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>A sizable portion of the US adult population effectively can't read, write and comprehend text. Yes and AI isn't to blame for that as adults predate AI. It's

>A sizable portion of the US adult population effectively can't read, write and comprehend text. Yes and AI isn't to blame for that as adults predate AI. It's the governments, schools, teachers, parents, teacher's unios, who taught them(or more accurately didn't teach them) and graduated them out of school anyway regardless just so they don't look bad in statistics. Sorry but if you graduate people out of high school who can't read you should be trialed for fraud. Simple as. People blaming AI for adults unable to read puts us back to the 90s when Doom was to blame for school shootings or back to 60s when rock music was to blame for juvenile delinquency, all of them being wrong, and they're wrong here too. People always want to blame a third party external scapegoat that isn't' the parents and isn't the government, for the problems of their kids.

JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
Nobody is blaming AI. The point is we don’t have the luxury of throwing nonsense at our kids when they’re illiterate. Particularly not nonsense where all the evidence shows it harms on average more than it helps.
- embedding-shape 4mo ago
  Just wanna start off by saying that with young unformed minds, it does probably harm more on average than it helps. But particularly for spelling and reading, it might maybe actually help? To be efficient with AI and LLMs you need to be good at least two things, reading and writing. One easy way of getting better is by reading a lot, and writing a lot. Maybe if we coax the kids into understanding (believing?) that better reading and writing helps them use AI better, they'd pay more attention to it?
  - wccrawford 4mo ago
    No, you can talk to them, and have them talk back. And it's really easy. You don't need to be good at reading or writing to use it.
    - embedding-shape 4mo ago
      You mean you can place transcript/dictation in front of them, so you don't have to type your words but you can speak them, and the LLM will receive text? If so I'd still argue it's important to be able to read and write to be able to use them effectively, but I have to also be honest, I never met/seen anyone who couldn't read/write and was using an LLM, I might be very wrong here.
simonw 4mo ago
Right, AI isn't to blame for that, but cell phones might be? The bad number increased from 19 to 28 percent between 2017 and 2023.
simonw 4mo ago
AI hasn't had a chance to demonstrate if it helps or hurts education yet. That's the big problem with education in general. If you introduce a new factor to children's education you can't realistically measure the effect it has had for about five years, because you need to wait for a cohort of kids to go through that system and then see how they did. This means that if you introduce something with clear negative effects it will be five years before you spot them! That's pretty catastrophic given that ChatGPT only emerged in late 2022 and only got good around early 2024.
- coryrc 4mo ago
  That's not true, it absolutely depends on effect size. I'll give you an obvious example: large lead acetate infusions. You'll notice pretty fast.
  - varjag 4mo ago
    OK so you can consider it was noticed.
- intended 4mo ago
  No? https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/ https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01947-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01947-1 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/lee_2025_ai_critical_thinking_survey.pdf https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/... This also links back up to the Ironies of Automation, which came out decades ago. The reports from teachers for the past few years have been pretty stark, with kids completely obviating homework. Homework is exercise. If you bring a forklift to gym you end up moving weights but not building muscles.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - joe_mamba 4mo ago
    >Homework is exercise. If you bring a forklift to gym you end up moving weights but not building muscles. In countries like Finland kids don't get any homework. Though their society and school system optimizes more for child happiness, not winning international math Olympiads where you need to cram to get ahead.

JumpCrisscross 4mo ago

Nobody is blaming AI. The point is we don’t have the luxury of throwing nonsense at our kids when they’re illiterate. Particularly not nonsense where all the evidence shows it harms on average more than it helps.

embedding-shape 4mo ago
Just wanna start off by saying that with young unformed minds, it does probably harm more on average than it helps. But particularly for spelling and reading, it might maybe actually help? To be efficient with AI and LLMs you need to be good at least two things, reading and writing. One easy way of getting better is by reading a lot, and writing a lot. Maybe if we coax the kids into understanding (believing?) that better reading and writing helps them use AI better, they'd pay more attention to it?
- wccrawford 4mo ago
  No, you can talk to them, and have them talk back. And it's really easy. You don't need to be good at reading or writing to use it.
  - embedding-shape 4mo ago
    You mean you can place transcript/dictation in front of them, so you don't have to type your words but you can speak them, and the LLM will receive text? If so I'd still argue it's important to be able to read and write to be able to use them effectively, but I have to also be honest, I never met/seen anyone who couldn't read/write and was using an LLM, I might be very wrong here.

simonw 4mo ago

Right, AI isn't to blame for that, but cell phones might be? The bad number increased from 19 to 28 percent between 2017 and 2023.

simonw 4mo ago

AI hasn't had a chance to demonstrate if it helps or hurts education yet. That's the big problem with education in general. If you introduce a new factor to children's education you can't realistically measure the effect it has had for about five years, because you need to wait for a cohort of kids to go through that system and then see how they did. This means that if you introduce something with clear negative effects it will be five years before you spot them! That's pretty catastrophic given that ChatGPT only emerged in late 2022 and only got good around early 2024.

coryrc 4mo ago
That's not true, it absolutely depends on effect size. I'll give you an obvious example: large lead acetate infusions. You'll notice pretty fast.
- varjag 4mo ago
  OK so you can consider it was noticed.
intended 4mo ago
No? https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/ https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01947-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01947-1 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/lee_2025_ai_critical_thinking_survey.pdf https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/... This also links back up to the Ironies of Automation, which came out decades ago. The reports from teachers for the past few years have been pretty stark, with kids completely obviating homework. Homework is exercise. If you bring a forklift to gym you end up moving weights but not building muscles.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- joe_mamba 4mo ago
  >Homework is exercise. If you bring a forklift to gym you end up moving weights but not building muscles. In countries like Finland kids don't get any homework. Though their society and school system optimizes more for child happiness, not winning international math Olympiads where you need to cram to get ahead.