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Posted by dash2 2 days ago

AI boosted homework scores, then exam scores dropped: study(www.economist.com)
https://archive.is/w1eng

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6868618

168 points | 222 commentspage 2
inemesitaffia 2 hours ago|
The homework helps the teacher track their performance/progress.

When the signal is removed, this is what you get.

2716057 2 days ago||
https://archive.is/w1eng
tolugenius 2 days ago||
I know this study is focused in China but one thing I'd like to understand is the nuance in what kind of student is likely to always reach for ai for homework help as I think (especially in the US, can't speak for other countries) the varying powers that be that can determine the quality and type of education you can receive (does your country have means to buy textbooks per student or shared, do you have funds to give students ipads to take home or no, what sets the bar on how far curriculums can go, are teacher and faculty pay and incentives simply tied to student pass rates, etc.) and those do more in shaping what "use AI responsibly" will look like and why it's so different.
mpalczewski 2 hours ago||
When you get out into the real world, what will matter is how effectively you use AI. When you are done with school, you can take the "exam" using AI. The problem is that teaching is trying to teach skills that are no longer relevant and is always behind what the latest going on in the industry. Every time without fail you got interns, who after two years at stanford would learn more in the 3 months on a google internship than in those two years at stanford. They learn useless shit.

My own experience is that college is fun. You can spend the time wisely, but school stuff, is not what makes you money.

Make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy and make colleges under write them. The problem will get solved quickly.

nick486 2 hours ago|
Way before AI, the problem was very similar - universities do not teach practically useful stuff. Its been a permanent complaint about the education system, really, at least for the last 50 years.

AI just gave the students a way to dodge the slog.

But university was never intended to teach the bleeding edge. That would really be impossible in practice. Pre-phd, it is supposed to teach ways to efficiently attack a problem. you can take a bunch of "play courses", and succeeding at any of those requires pretty much only that one skill.

Nowadays, the challenge they face, is to keep teaching "problem attack methods" in a way that can't be trivialized by AI.

Though fundamentally, if you go to university, and evade learning the one thing you can learn there - thats your loss.

mdrzn 2 days ago||
Use AI for homework, you will get it done faster and get a higher grade, and then get crushed on the exam.
1-6 2 hours ago||
Teachers have become proctors and not educators.
francisofascii 4 hours ago||
Are all of our LeetCode scores down, too? We should probably code the old fashioned way periodically to ensure we still "got it".
yipinwong 4 hours ago||
The article does not relate AI usage for homework to exam score drops.

It tries to link them together with no obvious cause and effect.

The score could have dropped due to worse environment at schools or kids who were stuck at home studying online and now in physical locations could not adapt fast enough (meaning, possibly just temporary drops). We do not yet have enough metrics gathered yet.

This type of article bashing AI for the root of any problems, I find it appalling without any evidence.

It's nothing but a conjecture.

dang 4 hours ago||
(This was originally posted in response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49389565, which has a different article. We've since merged the threads.)
djeastm 4 hours ago||
They left 20% of the 87,000 students as a control group. Is that not enough to allow for differences in environment, etc?
jsisto 2 days ago|
i’m pretty sure there’s already a correlation between technology in the classroom and worse learning outcomes
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