The reality is, most 5 year olds don’t get access to the resources most of us have had while growing up. People are saying, “kids should have human tutors.” Guys, most people in the world don’t have any tutors! What Ello has built and other forms of AI-based tutoring is going to raise the average level of education and literacy in the world. Especially in developing countries. Let individual parents decide what’s best for their kids.
5 year old kids should have enough play time with their peers and develop their social skills, instead of being sat in front of a screen with any kind of content. I feel a parallel between this and people defending short form video saying "but sometimes it's educational!" (it's not).
There's more than enough time in a day for a 5 year old to play with other kids and also spend some time learning.
At that age especially, play with other kids is time spent learning.
Most of them don't get access. So let's hook them up to an insane, unproven, unpredictable autocomplete math equation and entrust it to their development as a human being.
So gross.
Heaven forbid we let poor people use software that helps their kids read.
If they can't afford a tutor, they deserve nothing.
(Am I doing this right?)
Your reaction is based on 3 unproven assertions:
* An AI tutor is a net positive in learning for the subject matter it covers.
* An AI tutor does not cause other harms.
* An AI tutor is going to be cheap enough that someone who cannot afford a human tutor will still be able to afford an AI tutor.
I'm mostly willing to give the benefit of the doubt on the first point, but the third point seems unlikely, and history has given us no shortage of reasons to distrust tech companies on the second point, even if we assume this company can be trusted now.
Your reaction is based on 3 unproven assertions:
* An AI tutor is a net negative in learning for the subject matter it covers.
* An AI tutor does cause other harms.
* An AI tutor is going to be more expensive that someone who cannot afford a human tutor will still be able to afford an AI tutor.
Seriously, my first reaction to reading this headline was a knee jerk "are you insane", but this whole thread is just people arguing out of their arse while claiming authority. As of today, it was never attempted. It is also possible that the kids gain an advantage by learning to use llms to teach themselves things, which would be positive for their future.
I don't think it's going to happen, but that's just my opinion based on essentially prejudice, not a fact
Ello will have a free tier and we have the funding to make it free in the developing world, so 3rd assumption is true. We’re working really hard on 1 & 2 and feel confident about both of these, but I agree with the “nobody’s really successfully tried yet” sentiment
there's a big universe of solutions between getting nothing versus getting an AI 'educational' software that could do more harm than good.
> there's a big universe of solutions between getting nothing versus getting an AI 'educational' software
Such as?
Won't somebody think of the poor people's kids?!
Seriously though, it's great they're going to donate all this compute & tokens to the poor (who by definition can't afford to pay for it).
We could encourage parents to take an active role in tutoring their kids but I guess that's just entirely out of the question?
Nah. Let's have AI do it
Yeah tell them to change things.. why didn't we think of that? Provide opportunities to make parenting less stressful like here so that they can involve more.. this reflexive anti AI luddite attitude isn't productive as it's just less signal and more noise..
A reflexive anti-AI Luddite attitude is the healthy default until there is overwhelming evidence otherwise.
We should be wary of all new technology until it’s proven to be a benefit to society.
> We should be wary of all new technology until it’s proven to be a benefit to society.
Nope. Any nation that thinks like this will be outcompeted by more tech-positive nations in the long-term. It's on the luddites to demonstrate evidence of harm, if they want some use of technology banned.
> It's on the luddites to demonstrate evidence of harm, if they want some use of technology banned.
But then we're told we can't put the genie back in the bottle, it's too late, so we just have to suck it up and deal with it.
There's nothing preventing us from taking a more measured approach to new technology other than choice.
It's not reflexive, I've spent a lot of time and effort considering why I think AI is bad for society.
Is electricity bad for society? There are uses that are bad for society and uses that aren't bad for society.
In many ways electricity is bad for society. In this particular case I think the benefits outweigh the costs. I do not the think the benefits of AI outweigh the costs.
yes, an using it as an educational tool for 5-year olds is an unproven use we don't need to implement.
hmm bad attitude ZAP
"reflexive anti AI luddite attitude"
That's awfully reductive there, champ. Most critiques of AI are based on some combination of observed failings of the technology, observed failings of the tech industry writ large, and healthy skepticism in the face of Yet Another Tech Industry Hype Typhoon. Anyway, the burden of proof isn't on skeptics, it's on the technology and it's proponents, so let's see some receipts before we agree to squander limited public resources on unproven systems yeah?
>Most critiques of AI are based on some combination of observed failings of the technology
Most critiques of AI are based on experience with the cheapest AI available a year ago, by midwits unable to recognize that AI's performance on the Putnam, IMO and bar exam makes it far smarter than they are by almost every metric that was traditionally used to measure intelligence.
> Most critiques of AI are based on experience with the cheapest AI available a year ago, by midwits
You don't even need to use AI at all to have valid critiques of it
Plenty of other people are showing its flaws daily by replacing their entire personalities with AI slop
Oh it can do some impressive stuff sure. It is still bad for society
> You don't even need to use AI at all to have valid critiques of it
You cannot rationally criticize something if you have no up-to-date knowledge about it.
That's like saying you can't know if a stove is hot without putting your hand on it
The industry hype mill and it's attendant horde of touts are working overtime to make sure the dude that mows my lawn is up to date on AI, so I'm not sure how you're going to advance the argument that anyone routinely posting to the epicenter of the AI hype typhoon is some how poorly informed on the topic.
To make my earlier critique of your argument clearer, some applications of AI might be bad for society, but it does not follow that the tutoring application is also bad for society.
A responsible society would make sure that the applications have good results with adults before even thinking about applying it to children
And despite the hype, the jury is still out for how the results are for adults using AI
Nobody has tried to systematically apply AI tutoring for adults. AI tutoring for children is easier because there are more people who understand the domains that need to be taught to children and can evaluate if the children have grasped the concepts appropriately.
It is clear that a personal human tutor can achieve incredible results, and almost everybody who has revolutionized any field you might think of is a product of such a system. Scaling that would be immensely valuable to society.
> AI tutoring for children is easier
We shouldn't do questionable shit just because it's easier
We should do it because of the huge benefits to society. The fact that it is easier than doing something with marginal benefit is why we should do it first.
You have to demonstrate benefits to society before claiming you are providing them
Educational outcomes tank when computers are introduced to classrooms. It absolutely follows that AI as a tutoring application is bad for society.
https://fortune.com/2026/03/14/america-math-and-reading-scor...
> Educational outcomes tank when computers are introduced to classrooms.
Correlation does not necessarily mean causation.
It does not follow that anything produced by an electronic computational device is bad for children or society. I've personally seen computers teach children barely two years old to read.
> insane, unproven, unpredictable autocomplete math equation
It won IMO, solved Erdos problems. At what point will you stop saying that?
Also encouraged a guy to kill himself.
And let’s not forget it provided helpful, timely tips on weapon use for a school shooter.
Probably when it stops agreeing with me when I tell it that industrial quantities of garlic salt are an acceptable substitution for coco powder in a chocolate mousse recipe...
SwedishLLeMonAngels 1.0 Baker
Which model are you using? I don't think any recent state-of-the-art model does this.
This sounds like people who used to complain that they saw a website with bad info so obviously the internet should be avoided.
Why are you telling it that? No one is arguing LLMs are perfect but at this point dismissing them as stochastic parrots seems a bit silly
This particular use case is having it respond to prompts from 5-year old, so it really really needs to be able to answer correctly to questions of that type.
It's not silly, it's just the most convenient and broadly relatable failure mode. I mean, I could compile a 20 bullet point copypasta detailing everything from prompt injection to exfiltration of sensitive data as-a-feature but if touts are willing to stoop to ignoring all of that while arguing obvious reductio ad absurdum at face value there appears to be little point at tilting that windmill. The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle is definitely winning here.
I am sure you must have been to many developing countries to make that statement and are not just talking out of your behind.
But the ground reality is that they don't lack tutors or educators. They lack classrooms, they lack infrastrucutre, they lack nutrition. Solving those problems will actually incrase literacy in the world, not an AI bot.
> But the ground reality is that they don't lack tutors or educators.
As someone from a developing country: you are wrong. Lack of teachers (and especially GOOD teachers) is a big issue. Lack of infrastructure is also an issue, though.
"AI-based tutoring is going to raise the average level of education and literacy in the world"
Without exception every claim made to date about tech boosting educational outcomes has been provably false. As in, adding tech to the education process results in measurably less education, and this finding seems to track across all age cohorts. Furthermore, unless parents have significant education credentials they aren't qualified to make informed decisions on what's best for their kids in this context.
In practice, yes. In theory a machines can do about everything a human can, but better and cheaper.
One of the main constraint for education is available tutor time, see e.g. Bloom's 2 sigma experiment.
Obviously there are many pitfalls to overcome at the moment, but eventually machines will become better teachers than teachers, and not many parents will send their kids to public schools if the kids can learn much faster at home while being happier.
>In practice, yes. In theory a machines can do about everything a human can, but better and cheaper.
It cannot be a human, which is a large part of what humans offer to children.
This seems like a large problem to me.
> In practice, yes. In theory a machines can do about everything a human can, but better and cheaper.
If you could time-travel back to your 5y old self, would you prefer to be taught by AI tutor given the current state o/t art, or taught by whatever teachers you did have when you were 5? (with all the existing hallucination, breaking through guardrails etc problems of current AI in mind)
If you'd have a ~5y old yourself, what would your prefer for your kid?
> One of the main constraint for education is available tutor time, see e.g. Bloom's 2 sigma experiment.
Interesting! Also note a caveat (quoted from Wikipedia):
The phenomenon's associated problem, as described by Bloom, was to "find methods of group instruction as effective as one-to-one tutoring".
Perhaps it would be better to focus on that problem?
> and not many parents will send their kids to public schools if the kids can learn much faster at home while being happier.
How do you see peer-to-peer contact in that scenario? Toddlers on a video conference call hours a day? Physical contact is a basic need for humans. Especially kids.
> eventually machines will become better teachers than teachers
Ah yes: WILL (and although likely, not guaranteed). How about re-evaluate our options & stragegies once that's the case?
On the place of schools and peer-to-peer interaction:
My oldest is about to start kindergarten in a few weeks. From what I can gather, she's already reading at approximately a mid-2nd grade level and doing math at a late-1st grade level. I expect that divergence would only grow if I kept her at home. So I already firmly believe my kids would learn much faster at home, and this is with us sporadically spending maybe 10-20 minutes on some days doing intentional, structured learning. School is apparently 7 hours 5 days a week, which seems insane to me. We have federal proposals to reduce the definition of full-time to 32 hours for an adult.
From that perspective then, my wish already is that schools could offer to act as a sort of hub for families to meet/organize socialization, and offer the ability to sign up for classes more a la carte. e.g. maybe they can take art or music or science lab, or organize sports teams, and kids that need it can take take math, etc. Basically, act as a support system for homeschooling to fill missing gaps (going up to handling the entire curriculum or effectively acting as childcare for families that need/want that).
> If you could time-travel back to your 5y old self, would you prefer to be taught by AI tutor given the current state o/t art,
I don't know about Ello or whether is it better than human tutors yet.
> How do you see peer-to-peer contact in that scenario?
Neighbor kids gather and play as they please, which is also easier if they have more time on their hands, stay home, and overall live in each other's proximity.
> If you could time-travel back to your 5y old self, would you prefer to be taught by AI tutor given the current state o/t art, or taught by whatever teachers you did have when you were 5? (with all the existing hallucination, breaking through guardrails etc problems of current AI in mind)
I had to choose between my elementary school teachers and something like Claude Fable 5 with a good teaching-focused harness, I would definitely choose Fable 5.
Your average 5 year old will also gleefully attempt to eat an entire gallon of ice cream in one sitting so make of that what you will.