4 ms·

78% of people aged 16-24 had used a GenAI tool in the last year. That's a remarkable adoption rate IMO. We're talking about this technology as if it's the futur

78% of people aged 16-24 had used a GenAI tool in the last year. That's a remarkable adoption rate IMO. We're talking about this technology as if it's the future, but it has already transformed secondary and post-secondary education beyond all recognition. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/research-and-data/online-research/online-nation/2024/online-nation-2024-report.pdf?v=386238 https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/rese...

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> 78% of people aged 16-24 had used a GenAI tool in the last year. That's a remarkable adoption rate IMO. We're talking about this technology as if it's the future, but it has already transformed secondary and post-secondary education beyond all recognition. Your wording choice there is excellent as "transforming" can either be extremely positive, or negative, or just different. Given how many students now, judging by various outcries on social media by teaching staff are borderline illiterate in middle school, it does make one wonder what the long term effects of this will be.
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  Standardized test scores were marginally improving for decades, although they tanked during Covid
- Gigachad 2y ago
  It looks like the transformation is going to be that all marked work will be done on paper in class. Anything else is pointless since students just have all their work generated for them.
tmnvix 2y ago
> 78% of people aged 16-24 had used a GenAI tool in the last year. More interesting would be the percentage of people that have used GenAI in the past year with a purpose. I suspect a significant number have just played with it. Likely many didn't make it a habit, let alone ever do anything useful with it. It would be a bit of a stretch to say anyone in this group has 'adopted' AI.
- jsheard 2y ago
  > More interesting would be the percentage of people that have used GenAI in the past year with a purpose. Also how many would continue to use genAI if it weren't artificially cheap/free. Remember that nearly all AI companies are losing money hand over fist, there's bound to be user attrition when the walls close in and they have to start shoving in ads or aggressively upselling paid subscriptions.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  "Write an essay about X" is a purpose. If we keep testing young people in AI-friendly tasks, they will keep using AI to a larger rate than the rest of us.
  - naijaboiler 2y ago
    This! Young people are just using it to do school work. It’s like having a free homework completer
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  Please go talk to a teacher. Almost everyone is submitting AI generated stuff, everywhere.
bsder 2y ago
Google is so terrible that you either have to use AI to filter it or pay for a search engine that doesn't suck.
- mdanger007 2y ago
  The web in general sucks for quickly finding information. from the essays that proceed a recipe or a news site which autoplays an irrelevant video on every story. It not only wastes time it waste your phone data. The ChatGPT search feature has eliminated the junk and gives me the info I’m looking for.
rsynnott 2y ago
The big question, really, is whether they _regularly_ use it. I’ve used ChatGPT… precisely once, as a novelty.
- morkalork 2y ago
  I see teenagers chatting with it to study while taking the bus. That's not some idle one time experiment, that's using it every day type of behaviour.
- 650REDHAIR 2y ago
  Why only once?
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    It’s not something I’d find useful, and it wasn’t particularly amusing. I will confess to enjoying bad AI _image_ generation, mind you. Look at the images on this website! https://theonlineaccountants.uk/file-company-accounts.htm https://theonlineaccountants.uk/file-company-accounts.htm AI generated text generally just makes me cringe, tho.
- alisonatwork 2y ago
  This is one of the most interesting things about AI to me. As a lifelong computer nerd I've always dreamed of having a computer friend who knows all about my life and who I can bounce ideas off, it's a core sci-fi trope. But I tried these new LLMs everyone was so hype about and... nah, they all feel like I'm wasting my time. Anything I want to actually know I can look up myself faster than negotiating with these things to try guess what they want me to tell them so they will actually do what I wanted. And as far as just being a nice personality to spend my time with goes, they all come across to me as awkward or pretentious or fussy, and not what I want my computer friend to sound like. If I need to spend 20 minutes trying to "train" my computer friend how to sound vaguely like a real person, it's a fail, sorry. It feels like trying to socialize on Reddit or Discord, you waste a bunch of time going back and forth with strangers who are trying to be funny or clever but never actually say anything meaningful. Which is why I don't use those sites either. But then I have real life friends who have mentioned they talk to these chatbots all the time, almost like a therapist, and they ask them questions about their lives. Obviously they don't take the advice as seriously as they might coming from a professional, but they still consider it a valuable interaction. To them, having this kind of stilted interaction with a hokey-sounding AI is worth something. And I don't get what they are seeing that I am missing. Perhaps my standards are too high? Or perhaps they just have a greater tolerance for wasting time? Anyway, when surveys ask me if I've used AI, I always say yes. The worst surveys then do not ask a follow-up question of "did you think it was actually useful/compelling/fun", but of course they don't because the whole point of them is to build hype to sell the gimmick to another company who will shoehorn it into whatever.
helf 2y ago
[dead]
jacobolus 2y ago
> transformed secondary and post-secondary education beyond all recognition "Beyond all recognition" seems like quite an extraordinary claim.
- fragmede 2y ago
  I didn't have a teacher growing up that I could talk to 24/7, that would answer all my questions, no matter how ridiculous. with all of the digitized human knowledge at their fingertips, and the patience of a saint for every last one of my dumb questions.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

> 78% of people aged 16-24 had used a GenAI tool in the last year. That's a remarkable adoption rate IMO. We're talking about this technology as if it's the future, but it has already transformed secondary and post-secondary education beyond all recognition. Your wording choice there is excellent as "transforming" can either be extremely positive, or negative, or just different. Given how many students now, judging by various outcries on social media by teaching staff are borderline illiterate in middle school, it does make one wonder what the long term effects of this will be.

jncfhnb 2y ago
Standardized test scores were marginally improving for decades, although they tanked during Covid
Gigachad 2y ago
It looks like the transformation is going to be that all marked work will be done on paper in class. Anything else is pointless since students just have all their work generated for them.

tmnvix 2y ago

> 78% of people aged 16-24 had used a GenAI tool in the last year. More interesting would be the percentage of people that have used GenAI in the past year with a purpose. I suspect a significant number have just played with it. Likely many didn't make it a habit, let alone ever do anything useful with it. It would be a bit of a stretch to say anyone in this group has 'adopted' AI.

jsheard 2y ago
> More interesting would be the percentage of people that have used GenAI in the past year with a purpose. Also how many would continue to use genAI if it weren't artificially cheap/free. Remember that nearly all AI companies are losing money hand over fist, there's bound to be user attrition when the walls close in and they have to start shoving in ads or aggressively upselling paid subscriptions.
marcosdumay 2y ago
"Write an essay about X" is a purpose. If we keep testing young people in AI-friendly tasks, they will keep using AI to a larger rate than the rest of us.
- naijaboiler 2y ago
  This! Young people are just using it to do school work. It’s like having a free homework completer
Der_Einzige 2y ago
Please go talk to a teacher. Almost everyone is submitting AI generated stuff, everywhere.

bsder 2y ago

Google is so terrible that you either have to use AI to filter it or pay for a search engine that doesn't suck.

mdanger007 2y ago
The web in general sucks for quickly finding information. from the essays that proceed a recipe or a news site which autoplays an irrelevant video on every story. It not only wastes time it waste your phone data. The ChatGPT search feature has eliminated the junk and gives me the info I’m looking for.

rsynnott 2y ago

The big question, really, is whether they _regularly_ use it. I’ve used ChatGPT… precisely once, as a novelty.

morkalork 2y ago
I see teenagers chatting with it to study while taking the bus. That's not some idle one time experiment, that's using it every day type of behaviour.
650REDHAIR 2y ago
Why only once?
- rsynnott 2y ago
  It’s not something I’d find useful, and it wasn’t particularly amusing. I will confess to enjoying bad AI _image_ generation, mind you. Look at the images on this website! https://theonlineaccountants.uk/file-company-accounts.htm https://theonlineaccountants.uk/file-company-accounts.htm AI generated text generally just makes me cringe, tho.
alisonatwork 2y ago
This is one of the most interesting things about AI to me. As a lifelong computer nerd I've always dreamed of having a computer friend who knows all about my life and who I can bounce ideas off, it's a core sci-fi trope. But I tried these new LLMs everyone was so hype about and... nah, they all feel like I'm wasting my time. Anything I want to actually know I can look up myself faster than negotiating with these things to try guess what they want me to tell them so they will actually do what I wanted. And as far as just being a nice personality to spend my time with goes, they all come across to me as awkward or pretentious or fussy, and not what I want my computer friend to sound like. If I need to spend 20 minutes trying to "train" my computer friend how to sound vaguely like a real person, it's a fail, sorry. It feels like trying to socialize on Reddit or Discord, you waste a bunch of time going back and forth with strangers who are trying to be funny or clever but never actually say anything meaningful. Which is why I don't use those sites either. But then I have real life friends who have mentioned they talk to these chatbots all the time, almost like a therapist, and they ask them questions about their lives. Obviously they don't take the advice as seriously as they might coming from a professional, but they still consider it a valuable interaction. To them, having this kind of stilted interaction with a hokey-sounding AI is worth something. And I don't get what they are seeing that I am missing. Perhaps my standards are too high? Or perhaps they just have a greater tolerance for wasting time? Anyway, when surveys ask me if I've used AI, I always say yes. The worst surveys then do not ask a follow-up question of "did you think it was actually useful/compelling/fun", but of course they don't because the whole point of them is to build hype to sell the gimmick to another company who will shoehorn it into whatever.

helf 2y ago

[dead]

jacobolus 2y ago

> transformed secondary and post-secondary education beyond all recognition "Beyond all recognition" seems like quite an extraordinary claim.

fragmede 2y ago
I didn't have a teacher growing up that I could talk to 24/7, that would answer all my questions, no matter how ridiculous. with all of the digitized human knowledge at their fingertips, and the patience of a saint for every last one of my dumb questions.