> If an AI is wrong about one thing you'll have the same bias over entire generations, once a full generation is skipped it's very hard to go back
Sounds like intellectual monoculture? If so, I absolutely agree. Already a problem with respect to many thinking it's unpatriotic to suggest their country is anything other than "the good guys", or blasphemous to ask if their religion is anything less than the actual truth of the divine, and AI can extend that to every single topic.
(Oh hey, another possible Great Filter for the Fermi paradox).
> Socialisation, experiencing new things, general culture, deciding where you want to go in life, &c. Many things you learn in school aren't used for jobs but for day to day life and for the well being of society
Do we need schools for that, or will kids learn the same by messing around in multiplayer Minecraft or whatever the zeitgeist is?
> If we take that out and replace it by "kids in front of screens" we're in for a massive and quick change with potential deep and long lasting effects.
Sure, but that's going to happen regardless. Too many other things are changing also.
A monolithic AI also becomes a single point of epistemic and pedagogical control.
Whichever side or instance you care to consider, think of the capabilities of someone hell bent for leather on defining what is, or is not, included in an educational curriculum, at the primary, secondary, post-secondary, graduate, or professional degree level, and their ability to influence, overtly or covertly, through persuasion or coercion, what that is.
Even under present conditions of proscribed curricula and textbooks, individual instructors, libraries, librarians, and others can go against some imposed dogma to some extent. A world in which only a small handful of AI originators provide the direct interfact between each student and their education is a grim prospect.
I've noted several commentators in recent months discussion a similar situation in terms of popular culture and entertainment, most notably the influence China now exerts over cinema and sport. The notion that AI will continue to be largely a product of Silicon Valley, and subject to US or even generally Western influence, may not be a valid one.
I think that's a perfectly reasonable fear, but I am here mostly focusing on the idea that school itself stops being important when the AI can do whatever it is teaching the students.
(I don't think that fundamentally changes any of your actual arguments here, it just feels like we're talking about slightly different aspects of how this can go wrong).
> Do we need schools for that, or will kids learn the same by messing around in multiplayer Minecraft or whatever the zeitgeist is?
You don't read facial expressions, body language, use your body, exchange bacteria/viruses, have body contact, &c. in minecraft
You can't go against hundred millions years of evolution and expect minecraft to replace real life. (see loneliness epidemic, obesity epidemic, depression epidemic), we're smartish apes, not AIs or computers. We're not designed to seat all day, we're not design to interacts with screens
If you can entirely replace education you don't need _school_ per day but you need long term group socialization with people who have different and similar opinions and backgrounds, physical activity, mental entertainment and challenges
The end goal is to live in healthy and collaborative societies, not to be mienscraft basement dwellers
You're being a bit too bogged down in the specific example there; I never got into the game myself and only used it as an example because a relative used it to socialise pre-pandemic.
I mean, VRChat can do the facial expressions, video games don't prevent exercise, and there's plenty of ways to share germs if you find vaccines too clinical and high-tech.
And of course, I'm currently using my glowing rectangle to group socialise with with people who have different and similar opinions and backgrounds, for example yourself.
So why make it worse? Why gives kids tablets for things we know don't need tablets, and where a device is more of a distraction?
Shiny new technology is great for distracting from a failure to perform basic childcare like keeping children physically safe so they can learn. And then it's a rhetorical weapon "We can't listen to parents, they don't even want their children to have state of the art equipment!"
Second, the parents are mostly buying the tablets anyway.
Thirdly, about this:
> distracting from a failure to perform basic childcare like keeping children physically safe so they can learn
Pretty much the one kind of safety I can guarantee kids have when using a computer is their physically safety.
And learn what, exactly, given the hypothetical scenario you're replying to here is that the only thing left to learn is being sociable which they can ultimately do best by experiencing whatever medium they will be sociable in as adults, and for all other learning you're just being a nerd like me who learns for the fun of it.
Parents are buying the tablets because teachers - pushing shiny new technology in lieu of results - tell them it'll help. There aren't any studies showing the putting screens in front of kids helps in any way, and there are many showing it hurts - from fitness to mental robustness and socialization.
> Pretty much the one kind of safety I can guarantee kids have when using a computer is their physically safety.
I think you're remembering computer lab, or something, where there was a proctor because computers were expensive. Now schools won't expel anyone they label troubled, no matter how much they trouble other students, and they won't protect anyone or let them protect themselves.
> the only thing left to learn is being sociable which they can ultimately do best by experiencing whatever medium they will be sociable in as adults
I don't see social media being so complex that they need all the years of practice to keep up, but I do see forming deep relationships as being essential and social media doesn't do anything to help with that. They'll get there when they do, no worse for not having partaken.
> Parents are buying the tablets because teachers - pushing shiny new technology in lieu of results - tell them it'll help
Funny, I'm remembering a summer holiday job 20 years ago, working on a HVAC production line. One of the others there bought a plasma TV for his infant.
It's not all about what teachers are pushing.
Heck, from what I've heard the teachers don't like the tech any more than you do.
> I think you're remembering computer lab, or something, where there was a proctor because computers were expensive. Now schools won't expel anyone they label troubled, no matter how much they trouble other students, and they won't protect anyone or let them protect themselves.
I have literally no idea what this is supposed to be about. Computers themselves are not part of any of the things you just said are bad.
And as I'm asking if the schools are even going to still be relevant, expulsions would carry as little meaning as being banned from owning horses does today.
> I don't see social media being so complex that they need all the years of practice to keep up, but I do see forming deep relationships as being essential and social media doesn't do anything to help with that. They'll get there when they do, no worse for not having partaken.
I didn't specifically say social media, I said "medium they will be sociable in as adults". That might be the traditional forums of the 2005 interwebs style; or soc med; or group chat apps like IRC, Slack, MS Teams as various of my employers have had us using; or video group chats like many of us got used to during the pandemic; or VR environments, be they games like WoW or roleplay environment like Furcadia or Second Life or VRChat, or "serious" metaverse things like whatever it is FB is trying to do.
It can also be going to parks and gyms, art galleries and graffiti walls, cafés and nightclubs. How much of that is part of school anyway?
But even for text, what counts as polite, friendly, professional, intelligent, serious, or severe is absolutely a moving target, so…
that means knowin when they need to be all like yo and emoji wif spellin' that confuses ol fogies like me and missin all the full stops coz that be rude yo yo lol
And of course the fact that such cultural idioms shift arbitrarily and I've stopped caring means that actual real young people will cringe as much when reading that last paragraph as I did when writing it, in exactly the same way I told my mum to stop trying to be hip and with it back in the late 90s.
> Heck, from what I've heard the teachers don't like the tech any more than you do.
The school district found the ones who'd push it. If teachers aren't fond of this I hope they fight it themselves.
> It's not all about what teachers are pushing.
Sure, I bought my child a laptop. But I spent time teaching computer skills under the guise of game design, etc, and it wasn't for classwork but for everything else. It wasn't a one-size-fits-nobody cash grab.
> I'm asking if the schools are even going to still be relevant, expulsions would carry as little meaning as being banned from owning horses does today.
I don't care if the violent kid thinks he wins, as long as he's not allowed to spend more time with the non-violent kids. His failure isn't my problem, my kids happiness and success is.
> what counts as polite, friendly, professional, intelligent, serious, or severe is absolutely a moving target,
Not so much, I think, that it needs practice over the years. I've seen people pick up social media with no practice whatsoever and right away seem to fit right in.
> I have literally no idea what this is supposed to be about. Computers themselves are not part of any of the things you just said are bad.
Yeah, it seemed to be a bit of an unguided post. I'm not sure if you don't like that I don't like excess tech in schools, or what. I don't think computers are bad, I think teachers and schools pushing them uselessly is bad.
Sounds like intellectual monoculture? If so, I absolutely agree. Already a problem with respect to many thinking it's unpatriotic to suggest their country is anything other than "the good guys", or blasphemous to ask if their religion is anything less than the actual truth of the divine, and AI can extend that to every single topic.
(Oh hey, another possible Great Filter for the Fermi paradox).
> Socialisation, experiencing new things, general culture, deciding where you want to go in life, &c. Many things you learn in school aren't used for jobs but for day to day life and for the well being of society
Do we need schools for that, or will kids learn the same by messing around in multiplayer Minecraft or whatever the zeitgeist is?
> If we take that out and replace it by "kids in front of screens" we're in for a massive and quick change with potential deep and long lasting effects.
Sure, but that's going to happen regardless. Too many other things are changing also.