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There is a recent PISA research that students slowly decline in understanding the long reads. E.g. in one country, 21% of high school students do not even achi

by sixtyj 18d ago

There is a recent PISA research that students slowly decline in understanding the long reads. E.g. in one country, 21% of high school students do not even achieve “sufficient reading literacy”… So the question should be - what are we going to do with this? LLM can produce texts but we as people will not be able to understand anyway… About PISA research for example here: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/reading-ability-craters-on-international-exam-both-in-the-united-states-and-abroad/2026/09 https://www.edweek.org/leadership/reading-ability-craters-on...

watwut 18d ago
> LLM can produce texts but we as people will not be able to understand anyway LLM generated text oftentimes just do not have the point to be understood. LLM is training you to NOT read, because trying to do close reading of LLM generated text is usually a mistake. There is no deeper there. Either it was correct on the surface things or it is a gibberish.
yorwba 18d ago
PISA is a statistical measurement tool designed for sensitivity to differences in student performance. So it uses questions that some students are expected to get right and some are expected to get wrong, and places the result on a bell curve fit to a reference population. It's not clear what you mean by "sufficient reading literacy," but I guess it's one of the PISA proficiency levels. Those are simply equally-spaced intervals on the bell curve. For example, level 1c in reading is 2.4 to 3.1 standard deviations below the reference mean and 21% of participants in Iraqi Kurdistan and Lebanon scored at that level. Relative to the baseline, they are definitely close to the bottom. However, even they must've gotten some questions right, or they would've ended up in the "below level 1c" bucket (like 3% in Iraqi Kurdistan and 5% in Lebanon did). (https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results-volume-i_73451bc5-en/full-report/results-for-countries-and-economies_33854635.html#annex-d1e69716-8107cecc98 https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results-volum... Table I.B1.2a.11) If you wanted to know how many people achieve "sufficient reading literacy," you would need a test specifically designed for measuring it (i.e. not PISA), where people with sufficient ability can be expected to get all questions right. For example, the literacy rate is typically defined via the ability to "read and write a simple statement about everyday life," a test which 99% of adults in wealthy countries pass, 92% in Lebanon and 84% in Iraq: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cross-country-literacy-rates?country=Europe+and+Northern+America+%28SDG%29~IRQ~LBN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cross-country-literacy-ra... Of course a test that 99% pass just becomes table stakes and boring, whereas PISA with its large differences between individuals is much more exciting, but you shouldn't let that mislead you into thinking that students scoring relatively low on PISA necessarily must be lacking even those table-stakes skills.
alex43578 16d ago
Even before AI, it was clear that developed societies will be weighted down with an underclass of welfare recipients who are unable or unwilling to develop skills necessary to meaningfully contribute. As society/technology/the world moves faster and becomes more complicated, more and more of them will be left behind. 1 in 5 Americans are already functionally illiterate, and about 20% of working age men are already out of the labor force. https://cis.org/Report/WorkingAge-Not-Working-1960-2025 https://cis.org/Report/WorkingAge-Not-Working-1960-2025
- nerevarthelame 16d ago
  CIS is an anti-immigration hate group founded by a eugenicist and white supremacist. They're widely condemned for publishing factually incorrect and methodologically flawed reports by organizations across all of the political spectrum, save the furthest right extremists. That is not a legitimate source of information on immigration or welfare.
  - alex43578 16d ago
    BLS: https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea38.htm https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea38.htm Minneapolis Fed: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2022/whos-not-working-in-the-us-learn-the-basics https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2022/whos-not-working... Bipartisan Policy Center: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/why-are-prime-age-adults-opting-out-of-work/ https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/why-are-prime-age-adult... Do you have any numbers you'd like to provide to counter the claim that a significant portion of the population of working age individuals aren't already out of the labor force?
    - nerevarthelame 16d ago
      While I may have responded to your comment, I'm not debating you. My intention was to let other readers know that the sentiments you're expressing are little more than gutter eugenics hiding behind a flimsy facade of academic language and charts.

by sixtyj 18d ago

watwut 18d ago

> LLM can produce texts but we as people will not be able to understand anyway LLM generated text oftentimes just do not have the point to be understood. LLM is training you to NOT read, because trying to do close reading of LLM generated text is usually a mistake. There is no deeper there. Either it was correct on the surface things or it is a gibberish.

yorwba 18d ago

PISA is a statistical measurement tool designed for sensitivity to differences in student performance. So it uses questions that some students are expected to get right and some are expected to get wrong, and places the result on a bell curve fit to a reference population. It's not clear what you mean by "sufficient reading literacy," but I guess it's one of the PISA proficiency levels. Those are simply equally-spaced intervals on the bell curve. For example, level 1c in reading is 2.4 to 3.1 standard deviations below the reference mean and 21% of participants in Iraqi Kurdistan and Lebanon scored at that level. Relative to the baseline, they are definitely close to the bottom. However, even they must've gotten some questions right, or they would've ended up in the "below level 1c" bucket (like 3% in Iraqi Kurdistan and 5% in Lebanon did). (https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results-volume-i_73451bc5-en/full-report/results-for-countries-and-economies_33854635.html#annex-d1e69716-8107cecc98 https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results-volum... Table I.B1.2a.11) If you wanted to know how many people achieve "sufficient reading literacy," you would need a test specifically designed for measuring it (i.e. not PISA), where people with sufficient ability can be expected to get all questions right. For example, the literacy rate is typically defined via the ability to "read and write a simple statement about everyday life," a test which 99% of adults in wealthy countries pass, 92% in Lebanon and 84% in Iraq: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cross-country-literacy-rates?country=Europe+and+Northern+America+%28SDG%29~IRQ~LBN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cross-country-literacy-ra... Of course a test that 99% pass just becomes table stakes and boring, whereas PISA with its large differences between individuals is much more exciting, but you shouldn't let that mislead you into thinking that students scoring relatively low on PISA necessarily must be lacking even those table-stakes skills.

alex43578 16d ago

Even before AI, it was clear that developed societies will be weighted down with an underclass of welfare recipients who are unable or unwilling to develop skills necessary to meaningfully contribute. As society/technology/the world moves faster and becomes more complicated, more and more of them will be left behind. 1 in 5 Americans are already functionally illiterate, and about 20% of working age men are already out of the labor force. https://cis.org/Report/WorkingAge-Not-Working-1960-2025 https://cis.org/Report/WorkingAge-Not-Working-1960-2025

nerevarthelame 16d ago
CIS is an anti-immigration hate group founded by a eugenicist and white supremacist. They're widely condemned for publishing factually incorrect and methodologically flawed reports by organizations across all of the political spectrum, save the furthest right extremists. That is not a legitimate source of information on immigration or welfare.
- alex43578 16d ago
  BLS: https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea38.htm https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea38.htm Minneapolis Fed: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2022/whos-not-working-in-the-us-learn-the-basics https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2022/whos-not-working... Bipartisan Policy Center: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/why-are-prime-age-adults-opting-out-of-work/ https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/why-are-prime-age-adult... Do you have any numbers you'd like to provide to counter the claim that a significant portion of the population of working age individuals aren't already out of the labor force?
  - nerevarthelame 16d ago
    While I may have responded to your comment, I'm not debating you. My intention was to let other readers know that the sentiments you're expressing are little more than gutter eugenics hiding behind a flimsy facade of academic language and charts.