[textadventure]

This take from a Hermione-type High School senior shed next to zero new light on the subject. Yes, we know AI is redefining school and jobs and daily life. The perspective of an obnoxious A+ type student isn't helping, especially because you kind of can read between the lines that she isn't friends with these kids using AI, which would give her a deeper perspective of why and how they are using AI.

Is this what The Atlantic has come down to, publishing a complain-y piece by the class president?

EDIT: For anyone struggling with my criticism of the article, I very much agree that there is a problem of AI in education. Her suggestion which is "maybe more oral exams and less essays?" I'm sure has never been considered by teachers around the world rolls eyes.

As for how to tackle this, I think the only solution is accept the fact that AI is going nowhere and integrate it into the class. Show kids in the class how to use AI properly, compare what different AI models say, and compare what they say to what scholars and authors have written, to what kids in the past have written in their essays.

You don't have to fight AI to instill critical thinking in kids. You can embrace it to teach them its limitations.

[igor47]

Struggling to understand what you're saying but it sounds like you're making two points:

* We should dismiss the concerns in TFA because the author is... A good and conscientious student? Who is both unpopular and also the class president?

* The students who are outsourcing their thinking, or at least their work, to LLMs, have good reasons for this and the reasons are not addressed in the piece

The first point is at best a pure ad hominem and at worst a full blown assault on conscientiousness and actually doing the work. I think the class president and good student is a better authority than the cheater. I'm very disturbed by the recent trend on HN and the wider world to justify any shortcut taken for personal advancement. We need people to value substance, not just image...

The second point is irrelevant -- we don't have do both-sideism in every piece. But also even if they do have good reasons to cheat, this creates an instant race to the bottom where now everyone must cheat. This is why they do doping checks in professional sports, except this is much higher stakes

[textadventure]

I'm wondering why is this being published in the first place. It's not an interesting or illuminating perspective, it's a pretentious student telling us nothing new.

I gave no opinions on AI, yet I do think it's very much a problem. This article presents neither good ideas to tackle it, nor an insightful perspective on the problem.

[OutOfHere]

Well said. There are kids who're struggling no matter how hard they try, because the teacher's explanation was miserable, or because they have to actually work part-time for a living. These kids need AI. Without AI they could risk being on the street when they turn 18.

Later in life, when their life is more stable, these same kids will be the first to actually use AI to learn the then necessary concepts properly.

[igor47]

I agree we should create the kind of society that allows kids to focus on learning in school. I think just giving up on learning in school and turning it into pretend time where teachers pretend to teach while students pretend to learn is not a solution to any problem

[superb_dev]

No one is going to be put on the streets because they lacked AI.

Bad teachers and a bad economy are no reason to let kids outsource all their thinking to a machine when they’re still learning to think themselves.

[GuinansEyebrows]

plenty of straight-A students are in those same classes with miserable explanations or have jobs. plenty of kids who flunk out of expensive private schools and don't work. always have been since long before AI. nobody "needs" these tools. they're conveniences. it sounds more like your issue is with the timing and structure of impersonalized childhood education.

[mallowdram]

You can't imagine the revolution over anything arbitrary on the horizon? Kids will have to overthrow the lame Pleistocene technology we base AI on in order to survive. This tech is already DOA as a general tool, she's telling us this. If there's no excitement or joy in learning, the sector is moot.

The lack of imagination in CS is stunning and revolting. Symbols and causality are broken records, chuck them asap and move onto the next idea of what a PC is. It ain't binary.

[textadventure]

ANY real kid that is unpretentious would do. A "I use AI to cheat at school" article would be far more interesting that this "Oh my God, my peers are hopeless but not me" piece.