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For myself, it's been super helpful in at least two ways: 1) Staying on top of my kid's school obligations, homework, etc. School Learning Management Systems a

For myself, it's been super helpful in at least two ways: 1) Staying on top of my kid's school obligations, homework, etc. School Learning Management Systems are a hot mess, and I use agents to consolidate and collate, to keep track of the homework that has been done, what needs to be done, and even pre-grade homework to give feedback (most of the work is done on digital platforms too). It's been immensely time saving for these kinds of things. 2) Multiple instances of watching things passively: hotel room prices, availability of tickets, finding the best place to sell things online. In general things that require a lot of browsing, collating, and watching. These are the kinds of things that specialized software products could do as well, but with an agent they are just a prompt away, and you get exactly what you want. (More or less.)

Freak_NL 5d ago
Keeping track of your kids' homework is your concern? Doesn't it only become your concern, briefly, when the school contacts you about your kid not getting their homework done?
- fnordpiglet 5d ago
  As a parent people from prior generations do not get the current situation. I actually agree that this is a useful use of the agentic work tools - and it’s the only case I mentioned above I’ve used it for successfully, if not saving of time. Homework isn’t assigned in class any more. It’s posted on dozens of inscrutable websites in weird UX’s that are impossible for any single human to understand. Children are mystified, parents confused, teachers at their wits end. A few times a week children miss some website or queue from some system, teachers can’t get things to share properly, this needs tending, they need to photograph this and upload that to this place as well as that but not the other one. It’s truly remarkably astounding. I have serious doubts frontier models can navigate it either honestly. But this is in fact where I see the most chance of using these tools. “Computers at school” is the worst idea ever, and no one who hasn’t experienced the clusterfuck of middle school in 2026 can understand it. It makes the world of the movie Brazil seem utopian.
- pavel_lishin 5d ago
  I'm not the person you're asking, but in general, I would also stay on top of my child's obligations - homework, chores, etc. I don't want the first sign of trouble to be a call from a teacher, or the complete absence of clean clothes for them to wear in the morning. You don't teach children responsibility by removing yourself completely from that equation
  - mkjs 5d ago
    You equally don't teach them responsibility by always being there as the backstop though. I think missing a couple of homeworks is quite a low-stakes thing that can teach them a lot about responsibility, failure, and how to recover from it. A lot of kids now seem to go into adulthood having never been allowed to fail, and it can really mess them up the first time it inevitably happens.
rkagerer 5d ago
As someone who doesn't have kids and was last in school decades ago.... Do those School Learning Management Systems tell you everyday what homework your kid is expected to complete? Do you feel such a granular degree of monitoring and direction has impacted your child's opportunity to build character, intrinsic responsibility and self-management skills? When I was a kid, teachers gave out assignments, and the student was responsible for keeping track of them, staying on top of progress, and handing in by the deadline. If a problem arose that wasn't an isolated incident or resolvable directly between the student and teacher, the feedback would flow at a much higher level e.g. scheduled parent-teacher interviews or via a phone call. And what do parents do who don't accept the terms and conditions of said educational platforms? (e.g. due to overly broad privacy clauses or one-sided indemnities and the like)
- nasmorn 5d ago
  But nowadays kids are expected to check 2-4 platforms plus their notes and there is no guaranteed time when they know it will be there. It is like the worlds worst paid disfunctional work place and one of my kids schools literally uses teams for one third of their assignments. In word format so sometimes kids overwrite it. If you don’t accept the terms your kids life is just even harder.

Freak_NL 5d ago

Keeping track of your kids' homework is your concern? Doesn't it only become your concern, briefly, when the school contacts you about your kid not getting their homework done?

fnordpiglet 5d ago
As a parent people from prior generations do not get the current situation. I actually agree that this is a useful use of the agentic work tools - and it’s the only case I mentioned above I’ve used it for successfully, if not saving of time. Homework isn’t assigned in class any more. It’s posted on dozens of inscrutable websites in weird UX’s that are impossible for any single human to understand. Children are mystified, parents confused, teachers at their wits end. A few times a week children miss some website or queue from some system, teachers can’t get things to share properly, this needs tending, they need to photograph this and upload that to this place as well as that but not the other one. It’s truly remarkably astounding. I have serious doubts frontier models can navigate it either honestly. But this is in fact where I see the most chance of using these tools. “Computers at school” is the worst idea ever, and no one who hasn’t experienced the clusterfuck of middle school in 2026 can understand it. It makes the world of the movie Brazil seem utopian.
pavel_lishin 5d ago
I'm not the person you're asking, but in general, I would also stay on top of my child's obligations - homework, chores, etc. I don't want the first sign of trouble to be a call from a teacher, or the complete absence of clean clothes for them to wear in the morning. You don't teach children responsibility by removing yourself completely from that equation
- mkjs 5d ago
  You equally don't teach them responsibility by always being there as the backstop though. I think missing a couple of homeworks is quite a low-stakes thing that can teach them a lot about responsibility, failure, and how to recover from it. A lot of kids now seem to go into adulthood having never been allowed to fail, and it can really mess them up the first time it inevitably happens.

rkagerer 5d ago

As someone who doesn't have kids and was last in school decades ago.... Do those School Learning Management Systems tell you everyday what homework your kid is expected to complete? Do you feel such a granular degree of monitoring and direction has impacted your child's opportunity to build character, intrinsic responsibility and self-management skills? When I was a kid, teachers gave out assignments, and the student was responsible for keeping track of them, staying on top of progress, and handing in by the deadline. If a problem arose that wasn't an isolated incident or resolvable directly between the student and teacher, the feedback would flow at a much higher level e.g. scheduled parent-teacher interviews or via a phone call. And what do parents do who don't accept the terms and conditions of said educational platforms? (e.g. due to overly broad privacy clauses or one-sided indemnities and the like)

nasmorn 5d ago
But nowadays kids are expected to check 2-4 platforms plus their notes and there is no guaranteed time when they know it will be there. It is like the worlds worst paid disfunctional work place and one of my kids schools literally uses teams for one third of their assignments. In word format so sometimes kids overwrite it. If you don’t accept the terms your kids life is just even harder.