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by FinnLobsien·1mo ago·view on hn ↗
I think it’s quite tricky. On one side, writing is a form of thinking and cognitive training.

Just NOT doing that work by having AI simulate it is not good for anyone’s cognitive development.

At the same time, anyone growing up today will be using LLMs for massive parts of the jobs they grow up to do. So they should learn about it.

I really feel for teachers/educators right now. It must be hard to remain demanding and insist on educating kids well while also preparing them for the future they’ll actually live in.

4 comments
> anyone growing up today will be using LLMs for massive parts of the jobs they grow up to do. So they should learn about it

Whatever AI looks like in 20 years is going to be so different from what it is today as to make distracting from basic skill-building an almost-certainly net negative educational effort.

I agree to some degree. But by that logic, should kids in the 2000s not have learned about the internet because the internet fundamentally changed between then and now?

I think that if anything, it’s really good I learned how to operate a computer and the Internet BEFORE what the Internet became.

I pity the generation who don’t understand a computer’s folder structure because they grew up with smartphones and TikTok.

> should kids in the 2000s not have learned about the internet

Yes. Emphatically yes. In elementary school? The kids who were online in elementary school—literally in school—who got like how-to-use-AOL lessons?

They almost certainly underperform those who learned about the Internet at home or later in life. This is like those stupid keyboarding classes in the 2000s. It was obviously a waste of time compared with developing basic cognition.

No AI CEO or chief engineer today grew up with AI. The idea that everyone in a ball sack or ovary is currently incurably fucked when it comes to the future is naive beyond silliness.

To be clear, I’m not presently arguing against early technology exposure. I’m arguing against the systematized exposure of nascent technologies to young children.

I agree and I think some of the comments here have shifted my perspective on this, especially given the age.

I think with teaching anything, there’s always going to be a difference between teaching the tactics (e.g. how to use AOL) vs the fundamentals (what’s the internet, how do computers work)

Your example would call more to create an "information technology" subject in schools, that updates its curriculum to include changes like the development of AI. Thus, you go to that class, some of your coursework in the year is going to involve learning about AI and how it works, what it can and cannot do, using it for some project, so on. Not using AI for doing your homework in every other subject.
Yep good point. I’m not defending using AI to do homework.
> At the same time, anyone growing up today will be using LLMs for massive parts of the jobs they grow up to do. So they should learn about it.

There's not so much to learn they can't put it into a high school course. Adults currently in the workforce haven't been using AI since they were in elementary school, and they're adjusting fine.

I would disagree that they’re adjusting fine. So much of the stuff we see now is full AI slop clearly created with the first output of ChatGPT. It’s like saying we don’t need to teach kids about the internet because older generations grew up without it and they’re scrolling TikTok.

a) what’s the actual percentage of professionals who actively use AI? It’s much smaller than we think in tech.

b) what percentage of those people understand the very basics of how LLMs work (e.g. token prediction, context windows, etc)

c) what percentage of those people understand AI Agents (or any of their ingredients (APIs, credentials, etc.)

You quickly arrive at a tiny fraction that has a real clue about what they’re doing.

>using LLMs for massive parts of the jobs they grow up to do

These are elementary school kids...if they start using AI in 6th grade, they have 6 years to learn AI before graduating high school.

Fair point!
> anyone growing up today will be using LLMs for massive parts of the jobs they grow up to do. So they should learn about it

Essentially the entire value proposition for AI, particularly as it advances, is that you don't need to learn how to do things anymore.