4 ms·

We've only just begun. It's a veritable certainty that LLMs will be critical to education in the coming decades. I'll check back in after a few years!

intended 1mo ago
I have heard that sentiment many times already. It's a statement that is broad enough to capture any benefit and disavow any costs, for some later day when one can choose the nature of their measurement. How would you estimate actual gains and losses to education for LLMs? What would good look like?
- rpdillon 1mo ago
  The actual gains will be very similar to the gains that I thought would come from projects like Khan Academy (which was also quite hotly contested among teachers when it first came out). I don't agree with your rhetorical statement about the nature of my argument. I'm not trying to disavow any costs. I'm saying that AI represents a unique opportunity in the history of humanity to encapsulate knowledge and carry it through space and time in a highly scalable way. We have an epidemic of schools doing poorly in educating our students with constantly dropping standards, and an unwillingness to raise teachers' salaries. Education is extraordinarily expensive and I anticipate LLMs can be incorporated into a larger automated course load that is not stuck in the rigorous, true/false analysis that other automated systems have been stuck with in the past. LLMs are already excellent at critiquing humans' writing and providing feedback that a talented editor would typically have to be paid to provide. So, to summarize, the gains will be in the average cost of a high school education, the availability of that education across the world, the reliability of the information presented in the course curriculum, and the consistency with which we can educate at scale.
  - intended 1mo ago
    I agree my tone could have been better.
wat10000 1mo ago
I’m sure they’ll be critical in the sense that they’ll be heavily involved and the system set up to rely on them. I’m not so sure they’ll be critical in the sense that they substantially improve the process compared to today. Consider computers in education. Education has been trying to cram “technology” into the process for decades. Every student in my kid’s elementary school has a laptop. It’s critical to education today. But is it actually improving education? I don’t see any indication of that. As far as I can see, everyone decided that computers were important to have in education, so they made it happen, without ever checking to see if it actually helped.

intended 1mo ago

I have heard that sentiment many times already. It's a statement that is broad enough to capture any benefit and disavow any costs, for some later day when one can choose the nature of their measurement. How would you estimate actual gains and losses to education for LLMs? What would good look like?

rpdillon 1mo ago
The actual gains will be very similar to the gains that I thought would come from projects like Khan Academy (which was also quite hotly contested among teachers when it first came out). I don't agree with your rhetorical statement about the nature of my argument. I'm not trying to disavow any costs. I'm saying that AI represents a unique opportunity in the history of humanity to encapsulate knowledge and carry it through space and time in a highly scalable way. We have an epidemic of schools doing poorly in educating our students with constantly dropping standards, and an unwillingness to raise teachers' salaries. Education is extraordinarily expensive and I anticipate LLMs can be incorporated into a larger automated course load that is not stuck in the rigorous, true/false analysis that other automated systems have been stuck with in the past. LLMs are already excellent at critiquing humans' writing and providing feedback that a talented editor would typically have to be paid to provide. So, to summarize, the gains will be in the average cost of a high school education, the availability of that education across the world, the reliability of the information presented in the course curriculum, and the consistency with which we can educate at scale.
- intended 1mo ago
  I agree my tone could have been better.

wat10000 1mo ago

I’m sure they’ll be critical in the sense that they’ll be heavily involved and the system set up to rely on them. I’m not so sure they’ll be critical in the sense that they substantially improve the process compared to today. Consider computers in education. Education has been trying to cram “technology” into the process for decades. Every student in my kid’s elementary school has a laptop. It’s critical to education today. But is it actually improving education? I don’t see any indication of that. As far as I can see, everyone decided that computers were important to have in education, so they made it happen, without ever checking to see if it actually helped.