4 ms·

I think teaching a child to trust an LLM from a formative age is horrifically irresponsible. If anything, an app should be made where a child learns to correct

I think teaching a child to trust an LLM from a formative age is horrifically irresponsible. If anything, an app should be made where a child learns to correct an LLM's mistakes and learn that it isn't trustworthy. Actually, better, don't put an LLM in front of children. At all. EDIT: If a use case is for children who can't afford good education, then use an LLM to make educational materials for children, review them, and make them available for free. After all, the contents are ripped off from human educators anyway.

IshKebab 3mo ago
I don't think it's quite as simple as that. LLMs do make mistakes but generally with slightly obscure difficult stuff. They're not going to struggle at all with things a 4-9 year old is learning. Also it's not like teachers never make confident mistakes.
- TonyAlicea10 3mo ago
  > They're not going to struggle at all with things a 4-9 year old is learning. Ask them how many r's are in strawberry. > Also it's not like teachers never make confident mistakes. That's an extraordinary false equivalency that is popular around here. Teachers don't make confident mistakes because the student asked the wrong way. Teachers can be held accountable. Teachers can learn. Teachers can love their students.
  - Marha01 3mo ago
    > Ask them how many r's are in strawberry. 2024 called and wants its talking points back. > Teachers don't make confident mistakes because the student asked the wrong way. Teachers can be held accountable. Teachers can learn. Teachers can love their students. All of these can be true, and at the same it can be true that a child tutored by a good quality state-of-the-art LLM with a good teaching-focused harness could have better learning outcomes than a child without it. Even if we agreed that a good human teacher is better than a LLM, human teacher's time and attention is limited.
    - TonyAlicea10 3mo ago
      > 2024 called and wants its talking points back. It's a classic example of the kinds of questions LLMs get wrong. There's plenty of others. Not sure your point here. We can easily find things a 4-9 year old will talk about that an LLM will get wrong, hallucinate, etc. > a child tutored by a good quality state-of-the-art LLM with a good teaching-focused harness could have better learning outcomes than a child without it. There's a lot of work being done in 'could'. And it's entirely ignoring the dangers. I'm not saying "no LLMs in education". I'm a technical educator and I give students LLM prompts and agent skills that I've built to help them learn. This isn't that. We're talking about giving an LLM to a 4-9 year old and saying "this is your teacher".
      - blitzar 3mo ago
        > lot of work being done in 'could' if my aunt had wheels, she'd be a bicycle.
      - cindyllm 3mo ago
        [dead]
      - Marha01 3mo ago
        > It's a classic example of the kinds of questions LLMs get wrong. There's plenty of others. Not sure your point here. We can easily find things a 4-9 year old will talk about that an LLM will get wrong, hallucinate, etc. My point is that the hallucination rate of modern LLMs, while not zero, is so low that this is no longer an issue in practice. > There's a lot of work being done in 'could'. And it's entirely ignoring the dangers. I agree that there are some risks. But for many children, the alternative is not human teacher, but no teacher at all. This considerably changes the risk-benefit calculus, IMHO.
        TonyAlicea10 3mo ago
        > My point is that the hallucination rate of modern LLMs, while not zero, is so low that this is no longer an issue in practice. That's just not true. Talk to an LLM about a subject you know deeply. They make up things all the time.
  - IshKebab 3mo ago
    > There are 3 letter *"r"*s in "strawberry." > > Spelled out: s t r a w b e r r y → the r's are the 3rd, 8th, and 9th letters. > Teachers don't make confident mistakes because the student asked the wrong way. I don't see why the mechanism of being wrong matters. If anything it's worse when teachers are reliably wrong independently of how you ask the question. > Teachers can be held accountable. lol no. Have you ever tried correcting a teacher? > Teachers can learn. Good teachers can learn. The ones that make confident mistakes don't. Anyway no learning is needed for 4-9 year old education. > Teachers can love their students. That's just such a weird point to make. It is great that my kids' primary school teachers are super kind and loving. But it's not what they're for, and it's definitely not what AI tutors are for. Nobody is claiming this will replace a hug from a parent.
    - TonyAlicea10 3mo ago
      > That's just such a weird point to make. No, it's not. The claim that "teacher's make mistakes too" suggests that AI is equivalent to a human teacher in value. I posit other ways in which a human teacher is potentially more valuable. Also, teachers who love their students tend to want to educate them well. > lol no. Have you ever tried correcting a teacher? Do you mean as a student? If so, that's a different dynamic. Because teachers certainly have accountability processes in many institutions.
    - TonyAlicea10 3mo ago
      > Anyway no learning is needed for 4-9 year old education. This is an extraordinarily naive statement. Learning how to teach well takes a lifelong commitment. A topic being basic for an adult does not mean it is easier to teach to a child. In many ways it makes it harder.
      - BatFastard 3mo ago
        Indeed there are different kinds of learning, which the poster is not aware of. No booking learning is needed for 4-9 year old's. But learning patience, understanding, empathy are life long pursuits.
    - 3mo ago
- news_hacker 3mo ago
  > They're not going to struggle at all with things a 4-9 year old is learning Children ask some incredibly deep questions, I would not sell them short.
- like_any_other 3mo ago
  "Mister LLM, what should I think about <controversial political topic>?" Say what you will about the biases of teachers, but I'll take them any day over the propaganda [1] some foreign megacorporation has inculcated into its AI. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664834
- windexh8er 3mo ago
  This is wildly dangerous comment and I'm glad to see it downvoted. I have 2 kids. Both of them went through early grades during COVID. The change in learning and dislike of school was immense during that time-frame. My eldest missed out on the most and it's very clear that their age and time with which they should have been in-class and in-person impacted them. Not only the screen-time aspect of this ignorance, but the sheer inconsiderate approach to what a model even is. It's not a human, it can't cope or understand a child's current state of being. And if you think it can then stay away from K12 tech, please. Teachers make mistakes, yes. But can you swap a teacher with another teacher without a student knowing? No. You can with a model and that is dangerous. And not only the company. If Ello wants to they can move students to a Chinese model and nobody would know the difference. Or the OAI model they've chosen can be diluted or changed without Ello even knowing. Kids deserve better. I truly hope Ello fails in its mission because companies shoving models into K12 are truly going to be the stain we all have to deal with decades from now. I am beyond grateful that my kids learned reading the "old fashioned" way and it speaks volumes that both of them read constantly. Their peers and friend's kids who are addicted to YouTube, TikTok and other socials struggle reading. It's so very obvious to anyone who has kids at this age these days and I think a lot of parents are now realizing their mistakes and are often times embarrassed when they see these kids side-by-side in public displays of their work. I keep seeing this over and over. I am on a parent technology group at my kids school and it is a monumental effort to keep these "technology directors" in check. They are some of the easiest to sell to given they go into conversations with companies like Ello with nothing but trust. They don't consider data, privacy and security of these students or very rarely. They often don't understand relationships with respect to technology and the areas where issues can surface or be present. I hate everything about this blog post and, again, I truly hope Ello fails before they contribute to the continued degradation of these kids early lives.
  - Marha01 3mo ago
    > Teachers make mistakes, yes. But can you swap a teacher with another teacher without a student knowing? No, you can't. You can with a model and that is dangerous. And not only the company. If Ello wants to they can move students to a Chinese model and nobody would know the difference. Or the OAI model they've chosen can be dilluted or changed without Ello even knowing. Sounds like this issue could be solved by an open-source teaching harness.
burgreblast 3mo ago
Perhaps human teachers would model correct grammar? vs "you like dinosaurs! me too!” From the blog post.
- uoaei 3mo ago
  Perfect grammar is less important than comprehensible semantics for all but the most niche linguistic applications.
  - wizzwizz4 3mo ago
    One of these "niche linguistic applications" is language learning.
    - uoaei 3mo ago
      English is uniquely riddled with exceptions to rules linguistically. Teaching inflexibly only makes students flex around you.
- gowld 3mo ago
  That is "correct" grammar, English as she is spoke.
  - uoaei 3mo ago
    That's also grammar that's fit to get you harangued and chided by other 4-9 year olds on the schoolyard. Social outcomes are the primary means by which language is meaningful.
salemh 3mo ago
[dead]
mc_woods 3mo ago
I came here to say this. Part of learning is social interaction. Learning happens on both sides, from the teacher and the student. In a world of AI everywhere, off-line social interaction will be the major currency. We're all going to crave people... and each other.... The kids who grow up with social skills will be the most successful.
duskdozer 3mo ago
It's the natural successor to the first round of ed-tech, which both share the same purpose: create future customers. The students who grew up using Google or Microsoft laptops and office products in school go to them as adults. Making children dependent on LLMs at an early age gives you subscribers to your LLM products when they grow up.
metalspot 3mo ago
[flagged]
- TonyAlicea10 3mo ago
  Reading books does not have the psychological effects of passing cognition to an LLM. EDIT: A "luddite" is opposed to new technology. I'm a coder and technical educator. I teach people to use LLMs. Responsible use of a new technology is not being a luddite. And there are equivalent concerns of the effects of social media on children as well.
  - metalspot 3mo ago
    literacy causes profound brain structure changes and psychological effects, and mass literacy results in profound social transformation. which is why people have be trying to prevent the spread of literacy for thousands of years, to this very day. an LLM is a next token prediction function. of course it matters how you use it, and if you want to use it for an educational purpose, that has to be intentional, so i agree with you on that. chatgpt and all the other ai powered scams and attention monetization apps are horrible, because they are just using improved technology to accelerate the exploitation of consumers (both adults and children) of media and app platforms. the solution here is not to say the technology is bad but to use it to create competitive products that are actually beneficial.
    - jplusequalt 3mo ago
      >the solution here is not to say the technology is bad but to use it to create competitive products that are actually beneficial. In the context of educating 5 year olds, I would firmly argue that the solution involves exactly zero use of LLMs.
- liendolucas 3mo ago
  > AI is a massive leap forward in providing safe and educational digital experience. Can you point to any serious studies that sustain that claim? If anything that sounds like a gamifying learning experience, letting children become expert beginners.
clarle 3mo ago
I think a Socratic Method-style AI tutor would work, though. It would be less about the LLM providing direct educational material themselves, but making sure the student is thinking about the right questions to direct themselves in learning the material.
- jplusequalt 3mo ago
  How do you ensure the kid is learning the right material? You want them to stay on topic, but a Socratic Method that starts off on one topic can easily branch into many other topics, and then suddenly your student has spent the whole class learning about something other than what they were supposed to. All learning is good, yes. But a baseline curriculum is necessary to create a ground floor of knowledge for society.
  - Cycl0ps 3mo ago
    For a current-day LLM, deviation could be measured as the number of tokens since the agent touched on the prompted topic. A specific <<refocus>> token could even be trained so that a harness or other tooling could direct the LLM back towards the prompted topic if needed. Or something roughly like that. Generally speaking the goal would be for the LLM to bring the topic back on its own while incorporating the tangent, but a hardcoded, "Let's get back on track" button would probably be needed
    - TonyAlicea10 3mo ago
      > a hardcoded, "Let's get back on track" button would probably be needed Very true! An adult might hit that button. 4-9 year olds I think are less likely to.
  - pixel_popping 3mo ago
    Just run a loop with another agent that watch the transcript and trigger tool to refocus on the main agent or re-run agent entirely with follow up prompt not visible to the user so it gradually goes back to the right topic.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
windexh8er 3mo ago
This. I would never allow my kids onto a platform like Ello. My kids are starting to appreciate being shielded from social media and technology in their lives as they watch their friends go down dark paths and stuck in feeling like they have to participate there. I don't think kids, of any age, should be in front of LLMs unless by complete agreement of their parents and only after their parents are made very aware of how this technology came to be, how it can be used and how it cannot be guaranteed to be safe. Ello leading with that is disingenuous from the start and that should tell parents all they need to know up front. My kids read hundreds of books a year. They love reading, we read with them every single day as they learned. They learned to read the right way and that doesn't involve a screen. Keep kids out of this garbage.
- pixel_popping 3mo ago
  If I may, the argument of "screen" isn't necessarily the right one, the right way might not be the only right way, I have an almost 2-year old daughter and I've bought an e-ink (colored) tablet to show her family pictures, stories and so-on (very sparingly, maybe about 15min a day), we also generate books with images and short stories about what went during this week with the pictures we have and apply a child style to it, and it has been really great so far. It's not about "paper", it's about the software itself and the hardware not being toxic/addictive. In my side, she has a whole library in her playpen with already about 30 books (multiple languages), I would never put her on Youtube or anything like it, but carefully curating the content and showing it on eink, I see absolutely no problem. Example of page we generate (average "book" has 4-8 pages like this): https://ibb.co/Ld9mp10v https://ibb.co/Ld9mp10v She loves it, she is engaged into it, this is from an LLM, I don't see the problem with it, I also don't see how it's a problem to generate LLM-made written stories as well, they can be great, personalized and better in many scenarios than random books. I will definitely build learning materials entirely made by AI as well. Now regarding this project, I feel it's indeed quite dangerous, but I feel as a complementary learning thing, it could be great, for example post-school, 30min of this daily to consolidate learning might be beneficial, I will do so at quite a young age, but with my own softwares & devices of course, not that.
  - 3mo ago
tomsayer 3mo ago
I'm Tom, cofounder of Ello. -> I think teaching a child to trust an LLM from a formative age is horrifically irresponsible. I largely agree, although with some nuance. One of the most important skills a young child today is going to need as they grow up is the ability to understand what's AI and what isn't, and how to interact with things that are. We actually work hard to make sure a child knows they aren't talking to something real - that they're talking to a computer program. If part of the comment was on the accuracy of LLMs; our system of multiple harnessed LLMs running in parallel does deliver pedagogically solid and accurate content and experiences. There's a few comments in this thread about LLM hallucinations - We have curriculum specialists constantly evaluating the interactions that Ello delivers, and it just isn't a major factor right now. So we need to ensure that we're delivering a high-quality, accurate experience for a child, while at the same time making sure that they understand what's reality. -> Actually, better, don't put an LLM in front of children. At all. I've responded above to your reason against using AI in education. But to judge whether it's right to avoid using AI with children entirely, we also need to weigh the positive side. So many children get a substandard education that isn't responsive to them and doesn't set them up for success - whether that's a child stuck in a class of 30 being treated as average, or one of the 270 million kids who don't have access to any education at all. Saying "don't put an LLM in front of children" misses the reality of what education actually looks like for so many of them IMO. If your kid gets everything they need from their school, their home, their private tutor and so on, then great. So our answer is to use the benefits of AI to build technology that teaches - that understands where a child is and gives them the next learning experience they need to keep growing - while making sure they understand they're dealing with a computer program, and without trying to replace the critical role of the people in their lives.
- TonyAlicea10 3mo ago
  > We actually work hard to make sure a child knows they aren't talking to something real - that they're talking to a computer program. The problem is not talking to a computer program. Kids have been using computers in school long before LLMs. The problem is teaching a child to trust what the non-deterministic system is guessing at them. That will carry forward in their life. You’re teaching them that an LLM is right, not just what it is. As an aside, I’m also not sure about the certainty of what “making sure” a 4-year old knows is real or not is. > If your kid gets everything they need from their school, their home, their private tutor and so on, then great. That’s a powerful emotional point made to shut down criticism. Except it has nothing to do with putting a kid in front of LLMs. I expressly mentioned this in my comment. You could create a mountain of educational material, apps, and tools with LLM assistance and verify it. Same result.

IshKebab 3mo ago

I don't think it's quite as simple as that. LLMs do make mistakes but generally with slightly obscure difficult stuff. They're not going to struggle at all with things a 4-9 year old is learning. Also it's not like teachers never make confident mistakes.

TonyAlicea10 3mo ago
> They're not going to struggle at all with things a 4-9 year old is learning. Ask them how many r's are in strawberry. > Also it's not like teachers never make confident mistakes. That's an extraordinary false equivalency that is popular around here. Teachers don't make confident mistakes because the student asked the wrong way. Teachers can be held accountable. Teachers can learn. Teachers can love their students.
- Marha01 3mo ago
  > Ask them how many r's are in strawberry. 2024 called and wants its talking points back. > Teachers don't make confident mistakes because the student asked the wrong way. Teachers can be held accountable. Teachers can learn. Teachers can love their students. All of these can be true, and at the same it can be true that a child tutored by a good quality state-of-the-art LLM with a good teaching-focused harness could have better learning outcomes than a child without it. Even if we agreed that a good human teacher is better than a LLM, human teacher's time and attention is limited.
  - TonyAlicea10 3mo ago
    > 2024 called and wants its talking points back. It's a classic example of the kinds of questions LLMs get wrong. There's plenty of others. Not sure your point here. We can easily find things a 4-9 year old will talk about that an LLM will get wrong, hallucinate, etc. > a child tutored by a good quality state-of-the-art LLM with a good teaching-focused harness could have better learning outcomes than a child without it. There's a lot of work being done in 'could'. And it's entirely ignoring the dangers. I'm not saying "no LLMs in education". I'm a technical educator and I give students LLM prompts and agent skills that I've built to help them learn. This isn't that. We're talking about giving an LLM to a 4-9 year old and saying "this is your teacher".
    - blitzar 3mo ago
      > lot of work being done in 'could' if my aunt had wheels, she'd be a bicycle.
    - cindyllm 3mo ago
      [dead]
    - Marha01 3mo ago
      > It's a classic example of the kinds of questions LLMs get wrong. There's plenty of others. Not sure your point here. We can easily find things a 4-9 year old will talk about that an LLM will get wrong, hallucinate, etc. My point is that the hallucination rate of modern LLMs, while not zero, is so low that this is no longer an issue in practice. > There's a lot of work being done in 'could'. And it's entirely ignoring the dangers. I agree that there are some risks. But for many children, the alternative is not human teacher, but no teacher at all. This considerably changes the risk-benefit calculus, IMHO.
      - TonyAlicea10 3mo ago
        > My point is that the hallucination rate of modern LLMs, while not zero, is so low that this is no longer an issue in practice. That's just not true. Talk to an LLM about a subject you know deeply. They make up things all the time.
- IshKebab 3mo ago
  > There are 3 letter *"r"*s in "strawberry." > > Spelled out: s t r a w b e r r y → the r's are the 3rd, 8th, and 9th letters. > Teachers don't make confident mistakes because the student asked the wrong way. I don't see why the mechanism of being wrong matters. If anything it's worse when teachers are reliably wrong independently of how you ask the question. > Teachers can be held accountable. lol no. Have you ever tried correcting a teacher? > Teachers can learn. Good teachers can learn. The ones that make confident mistakes don't. Anyway no learning is needed for 4-9 year old education. > Teachers can love their students. That's just such a weird point to make. It is great that my kids' primary school teachers are super kind and loving. But it's not what they're for, and it's definitely not what AI tutors are for. Nobody is claiming this will replace a hug from a parent.
  - TonyAlicea10 3mo ago
    > That's just such a weird point to make. No, it's not. The claim that "teacher's make mistakes too" suggests that AI is equivalent to a human teacher in value. I posit other ways in which a human teacher is potentially more valuable. Also, teachers who love their students tend to want to educate them well. > lol no. Have you ever tried correcting a teacher? Do you mean as a student? If so, that's a different dynamic. Because teachers certainly have accountability processes in many institutions.
  - TonyAlicea10 3mo ago
    > Anyway no learning is needed for 4-9 year old education. This is an extraordinarily naive statement. Learning how to teach well takes a lifelong commitment. A topic being basic for an adult does not mean it is easier to teach to a child. In many ways it makes it harder.
    - BatFastard 3mo ago
      Indeed there are different kinds of learning, which the poster is not aware of. No booking learning is needed for 4-9 year old's. But learning patience, understanding, empathy are life long pursuits.
  - 3mo ago
news_hacker 3mo ago
> They're not going to struggle at all with things a 4-9 year old is learning Children ask some incredibly deep questions, I would not sell them short.
like_any_other 3mo ago
"Mister LLM, what should I think about <controversial political topic>?" Say what you will about the biases of teachers, but I'll take them any day over the propaganda [1] some foreign megacorporation has inculcated into its AI. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664834
windexh8er 3mo ago
This is wildly dangerous comment and I'm glad to see it downvoted. I have 2 kids. Both of them went through early grades during COVID. The change in learning and dislike of school was immense during that time-frame. My eldest missed out on the most and it's very clear that their age and time with which they should have been in-class and in-person impacted them. Not only the screen-time aspect of this ignorance, but the sheer inconsiderate approach to what a model even is. It's not a human, it can't cope or understand a child's current state of being. And if you think it can then stay away from K12 tech, please. Teachers make mistakes, yes. But can you swap a teacher with another teacher without a student knowing? No. You can with a model and that is dangerous. And not only the company. If Ello wants to they can move students to a Chinese model and nobody would know the difference. Or the OAI model they've chosen can be diluted or changed without Ello even knowing. Kids deserve better. I truly hope Ello fails in its mission because companies shoving models into K12 are truly going to be the stain we all have to deal with decades from now. I am beyond grateful that my kids learned reading the "old fashioned" way and it speaks volumes that both of them read constantly. Their peers and friend's kids who are addicted to YouTube, TikTok and other socials struggle reading. It's so very obvious to anyone who has kids at this age these days and I think a lot of parents are now realizing their mistakes and are often times embarrassed when they see these kids side-by-side in public displays of their work. I keep seeing this over and over. I am on a parent technology group at my kids school and it is a monumental effort to keep these "technology directors" in check. They are some of the easiest to sell to given they go into conversations with companies like Ello with nothing but trust. They don't consider data, privacy and security of these students or very rarely. They often don't understand relationships with respect to technology and the areas where issues can surface or be present. I hate everything about this blog post and, again, I truly hope Ello fails before they contribute to the continued degradation of these kids early lives.
- Marha01 3mo ago
  > Teachers make mistakes, yes. But can you swap a teacher with another teacher without a student knowing? No, you can't. You can with a model and that is dangerous. And not only the company. If Ello wants to they can move students to a Chinese model and nobody would know the difference. Or the OAI model they've chosen can be dilluted or changed without Ello even knowing. Sounds like this issue could be solved by an open-source teaching harness.

burgreblast 3mo ago

Perhaps human teachers would model correct grammar? vs "you like dinosaurs! me too!” From the blog post.

uoaei 3mo ago
Perfect grammar is less important than comprehensible semantics for all but the most niche linguistic applications.
- wizzwizz4 3mo ago
  One of these "niche linguistic applications" is language learning.
  - uoaei 3mo ago
    English is uniquely riddled with exceptions to rules linguistically. Teaching inflexibly only makes students flex around you.
gowld 3mo ago
That is "correct" grammar, English as she is spoke.
- uoaei 3mo ago
  That's also grammar that's fit to get you harangued and chided by other 4-9 year olds on the schoolyard. Social outcomes are the primary means by which language is meaningful.

salemh 3mo ago

[dead]

mc_woods 3mo ago

I came here to say this. Part of learning is social interaction. Learning happens on both sides, from the teacher and the student. In a world of AI everywhere, off-line social interaction will be the major currency. We're all going to crave people... and each other.... The kids who grow up with social skills will be the most successful.

duskdozer 3mo ago

It's the natural successor to the first round of ed-tech, which both share the same purpose: create future customers. The students who grew up using Google or Microsoft laptops and office products in school go to them as adults. Making children dependent on LLMs at an early age gives you subscribers to your LLM products when they grow up.

metalspot 3mo ago

[flagged]

TonyAlicea10 3mo ago
Reading books does not have the psychological effects of passing cognition to an LLM. EDIT: A "luddite" is opposed to new technology. I'm a coder and technical educator. I teach people to use LLMs. Responsible use of a new technology is not being a luddite. And there are equivalent concerns of the effects of social media on children as well.
- metalspot 3mo ago
  literacy causes profound brain structure changes and psychological effects, and mass literacy results in profound social transformation. which is why people have be trying to prevent the spread of literacy for thousands of years, to this very day. an LLM is a next token prediction function. of course it matters how you use it, and if you want to use it for an educational purpose, that has to be intentional, so i agree with you on that. chatgpt and all the other ai powered scams and attention monetization apps are horrible, because they are just using improved technology to accelerate the exploitation of consumers (both adults and children) of media and app platforms. the solution here is not to say the technology is bad but to use it to create competitive products that are actually beneficial.
  - jplusequalt 3mo ago
    >the solution here is not to say the technology is bad but to use it to create competitive products that are actually beneficial. In the context of educating 5 year olds, I would firmly argue that the solution involves exactly zero use of LLMs.
liendolucas 3mo ago
> AI is a massive leap forward in providing safe and educational digital experience. Can you point to any serious studies that sustain that claim? If anything that sounds like a gamifying learning experience, letting children become expert beginners.

clarle 3mo ago

I think a Socratic Method-style AI tutor would work, though. It would be less about the LLM providing direct educational material themselves, but making sure the student is thinking about the right questions to direct themselves in learning the material.

jplusequalt 3mo ago
How do you ensure the kid is learning the right material? You want them to stay on topic, but a Socratic Method that starts off on one topic can easily branch into many other topics, and then suddenly your student has spent the whole class learning about something other than what they were supposed to. All learning is good, yes. But a baseline curriculum is necessary to create a ground floor of knowledge for society.
- Cycl0ps 3mo ago
  For a current-day LLM, deviation could be measured as the number of tokens since the agent touched on the prompted topic. A specific <<refocus>> token could even be trained so that a harness or other tooling could direct the LLM back towards the prompted topic if needed. Or something roughly like that. Generally speaking the goal would be for the LLM to bring the topic back on its own while incorporating the tangent, but a hardcoded, "Let's get back on track" button would probably be needed
  - TonyAlicea10 3mo ago
    > a hardcoded, "Let's get back on track" button would probably be needed Very true! An adult might hit that button. 4-9 year olds I think are less likely to.
- pixel_popping 3mo ago
  Just run a loop with another agent that watch the transcript and trigger tool to refocus on the main agent or re-run agent entirely with follow up prompt not visible to the user so it gradually goes back to the right topic.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

windexh8er 3mo ago

This. I would never allow my kids onto a platform like Ello. My kids are starting to appreciate being shielded from social media and technology in their lives as they watch their friends go down dark paths and stuck in feeling like they have to participate there. I don't think kids, of any age, should be in front of LLMs unless by complete agreement of their parents and only after their parents are made very aware of how this technology came to be, how it can be used and how it cannot be guaranteed to be safe. Ello leading with that is disingenuous from the start and that should tell parents all they need to know up front. My kids read hundreds of books a year. They love reading, we read with them every single day as they learned. They learned to read the right way and that doesn't involve a screen. Keep kids out of this garbage.

pixel_popping 3mo ago
If I may, the argument of "screen" isn't necessarily the right one, the right way might not be the only right way, I have an almost 2-year old daughter and I've bought an e-ink (colored) tablet to show her family pictures, stories and so-on (very sparingly, maybe about 15min a day), we also generate books with images and short stories about what went during this week with the pictures we have and apply a child style to it, and it has been really great so far. It's not about "paper", it's about the software itself and the hardware not being toxic/addictive. In my side, she has a whole library in her playpen with already about 30 books (multiple languages), I would never put her on Youtube or anything like it, but carefully curating the content and showing it on eink, I see absolutely no problem. Example of page we generate (average "book" has 4-8 pages like this): https://ibb.co/Ld9mp10v https://ibb.co/Ld9mp10v She loves it, she is engaged into it, this is from an LLM, I don't see the problem with it, I also don't see how it's a problem to generate LLM-made written stories as well, they can be great, personalized and better in many scenarios than random books. I will definitely build learning materials entirely made by AI as well. Now regarding this project, I feel it's indeed quite dangerous, but I feel as a complementary learning thing, it could be great, for example post-school, 30min of this daily to consolidate learning might be beneficial, I will do so at quite a young age, but with my own softwares & devices of course, not that.
- 3mo ago

tomsayer 3mo ago

I'm Tom, cofounder of Ello. -> I think teaching a child to trust an LLM from a formative age is horrifically irresponsible. I largely agree, although with some nuance. One of the most important skills a young child today is going to need as they grow up is the ability to understand what's AI and what isn't, and how to interact with things that are. We actually work hard to make sure a child knows they aren't talking to something real - that they're talking to a computer program. If part of the comment was on the accuracy of LLMs; our system of multiple harnessed LLMs running in parallel does deliver pedagogically solid and accurate content and experiences. There's a few comments in this thread about LLM hallucinations - We have curriculum specialists constantly evaluating the interactions that Ello delivers, and it just isn't a major factor right now. So we need to ensure that we're delivering a high-quality, accurate experience for a child, while at the same time making sure that they understand what's reality. -> Actually, better, don't put an LLM in front of children. At all. I've responded above to your reason against using AI in education. But to judge whether it's right to avoid using AI with children entirely, we also need to weigh the positive side. So many children get a substandard education that isn't responsive to them and doesn't set them up for success - whether that's a child stuck in a class of 30 being treated as average, or one of the 270 million kids who don't have access to any education at all. Saying "don't put an LLM in front of children" misses the reality of what education actually looks like for so many of them IMO. If your kid gets everything they need from their school, their home, their private tutor and so on, then great. So our answer is to use the benefits of AI to build technology that teaches - that understands where a child is and gives them the next learning experience they need to keep growing - while making sure they understand they're dealing with a computer program, and without trying to replace the critical role of the people in their lives.

TonyAlicea10 3mo ago
> We actually work hard to make sure a child knows they aren't talking to something real - that they're talking to a computer program. The problem is not talking to a computer program. Kids have been using computers in school long before LLMs. The problem is teaching a child to trust what the non-deterministic system is guessing at them. That will carry forward in their life. You’re teaching them that an LLM is right, not just what it is. As an aside, I’m also not sure about the certainty of what “making sure” a 4-year old knows is real or not is. > If your kid gets everything they need from their school, their home, their private tutor and so on, then great. That’s a powerful emotional point made to shut down criticism. Except it has nothing to do with putting a kid in front of LLMs. I expressly mentioned this in my comment. You could create a mountain of educational material, apps, and tools with LLM assistance and verify it. Same result.