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I read the article. Those kids are definitely learning how to think, just not in the way educators wish. One of the girls quoted said she loves writing, but fin

by cs702 1y ago

I read the article. Those kids are definitely learning how to think, just not in the way educators wish. One of the girls quoted said she loves writing, but finds it helpful to get structure and initial content from generative AI. The kid at Columbia has already launched two startups. Clever kids always figure out how to leverage the tools they have at hand. With the advent of new technology, humanity has no choice but to move up the value chain -- in this case, from executing tasks to judging, supervising, and curating AI work.

gwern 1y ago
> One of the girls quoted said she loves writing, but finds it helpful to get structure and initial content from generative AI. Which shows she's not learning from the AI or even improving on it. All she's doing is filling out the 'structure and initial content' - oh, is that all??? > The kid at Columbia has already launched two startups. Which doesn't require learning anything much from the LLMs, as he did that on his own before them (note the Leetcode). Also, considering that the second one is fraudulent and if it works, exists largely to abet fraud, this is not a ringing endorsement. > With the advent of new technology, humanity has no choice but to move up the value chain -- in this case, from executing tasks to judging, supervising, and curating AI work. ChatGPT couldn't written that ending any better. (I will charitably assume it did not, unless you took the trouble to replace that emdash with a double hyphen just to be cute.) It could have written it about 1000x cheaper, however.
- cs702 1y ago
  I'm not sure there's a choice. The economic incentives are too strong. Like it or not, those individuals who figure out (i.e., learn) how to leverage AI to do more, faster, and (eventually) better will have an advantage over those individuals who don't. Many kids intuitively seem to understand this. Believe it or not, I write all my comments the old-fashioned way -- without the help of any AI!
  - bdangubic 1y ago
    there is on choice. my kid uses about 11 different AI tools and she is about to turn 12. it is on parents to guide this but any kid who is not all over this at the deep level will be at insurrmountable disadvantage
gwern 1y ago
BTW, this is how it's going with the 'clever kids' and hiring for their cheating startup: https://x.com/im_roy_lee/status/1920206362996343261 https://x.com/im_roy_lee/status/1920206362996343261 it's really fucking hard to find competent engineers. i've interviewed about 20 cs majors who claim to be experts at typescript and only 3 of them have been able to explain what the purpose of useState is (not trolling). (There are at least 2 ways this tweet is embarrassing.)

by cs702 1y ago

gwern 1y ago

> One of the girls quoted said she loves writing, but finds it helpful to get structure and initial content from generative AI. Which shows she's not learning from the AI or even improving on it. All she's doing is filling out the 'structure and initial content' - oh, is that all??? > The kid at Columbia has already launched two startups. Which doesn't require learning anything much from the LLMs, as he did that on his own before them (note the Leetcode). Also, considering that the second one is fraudulent and if it works, exists largely to abet fraud, this is not a ringing endorsement. > With the advent of new technology, humanity has no choice but to move up the value chain -- in this case, from executing tasks to judging, supervising, and curating AI work. ChatGPT couldn't written that ending any better. (I will charitably assume it did not, unless you took the trouble to replace that emdash with a double hyphen just to be cute.) It could have written it about 1000x cheaper, however.

cs702 1y ago
I'm not sure there's a choice. The economic incentives are too strong. Like it or not, those individuals who figure out (i.e., learn) how to leverage AI to do more, faster, and (eventually) better will have an advantage over those individuals who don't. Many kids intuitively seem to understand this. Believe it or not, I write all my comments the old-fashioned way -- without the help of any AI!
- bdangubic 1y ago
  there is on choice. my kid uses about 11 different AI tools and she is about to turn 12. it is on parents to guide this but any kid who is not all over this at the deep level will be at insurrmountable disadvantage

gwern 1y ago

BTW, this is how it's going with the 'clever kids' and hiring for their cheating startup: https://x.com/im_roy_lee/status/1920206362996343261 https://x.com/im_roy_lee/status/1920206362996343261 it's really fucking hard to find competent engineers. i've interviewed about 20 cs majors who claim to be experts at typescript and only 3 of them have been able to explain what the purpose of useState is (not trolling). (There are at least 2 ways this tweet is embarrassing.)