Haidt generally has very interesting opinions but I don’t have time to listen to this this morning unfortunately.
The knee-jerk reaction of banning AI is probably the wrong choice, people need to learn where the limits are, but I also wouldn't be able to suggest a framework where students aren't rewarded for skirting around being educated.
Secondly it’s unclear whether shortcuts to many “answers” are wholly beneficial in many cases outside the academic sphere. Hence scandals when for example video educators use AI in their material. Or the general push back on AI writing, website design, etc. These answers are being pushed back on.
Channeled correctly it could be a fantastic educational tool. And will be in my opinion.
You are not going to put the genie back into the bottle.
Why would I believe that someone who can't use a mouse/computer is ready to be taught by AI?
The human element is critical for teaching, in my opinion. (Great) teachers are able to smooth over some of my criticisms of education. I also believe we are very far off from it being able to do even a bad job at teaching. So I'm not suggesting that at all.
What I'm talking about is teaching students how to use it, especially when not to use it, and how to get better results from it. I don't think AI is going to replace us any time soon, but people who use AI will replace those who don't.
But you can't do that without a certain level of maturity.
> but I also wouldn't be able to suggest a framework where students aren't rewarded for skirting around being educated.
Well, then "knee-jerk" ban AI in schools... until you can suggest such a framework, and test it to show it works, and roll it out at a society-wide level.
Until then, you're just handing kids flamethrowers in a highly flammable environment, and saying "we'll just figure out the problems later."
As someone who graduated from college in the 2000s, I've been surprised to hear from recently-graduated colleagues that doing exams in person is no longer the default. That strikes me as the obvious first line solution for (at least) the STEM subjects that lend themselves to exams centered around technical problem-solving: exams in person, no phones or similarly capable devices, cheaters get a failing grade with no possibility for appeal.
The conventional wisdom when I was in school was that classes where homework isn't graded aren't really any easier for most students, because the homework is where you learn the skills, and if you don't do it then you'll fail the exams. Frankly, the same will be true either way for students who use LLMs for all the exercises: they won't learn the skills, and they will fail the exams. This is a working-as-intended outcome.
So why not start there? It's how school has ~always worked, so there's no question of feasibility. The only question is whether our will to give committed students a real education is stronger than our desire to productize education as a rent extraction scheme tailored to a nepotistic and shallowly credentials-obsessed society where having 'B.Sc.' on your resume sorts you one bucket higher in the algorithmic hiring queue to flip burgers at your local McDonald's.
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It's less obvious how to fix the humanities subjects where take-home writing assignments carry most of a student's grade, though I'm tempted to think that even a relatively simple and tightly scoped writing exercise given as an in-person exam could conclusively weed out most of the students who've been relying on LLMs to do the assignments for them.
That's just inane. The existence of the nailgun does not mean learning how to swing a hammer has no value.
Academia relies on teaching everyone the same way, which advantages some kids and disadvantages others. AI could potentially help more kids. To say nothing of increasing access to education, which so often depends on how wealthy the school district is.
https://infographics.economist.com/2026/20260822_WOC963/
https://infographics.economist.com/2026/20260822_WOC965/
https://infographics.economist.com/2026/20260822_WOC839/
For most kids, AI is a detriment, but for a minority (smartest? most self motivated?) it's a boost.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anxious_Generation#Academi...
> For most kids, AI is a detriment, but for a minority (smartest? most self motivated?) it's a boost.
While I doubt it's a boost in anything but productivity, the negatives are simply too great to ignore.
???
Odgers, Candice L. (March 29, 2024). "The great rewiring: is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?". Nature. 628 (8006): 29–30. Bibcode:2024Natur.628...29O. doi:10.1038/d41586-024-00902-2. Archived from the original on September 10, 2024. Retrieved April 21, 2024.
And if you go to the article that has citations as well.
>While I doubt it's a boost in anything but productivity
If you look at the last chart it shows that students that spend the greatest amount of time using AI gets higher exam scores. It's not just "completes homework quicker".
>the negatives are simply too great to ignore.
That's... exactly what I said? I'm not sure how anyone can read "For most kids, AI is a detriment, but for a minority (smartest? most self motivated?) it's a boost" and get the impression that the negatives are fine because a tiny minority are getting better learning.
Why is proposing "alternative views" required for a critique? If we're discussing what caused diseases pre-germ theory, does that mean we can't point out the flaws in miasma theory because no "alternative views"?
>and cites "selling a lot of books" comes off to me as someone with an agenda. No thanks.
Well clearly you only read the first two sentences (or first paragraph?), because it cites multiple studies:
>These are not just our data or my opinion. Several meta-analyses and systematic reviews converge on the same message2–5. An analysis done in 72 countries shows no consistent or measurable associations between well-being and the roll-out of social media globally6. Moreover, findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, the largest long-term study of adolescent brain development in the United States, has found no evidence of drastic changes associated with digital-technology use7. Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University, is a gifted storyteller, but his tale is currently one searching for evidence.
Not to mention "selling a lot of books" isn't even the critique, it's that it offers a seductive explanation:
"... because Jonathan Haidt is telling a scary story about children’s development that many parents are primed to believe"
Exactly. The educational system needs to be reformed to exalt and celebrate the minority boosted AI, and quickly shuttle those harmed into the trash. Our North Star needs to be AI technology and the returns of investors who support it. Everything else, including human beings, are unimportant and expendable. Tech first!
I'm not sure how you got the impression that not being maximally rabid against AI (ie. recognizing there are benefits) implies I'm sort of AI bro that is willing to sacrifice the education of 80% (or whatever) of kids into the metaphorical woodchipper just so the remaining can get slightly better exam scores.
That being said, this stuff is hard to study, and I have no doubt that things like social media and AI are bad for a developing brain even if you can't arrive at a statistically satisfying conclusion. I can tell that this shit is bad for me, and I'm a fully grown man.
You see, the effect on social media on socialization has two parts. The first is the direct effect on an individual caused by their own use of social media. The second is the effect on an individual's social environment when everyone around them is on social media. The first effect is difficult but basically feasible to study. The second effect is downright wicked. So dismissing evidence that hints at the second effect as being "mere correlation that disappears under scrutiny" is not valid reasoning when your process of scrutiny focuses on the first effect.
In social science you have to accept reasoning from incomplete data. You won't always have the answers. I don't think Haidt really stands above or below his peers in any category except notoriety. Of course anyone who has worked with scientists knows to be a little suspicious of a researcher who seems to enjoy being in the public eye. But as the public eye, we're still stuck with them.
Ultimately it's the same issue across all technological tools. If the tools (AI, wikipedia, calculators, etc) can be used to complete work (or homework) without understanding the underlying fundamental concepts of the work being done, then you're hurting your education and/or professional development
Seriously? Idk about you but we weren't allowed to use calculators until long after we had already learned how to do whatever the calculator did by hand, except in cases where that was never the point of the lesson to begin with (like calculating cosines). And even then, sparingly. The reason they eventually let people use it was that it had nothing to do with the lesson being taught, and it was a waste of time at that point to make us do arithmetic by hand. Not because it suddenly became OK to turn off your brain and become lazy.
Yes, I remember those days all too well. "You need to learn to perform long division by hand because you won't always have a calculator with you."
LOL, no.
It will play out pretty much the same way this time.
Learning to do long division by hand trains the mind. It prepares you to understand polynomial division. It teaches you the deep connection of division and subtraction. So, mastering it should be part of the curriculum. As soon as it is truly mastered, it should be allowed to use a calculator.
I don't mean "AI" like generating quizzes or whatever. But people fooling themselves that LLMs are a "bicycle for the mind" with little kids are delusional.
i dont really think ai should be in most schooling, but calculators and computers also offload thinking. books offload memory.