By a 4-3 margin, the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools on Monday approved an application from Unbound Academy to open a fully online school serving grades four through eight.  Unbound already operates a private school that uses its AI-dependent “2hr Learning” model in Texas and is currently applying to open similar schools in Arkansas and Utah.

Under the 2hr Learning model, students spend just two hours a day using personalized learning programs from companies like IXL and Khan Academy. “As students work through lessons on subjects like math, reading, and science, the AI system will analyze their responses, time spent on tasks, and even emotional cues to optimize the difficulty and presentation of content,” according to Unbound’s charter school application in Arizona. “This ensures that each student is consistently challenged at their optimal level, preventing boredom or frustration.”

Spending less time on traditional curriculum frees up the rest of students’ days for life-skill workshops that cover “financial literacy, public speaking, goal setting, entrepreneurship, critical thinking, and creative problem-solving,” according to the Arizona application.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    4 days ago

    Great, one AI to set problems and another to solve them.

    Those kids are gonna get pretty good at Fortnite though.

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    This seems like a great machine to create republican voters, purposefully undereducated and perpetually frightened - the school to joe rogan pipeline

    Arizona State Board for Charter Schools

    Imagine the AMAZING individuals that must make up this group.

    In its Arizona application, Unbound says its bold claims about how much its students will learn are based on the experiment it’s running on students in Texas, inspired by Elon Musk.

    The cancer that had metastasized to all systems

  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    4 days ago

    Can’t wait to watch our own federal government cannibalize itself to the detriment of hundreds of millions of people. Good stuff.

  • DNU@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    I also think this sucks massively, yet the possibility of a well made curriculum focused on one Person dies sound enticing. So much less time wasted on stuff one child has no problems with vs another that’s just stuck at some logical step. Ofc no social interaction is such a big - it almost can’t be fixed.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      4 days ago

      Yeah, I want to hate it (and I do) but the idea is great. It’s just that there’s no way in hell the AI is doing the same job as a teacher. It’d also be very hard to tell if it’s working correctly. Who’s going to tell them it’s not? The student?

      I do think we need to modify our educational system to better suit people with different needs, but this should be through increased funding for more teachers, not AI to increase profits.

      • DNU@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        TBH my thoughts are almost a bit dystopian, but I think the AI should be implemented to spec the teachers performance vs his pupils and not on the children directly. There are (at least in my country) almost no barriers to what teachers can and can’t do, some AI that checks the children’s homework and tracks what’s going on could be immeasurably valuable to gain insight into the children’s learning behaviour.

        ofc from the (good) teachers perspective this understandably is the beginning of the end. I don’t even want to imagine how a system like that could be abused by bad actors or just plain and simple republicans.

  • 2ugly2live@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Kids aren’t being taught how to read, use a computer, or math. Now they’re not going to be taught at all through grades 4-8? I imagine if the parents are involved, it may do something, but what about kids with working parents? Whose going to make sure they’re actually retaining information? It’s kind of fucked up that they’ll be reintroduced into the “normal” system, and possibly be severely behind kids who had to go to class everyday.

  • childOfMagenta@lemm.ee
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    4 days ago

    “This ensures that each student is consistently challenged”.

    They will be challenged alright.

    • curry@programming.dev
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      4 days ago

      I wanna see the Karens losing their mind because the AI teacher dared to mention evolution.

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 days ago

        I don’t think the AI is actually teaching anything. Sounds like the courses exist and are written by people. Then a program just presents the content to them, and it has a set of questions. The only thing that’s sounds to be maybe AI about is that if they get a question wrong the computer will give them an easier one next. Meaning someone categorized the questions into hardness levels and likely groups that were similar to ensure it could swap them with an easier/harder question pertaining to the same concept. Really it could just be done with an if statement. Maybe they think saying it is being taught by AI is to make people feel like someone is paying attention to their kid… When really they are just left by themself. We could have done this 20 years ago… but maybe we thought better of it back then.

      • TheMachineStops@discuss.tchncs.de
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        4 days ago

        I know people who use AI in real life a lot, I think it is fine to use ChatGPT to help write an email, but some people use it daily for everything. Now you can find AI in WhatsApp, so I am fully expecting people to talk go each other using Meta AI. I am just tired of seeing it everywhere, it is good for stocks though, just say the word AI and suddenly the stock skyrockets.

  • sudoer777@lemmy.ml
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    4 days ago

    As someone who is extremely hands on and learns basically nothing from lectures, this actually sounds like a decent idea if it is executed well, especially the Khan Academy integration. I’d rather just sit down and read a textbook and do practice problems and be graded on them than be stuck in a lecture for 7 hours only to have to relearn everything anyways because I lose track of what’s being said in like 5 seconds of the lecture starting.

  • somedev@aussie.zone
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    4 days ago

    Why the fuck are we so accepting of everybody trying to replace real people with AI. The answer is money, obviously, but holy shit.

    • john89@lemmy.ca
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      4 days ago

      To be fair, white collar workers have become so lazy and incompetent, most of their jobs would be done better by AI.

      Charlie Kaufman had some good words to say about AI in screenwriting. Most movies released today could be written by AI and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        4 days ago

        I absolutely love Kaufman’s films, but what a garbage take. Not everything needs to be as complex or mindbending as Adaptation or Eternal Sunshine…

      • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
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        4 days ago

        Most movies released today could be written by AI and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

        This is the worst take I’ve ever read on Lemmy.

        Do you hate cinema? WTF is this garbage? Imagine saying this about art, or anything written from the heart. What on earth?

        We don’t need coffee. They invented instant!

        Thank goodness for VR. Now I don’t need to travel!

        Thanks, Ai girlfriend, you look cute today, too!

        Naaaaaaah. This is a slippery slope, my guy. We aren’t doing this.

        Fffffffff. Spoken like someone raised by bullshit.

          • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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            4 days ago

            I did until they decided that every character needed to be Tony Stark, be overly meta, mug for the camera, and just completely fail to take any god damn thing seriously for even a fucking minute.

          • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
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            4 days ago

            Actually, man. I appreciate the level of effort that goes into that sort of production. I do find a lot to enjoy in the thrillride aspect and the sheer amount of work that goes into them.

            But I consider that entertainment entirely separate from being on the edge of my seat in terror for a frail woman in a cabin being antagonized by a metaphor for Satan, grief or loss in a film that cost as much as as one Cybertruck.

            • john89@lemmy.ca
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              4 days ago

              Sorry I didn’t conform to your generalization.

              What? You’re fitting right in with my expectations.

              • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
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                4 days ago

                I could’ve been an absolute prude about it, but there is viable effort, set design, costuming, and work.

                It’s written like ass, but hey, trash in, trash out.

        • Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Yeah, I mean you could get gpt or something to write you a movie script. Maybe even get it to give you points on lighting, shots, etc. It definitely wouldn’t be close to a good film though, and probably some nonsense uncanny valley shit.

          I don’t think AI will replace human creativity when it comes to art. It’s soulless. I know that’s a subjective judgement but it’s one I think almost all of us would make.

      • somedev@aussie.zone
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        4 days ago

        What a bullshit statement. I suppose we just let machinery take all the jobs of the blue collar workers too then?

        • GrammarPolice@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          If it can… yes. The caveat is that the government should provide for those who will be out of jobs. I would be very happy if machines overtook dangerous and difficult manual labour jobs such as mining

      • naught101@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        I’m not convinced that’s the screenwriters’ fault. I think more likely its that the mainstream movie industry knows that pastiche crap is what is most profitable, so that’s all it funds.

        Similar with pop music. Most stuff that gets made is garbage. But it doesn’t mean that amazing stuff isn’t being made, it’s just that you have to hunt for it.

        Movies are worse because the resource and people requirements for a single movie are much more substantial than for a single album.

        • john89@lemmy.ca
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          4 days ago

          I’d say it’s both.

          Not all writers are complacent with potboiling, but most of them are and it’s what makes them average.

    • kromem@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Yes and no. It really depends on the model.

      The newest Claude Sonnet I’d probably guess will come in above average compared to the humans available for a program like this in making learning fun and personally digestible for each student.

      The newest Gemini models could literally cost kids their lives.

      The gap between what the public is aware of (and even what many employees at labs, including the frontier ones) and the reality of just how far things have come in the last year is wild.

      • naught101@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        I can see how this might be true if an AI can respond to individual cues from a single kid, which a teacher can’t reliably do because they have to look after 30 kids at once.

        I’m skeptical that those cue responses will be reasonable though. Maybe in the mean, but I reckon there’s gonna be some wild and potentially traumatic edge cases.