AI hasn't had a chance to demonstrate if it helps or hurts education yet.
That's the big problem with education in general. If you introduce a new factor to children's education you can't realistically measure the effect it has had for about five years, because you need to wait for a cohort of kids to go through that system and then see how they did.
This means that if you introduce something with clear negative effects it will be five years before you spot them!
That's pretty catastrophic given that ChatGPT only emerged in late 2022 and only got good around early 2024.
That's not true, it absolutely depends on effect size. I'll give you an obvious example: large lead acetate infusions. You'll notice pretty fast.
OK so you can consider it was noticed.
No?
https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt...
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01947-1
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...
This also links back up to the Ironies of Automation, which came out decades ago.
The reports from teachers for the past few years have been pretty stark, with kids completely obviating homework.
Homework is exercise. If you bring a forklift to gym you end up moving weights but not building muscles.
>Homework is exercise. If you bring a forklift to gym you end up moving weights but not building muscles.
In countries like Finland kids don't get any homework. Though their society and school system optimizes more for child happiness, not winning international math Olympiads where you need to cram to get ahead.
> Even if the Finns don't need it, research suggests it makes a positive difference. Prof Susan Hallam from the Institute of Education says there is "hard evidence" that homework really does improve how well pupils achieve. "There is no question about that," she says. A study for the Department for Education found students who did two to three hours of homework per night were almost 10 times more likely to achieve five good GCSEs than those who did no homework
https://www.bbc.com/news/education-37716005
Finns appear to have a school system that works in a manner that suits their nation, and was reformed decades ago.
>A study for the Department for Education found students who did two to three hours of homework per night were almost 10 times more likely to achieve five good GCSEs than those who did no homework
It didn't control for why they were doing the homework. I'd bet if you did a study comparing two cohorts of students with identical social-economic status and IQ, you wouldn't see a significant difference.