important. Even if a perfect Primer were created, how would it improve with time? If it truly replaced tutoring, then the art of tutoring would be lost forever, and it'd be up to software engineers to determine the metrics by which to measure the success of the Primer's tutoring algorithm. Of course, that would never happen. Instead, tutoring by Primer would be reserved for poor people who didn't have tutors in their lives--or who had potential tutors who were scared off by the notion that they were not as effective the Primer. Then, in those communities, organic tutoring--an institution that has existed since literally the beginning of humanity--would be amputated and replaced by whatever tutoring the Primer's developers saw fit. Real tutoring would, of course, be preserved for the ruling elite. Which I think is what happens in the book, come to think of it. Of course I could be completely wrong. But this is the peril of MOOCs in general: students who go to first-tier schools like Harvard and Oxford get personalized instruction, while everyone else gets video lectures while glorified TAs proctor exams.[0] 0. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-Professors-at-San-Jose/138941 https://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-Professors-at-San-Jose... 'Professors in the philosophy department at San Jose State University are refusing to teach a philosophy course developed by edX, saying they do not want to enable what they see as a push to "replace professors, dismantle departments, and provide a diminished education for students in public universities."'
- LifeLiverTransp 8y ago
  Why shouldnt the same thing as happens in the book happen on a voluntary basis? A second app connecting to the tutor, basically providing open source education..
- mrybczyn 8y ago
wallflower 8y ago
> TYLIP is...a book that is powered by a computer so advanced it’s almost magical, and it teaches children everything. It does this through a fully interactive story. It teaches you how to read, how to do maths, it teaches you morals, ethics, even self-defence. http://mssv.net/2006/05/01/the-young-ladys-illustrated-primer/ http://mssv.net/2006/05/01/the-young-ladys-illustrated-prime...
- arthurjj 8y ago
  An interesting take away from the article is that games like Animal Crossing might be a better staring point for building TYLIP than the methods in the OP article
  - anshuldhawan99 8y ago
    100% agreed. We are taking a game based approach to creating the primer.
jaggederest 8y ago
This is close to the inspiration for the One Laptop Per Child project, as far as I am aware. YLIP was a major philosophical impetus for it, and it was even named "Nell" after the main character in Diamond Age. The Amazon Kindle was also codenamed "Fiona" after another main character, Fiona Hackworth.
- gumby 8y ago
  > This is close to the inspiration for the One Laptop Per Child project, as far as I am aware. YLIP was a major philosophical impetus for it... The OLPC was actually Nicholas Negroponte's second attempt at getting inexpensive computing to the developed world; I know because I worked for his first attempt at the CMIRH in 1982 & 1983. The Diamond Age wasn't even published until 1995. This isn't to say that many OLPC folks weren't inspired by the book, but the OLPC's inspiration goes much further back.
  - na85 8y ago
    Is the OLPC considered a successful endeavor?
    - askvictor 8y ago
      In itself, probably not. (though I can't speak for the children and teachers who have gotten to use them in the real world). However, it changed the landscape for computing - netbooks, iPads and Chromebooks all arguably descend from olpc.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        That's probably generous. OLPC may have helped create an aspiration for cheaper portable computers. But netbooks themselves, as originally conceived, never amounted to much either. iPads are mostly consumption devices. And Chromebooks, while I'm a personal fan, are a marginal success. Tech advances have made it possible to buy pretty inexpensive laptops but I'm not sure how much credit OLPC deserves for that.
chaostheory 8y ago
Why limit it to a 'book'? I feel that the people behind the movie Her has hit it and it's the design that everyone is trying to make real.
Analemma_ 8y ago
I'm a little troubled that this seems to be completely missing the point of the Diamond Age (aka, "the Fight Club effect"). The whole lesson of the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is that you shouldn't make the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.
- Jtsummers 8y ago
  I'm curious how you got to that conclusion. I'll admit, it's been ~16 years since I read that book. I remember most of the story but I didn't have the same reaction you seem to have. I'd like to know what your reasoning is.
- aidenn0 8y ago
  I saw the book as relatively neutral on this point. Nell certainly is improved by it (though it could be easily read that this is largely due to Miranda), and Elizabeth's malaise is easily explained by growing up in luxury, with an abusive teacher. The YLIP is shown as something inferior to a true parent (Miranda being Nell's surrogate parent being pointed to as a big reason for her success), but better than nothing (it was a "best availabe" tool Dr X. provided for the orphans).
  - Jtsummers 8y ago
    Wasn't Elizabeth's tutor-actor different from day-to-day? (If I'm recalling my characters correctly.) And that was partly the explanation for how she turned out. While Nell's was a dedicated tutor-actor through the whole time.
    - undersuit 8y ago
      Nell's tutor started recognizing the job offers for the tutor lessons and choose to become the dedicated one.
    - aidenn0 8y ago
      This is true, and more support for the the book considering the Primers to not be insufficient replacement for an involved parent, which is an easy argument to make, but does not mean the book thinks they are bad.
germinalphrase 8y ago
So much of education when a child is young is made up of non-academic cognitive skills. How do you shape and react to a child's human interactions - and the associated cognitive skills - via any kind of media or device? It's hard enough for trained human beings...
- schoen 8y ago
  In The Diamond Age, it was very advanced AI that included software specifically aimed at social interactions -- plus a kind of trust fund that paid for hiring "racters" (character actors) in certain circumstances.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - QuercusMax 8y ago
    I always though "racters" was short for "interactors", but it could be either one...
    - schoen 8y ago
      Oh, I think that might be right! It's been a little while. :-)
    - rtkwe 8y ago
      I think it's a bit of both the 'shows'/programs are called "'ractives" clearly for interactives, from there we can get ractors from interactors or just a perversion of actors in ractives.
  - germinalphrase 8y ago
    I haven't read the book. It monitor interactions with other people or just the device?
    - retbull 8y ago
      From what I remember (couple of years since I read it) it can keep track of other people if they are near by but mostly the child would talk to the book like a friend and explain what was happening.
oceanghost 8y ago
I've been working on this for a year or so (unrelated to this article). I assume the AI will be available at some point in the future. The hard part is actually the teaching material.
digi_owl 8y ago
One of those books i simply noped out of after the n-th time it diverged into lala-land. Stephenson may know his technical stuff, but it does in no way make him able to write interesting books.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bitwize 8y ago
An HN story about Croquet (Smalltalk framework) dropped a few years ago. Someone was like "So, Alan Kay is trying to build the Metaverse?" My response was, no, Alan Kay is trying to build the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer from The Diamond Age, and always has been. The Metaverse is one of the lemmas he has to develop in order to get there.
- jecel 8y ago
  And Alan Kay would also cite John McCarthy's Advice Taker as a reference for such a project, which this article didn't do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advice_taker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advice_taker
esrauch 8y ago
I feel like the article is severely overestimating the state of the art and the current capabilities of the "big 5". All of them are working on the most basic fundamental components that are prerequisites to a Primer and every prerequisite is still pretty far off: no one can currently build a useful conversational agent (anything beyond query-and-response of Alexa), no one can really extract useful semantic meaning from text comments with surrounding context, no one can construct good automatic customized lessons for 5th graders based on feedback loops. There is no meaningful version of a primer that can exist without all of those things just being solved problems. Given the inability to meaningfully execute in any of those areas, the challenges listed in the article seem laughably meaningless to me: the problem of "they won't use it 24/7, so the system wouldn't be able to learn everything it needs to" is meaningless if we can't make something learn something from 24/7 use. Similarly, a system diagram showing that it would be a book with sensors and smarts doesn't really seem to be providing any insight at all.
- inimino 8y ago
  I think you're missing the point, which is to develop something that can help people learn better today and be a starting point for something like the primer, not to build the primer today. Obviously the technology for the latter doesn't exist, which is why some creativity is needed in approaching the problem. The state of the art in guided learning is still textbooks and lectures, and most applications of technology beyond those have been failures, but that doesn't mean there are no wins to be had with current technology.
  - esrauch 8y ago
    I think it is the exact opposite of that. There is some version that can be done with current technology, but the challenges for that version are fundamentally much much more basic than what is discussed here: the article is basically jumping ahead imagining we had 90% of the technology of the primer solved and what problems you might face in that hypothetical world where the remaining constraints being "people don't talk to it enough, otherwise it would work" The article mentions several times the concerns about getting enough user specific data and that it can't be easily bootstrapped by a smaller company that isn't the "big 5" because others don't have enough data. Except the big 5 can't solve related and easier problems yet with the data they have and a ton of engineering effort invested. The article ponders whether a primer for the hardest topics (educated adults) could have enough usage while we can't even do "make something that usefully, intelligently adapts to teach users even trivial topics or targeting a single grade of very young children", or "something that can hold a conversation better than a toddler".
8bitsrule 8y ago
"based on ... (mumble) ...builds on ... learner's existing knowledge " (https://proto-knowledge.blogspot.com/2011/11/building-young-ladys-illustrated-primer.html https://proto-knowledge.blogspot.com/2011/11/building-young-...) is a key part of any such system. A hard part, since it requires building a map of the student's 'database'. Quizzing without being too intrusive. And secured. (Easier than in a classroom. Typically faced with 2-dozen or more students, the teacher has little idea what curriculum each student has been exposed to. Assessing the group wrongly means having to go back and start all over. And the only possible solution still has to be general, not tailored.) This has been and remains a wonderful dream application. If it's for all, not just for the privileged, bravo.
Tloewald 8y ago
Seems to me that among other things the writer has completely missed the point of the Primer was not to educate in the sense they mean it but to build character.
graycat 8y ago
From a post above is > I feel like the article is severely overestimating the state of the art and the current capabilities of the "big 5". To me this is especially diplomatic! From the OP > Obviously we have the Primer, WHAT?????? What do "we have"? Where is this "Primer" that "we have"????? What here is "obvious"? IMHO this might as well been written in Russian, and there I don't even know the alphabet! For decades we've had multiple choice tests. Is THAT what she's talking about that "we have"? So, could write a computer program that asks multiple choice questions and for wrong answers displays some background tutorial material. Is THAT what she has in mind? She keeps saying "AI", that is, "artificial intelligence": Just what more specifically does she have in mind? Curve fitting with networks of sigmoid functions, with regression trees, with versions of regression?

153 points by arthurjj 8y ago

For mature learners, a prototype they might find useful would be a research assistant. The AI could work at making sure it understood queries better over time, then get better at finding answers, then get better at summarizing why its findings are useful, and finally work on explaining/teaching what it found.

hprotagonist 8y ago
this is more like "the Librarian".

mgleason_3 8y ago

Wow, for a mature mind :), that was a lot to absorb. It’s interesting to see an overview of the current state of art. Still, its too bad the conclusion is that only the big 5 have a chance (Google, Facebook, ...)

jillesvangurp 8y ago

I love this book. Still very current despite the fact it was published in the nineties. I re-read most of Neal Stephenson's stuff every few years. Just finished Anathem, again ;-).

MrMember 8y ago
I like Stephenson's writing a lot but i don't know if I could re-read his books. The frequent, lengthy digressions put me off of reading them again.
- smogcutter 8y ago
  IMO Diamond Age feels way less like a recap of Stephenson's reading list than some of the others. Worth a second look if you're on the fence and looking for a good story.
  - eponeponepon 8y ago
    It's always felt like the most disciplined of his books to me - Snow Crash is almost there, but just a little too formulaic as a story. I enjoy the digressions and length in his other work, but they can get a little dull after the first reading.
    - Avshalom 8y ago
      I agree as far as the novel/ridiculously-long-essay dichotomy goes. That said Snow Crash is usually called a satire of (post)cyberpunk and as a satire it needs to adhere to the formula more than just another entry in the genre.
      - asteli 8y ago
        That explains a lot about my impressions of Snow Crash specifically. I felt that Stephenson wasn't being serious with his writing (contrast to, say, William Gibson's original treatment of cyberpunk). A bit toward the Terry Pratchett side of the writing spectrum. I found it to be a slight turn-off, but if what you say is true, I'm more inclined to give Stephenson's other work more attention.
        hinkley 8y ago
        I wonder how that lines up with people who hate the first chapter and think it’s a nonsequitur versus people who enjoy it for its absurdity, versus people who think it is perfectly in keeping with the rest of the book. Is it Gene Wilder doing a front flip in his first scene in Willie Wonka so you never quite trust him again?
        Avshalom 8y ago
        >> Gene Wilder doing a front flip in his first scene in Willie Wonka so you never quite trust him again? ... ... Oh SHIT.
        8y ago
- intrasight 8y ago
  I've only re-read "snow crash" - but that was actually a listen to audiobook on a roadtrip
- criddell 8y ago
  If I were to re-read Snow Crash, I would skip all the talk about ancient Sumer and the Sumerians. IMHO, that book would be greatly improved by eliminating all of that.
  - dfox 8y ago
    It serves to build and explain the neo-scientologist motivation of the antagonists. And in my opinion it is somewhat more sane than real scientology mythology.
- CobrastanJorji 8y ago
  Those are frequently my favorite parts. When I think of Cryptonomicon, I think about the Cap'N Crunch problem.
- laurentl 8y ago
  I’m currently re-reading Seveneves, and will probably tuck into Cryptonomicon (for the third time) in the next few months. Neal Stephenson’s books are rich enough that I usually get a different vibe from them when I read them again. For instance, on first read I liked the second part of Seveneves better than the first part, and now it’s the other way around. Maybe it’s due to the fact that on first read I get sucked in by the plot twists and on later reads I can enjoy the scenery and pick up different themes.
  - Avshalom 8y ago
    Seveneves was deeply traumatizing to me; I don't think Stephenson really grasps what 5000 years means to some isolated populations. I don't think I'm ever going to re-read it.
    - hideo 8y ago
      Yeah, I was/am a huge fan of his books. Anathem is just an incredible work of art and deserves every bit of recognition it got if not more. But REAMDE and Seveneves were just terribly disappointing and a huge letdown to me. They both seemed shallow and flat compared to the depth of story in his other books. I don't think I can think of any other author whose books I both adore and loathe.
      - Avshalom 8y ago
        It's not necessarily that Seveneves felt 'flat' so much as the second half presents people as basically un changed after millennia which in some cases is over-lookable and in other cases deeply deeply lacking in empathy.
        toasterlovin 8y ago
        But hadn’t the pingers started to develop adaptations to ocean life? And both the diggers and the pingers would have a hard time generating novel adaptations because they were severely population constrained (smaller population = lower total generation of mutations). And anyway, 5000 years is enough time for subpopulations to diverge, but it’s not enough time for subspecies to emerge.

teachrdan 8y ago

"Scaling one-on-one tutoring is seen by many experts and researchers as the silver bullet for human cognitive development" While I admire the author's intentions, this is completely the wrong approach. There are multiple reasons why having actual human tutors is important: 0. The creation of a deep, long-lasting relationship between tutor and tutee 1. The benefits to the tutee: the feeling of pride in helping the younger generation, building empathy and understanding of what the younger generation is doing 2. The tutee is inspired to pass along their knowledge to others later in life; they learn how to tutor by being tutored, thus continuing the cycle That last point is important. Even if a perfect Primer were created, how would it improve with time? If it truly replaced tutoring, then the art of tutoring would be lost forever, and it'd be up to software engineers to determine the metrics by which to measure the success of the Primer's tutoring algorithm. Of course, that would never happen. Instead, tutoring by Primer would be reserved for poor people who didn't have tutors in their lives--or who had potential tutors who were scared off by the notion that they were not as effective the Primer. Then, in those communities, organic tutoring--an institution that has existed since literally the beginning of humanity--would be amputated and replaced by whatever tutoring the Primer's developers saw fit. Real tutoring would, of course, be preserved for the ruling elite. Which I think is what happens in the book, come to think of it. Of course I could be completely wrong. But this is the peril of MOOCs in general: students who go to first-tier schools like Harvard and Oxford get personalized instruction, while everyone else gets video lectures while glorified TAs proctor exams.[0] 0. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-Professors-at-San-Jose/138941 https://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-Professors-at-San-Jose... 'Professors in the philosophy department at San Jose State University are refusing to teach a philosophy course developed by edX, saying they do not want to enable what they see as a push to "replace professors, dismantle departments, and provide a diminished education for students in public universities."'

LifeLiverTransp 8y ago
Why shouldnt the same thing as happens in the book happen on a voluntary basis? A second app connecting to the tutor, basically providing open source education..
mrybczyn 8y ago

wallflower 8y ago

> TYLIP is...a book that is powered by a computer so advanced it’s almost magical, and it teaches children everything. It does this through a fully interactive story. It teaches you how to read, how to do maths, it teaches you morals, ethics, even self-defence. http://mssv.net/2006/05/01/the-young-ladys-illustrated-primer/ http://mssv.net/2006/05/01/the-young-ladys-illustrated-prime...

arthurjj 8y ago
An interesting take away from the article is that games like Animal Crossing might be a better staring point for building TYLIP than the methods in the OP article
- anshuldhawan99 8y ago
  100% agreed. We are taking a game based approach to creating the primer.

jaggederest 8y ago

This is close to the inspiration for the One Laptop Per Child project, as far as I am aware. YLIP was a major philosophical impetus for it, and it was even named "Nell" after the main character in Diamond Age. The Amazon Kindle was also codenamed "Fiona" after another main character, Fiona Hackworth.

gumby 8y ago
> This is close to the inspiration for the One Laptop Per Child project, as far as I am aware. YLIP was a major philosophical impetus for it... The OLPC was actually Nicholas Negroponte's second attempt at getting inexpensive computing to the developed world; I know because I worked for his first attempt at the CMIRH in 1982 & 1983. The Diamond Age wasn't even published until 1995. This isn't to say that many OLPC folks weren't inspired by the book, but the OLPC's inspiration goes much further back.
- na85 8y ago
  Is the OLPC considered a successful endeavor?
  - askvictor 8y ago
    In itself, probably not. (though I can't speak for the children and teachers who have gotten to use them in the real world). However, it changed the landscape for computing - netbooks, iPads and Chromebooks all arguably descend from olpc.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      That's probably generous. OLPC may have helped create an aspiration for cheaper portable computers. But netbooks themselves, as originally conceived, never amounted to much either. iPads are mostly consumption devices. And Chromebooks, while I'm a personal fan, are a marginal success. Tech advances have made it possible to buy pretty inexpensive laptops but I'm not sure how much credit OLPC deserves for that.

chaostheory 8y ago

Why limit it to a 'book'? I feel that the people behind the movie Her has hit it and it's the design that everyone is trying to make real.

Analemma_ 8y ago

I'm a little troubled that this seems to be completely missing the point of the Diamond Age (aka, "the Fight Club effect"). The whole lesson of the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is that you shouldn't make the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.

Jtsummers 8y ago
I'm curious how you got to that conclusion. I'll admit, it's been ~16 years since I read that book. I remember most of the story but I didn't have the same reaction you seem to have. I'd like to know what your reasoning is.
aidenn0 8y ago
I saw the book as relatively neutral on this point. Nell certainly is improved by it (though it could be easily read that this is largely due to Miranda), and Elizabeth's malaise is easily explained by growing up in luxury, with an abusive teacher. The YLIP is shown as something inferior to a true parent (Miranda being Nell's surrogate parent being pointed to as a big reason for her success), but better than nothing (it was a "best availabe" tool Dr X. provided for the orphans).
- Jtsummers 8y ago
  Wasn't Elizabeth's tutor-actor different from day-to-day? (If I'm recalling my characters correctly.) And that was partly the explanation for how she turned out. While Nell's was a dedicated tutor-actor through the whole time.
  - undersuit 8y ago
    Nell's tutor started recognizing the job offers for the tutor lessons and choose to become the dedicated one.
  - aidenn0 8y ago
    This is true, and more support for the the book considering the Primers to not be insufficient replacement for an involved parent, which is an easy argument to make, but does not mean the book thinks they are bad.

germinalphrase 8y ago

So much of education when a child is young is made up of non-academic cognitive skills. How do you shape and react to a child's human interactions - and the associated cognitive skills - via any kind of media or device? It's hard enough for trained human beings...

schoen 8y ago
In The Diamond Age, it was very advanced AI that included software specifically aimed at social interactions -- plus a kind of trust fund that paid for hiring "racters" (character actors) in certain circumstances.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- QuercusMax 8y ago
  I always though "racters" was short for "interactors", but it could be either one...
  - schoen 8y ago
    Oh, I think that might be right! It's been a little while. :-)
  - rtkwe 8y ago
    I think it's a bit of both the 'shows'/programs are called "'ractives" clearly for interactives, from there we can get ractors from interactors or just a perversion of actors in ractives.
- germinalphrase 8y ago
  I haven't read the book. It monitor interactions with other people or just the device?
  - retbull 8y ago
    From what I remember (couple of years since I read it) it can keep track of other people if they are near by but mostly the child would talk to the book like a friend and explain what was happening.

oceanghost 8y ago

I've been working on this for a year or so (unrelated to this article). I assume the AI will be available at some point in the future. The hard part is actually the teaching material.

digi_owl 8y ago

One of those books i simply noped out of after the n-th time it diverged into lala-land. Stephenson may know his technical stuff, but it does in no way make him able to write interesting books.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

bitwize 8y ago

An HN story about Croquet (Smalltalk framework) dropped a few years ago. Someone was like "So, Alan Kay is trying to build the Metaverse?" My response was, no, Alan Kay is trying to build the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer from The Diamond Age, and always has been. The Metaverse is one of the lemmas he has to develop in order to get there.

jecel 8y ago
And Alan Kay would also cite John McCarthy's Advice Taker as a reference for such a project, which this article didn't do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advice_taker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advice_taker

esrauch 8y ago

I feel like the article is severely overestimating the state of the art and the current capabilities of the "big 5". All of them are working on the most basic fundamental components that are prerequisites to a Primer and every prerequisite is still pretty far off: no one can currently build a useful conversational agent (anything beyond query-and-response of Alexa), no one can really extract useful semantic meaning from text comments with surrounding context, no one can construct good automatic customized lessons for 5th graders based on feedback loops. There is no meaningful version of a primer that can exist without all of those things just being solved problems. Given the inability to meaningfully execute in any of those areas, the challenges listed in the article seem laughably meaningless to me: the problem of "they won't use it 24/7, so the system wouldn't be able to learn everything it needs to" is meaningless if we can't make something learn something from 24/7 use. Similarly, a system diagram showing that it would be a book with sensors and smarts doesn't really seem to be providing any insight at all.

inimino 8y ago
I think you're missing the point, which is to develop something that can help people learn better today and be a starting point for something like the primer, not to build the primer today. Obviously the technology for the latter doesn't exist, which is why some creativity is needed in approaching the problem. The state of the art in guided learning is still textbooks and lectures, and most applications of technology beyond those have been failures, but that doesn't mean there are no wins to be had with current technology.
- esrauch 8y ago
  I think it is the exact opposite of that. There is some version that can be done with current technology, but the challenges for that version are fundamentally much much more basic than what is discussed here: the article is basically jumping ahead imagining we had 90% of the technology of the primer solved and what problems you might face in that hypothetical world where the remaining constraints being "people don't talk to it enough, otherwise it would work" The article mentions several times the concerns about getting enough user specific data and that it can't be easily bootstrapped by a smaller company that isn't the "big 5" because others don't have enough data. Except the big 5 can't solve related and easier problems yet with the data they have and a ton of engineering effort invested. The article ponders whether a primer for the hardest topics (educated adults) could have enough usage while we can't even do "make something that usefully, intelligently adapts to teach users even trivial topics or targeting a single grade of very young children", or "something that can hold a conversation better than a toddler".

8bitsrule 8y ago

"based on ... (mumble) ...builds on ... learner's existing knowledge " (https://proto-knowledge.blogspot.com/2011/11/building-young-ladys-illustrated-primer.html https://proto-knowledge.blogspot.com/2011/11/building-young-...) is a key part of any such system. A hard part, since it requires building a map of the student's 'database'. Quizzing without being too intrusive. And secured. (Easier than in a classroom. Typically faced with 2-dozen or more students, the teacher has little idea what curriculum each student has been exposed to. Assessing the group wrongly means having to go back and start all over. And the only possible solution still has to be general, not tailored.) This has been and remains a wonderful dream application. If it's for all, not just for the privileged, bravo.

Tloewald 8y ago

Seems to me that among other things the writer has completely missed the point of the Primer was not to educate in the sense they mean it but to build character.

graycat 8y ago

From a post above is > I feel like the article is severely overestimating the state of the art and the current capabilities of the "big 5". To me this is especially diplomatic! From the OP > Obviously we have the Primer, WHAT?????? What do "we have"? Where is this "Primer" that "we have"????? What here is "obvious"? IMHO this might as well been written in Russian, and there I don't even know the alphabet! For decades we've had multiple choice tests. Is THAT what she's talking about that "we have"? So, could write a computer program that asks multiple choice questions and for wrong answers displays some background tutorial material. Is THAT what she has in mind? She keeps saying "AI", that is, "artificial intelligence": Just what more specifically does she have in mind? Curve fitting with networks of sigmoid functions, with regression trees, with versions of regression?