Unbound Academy promises students will learn “twice as fast” with an AI tutor and an educator “guide.” Skeptics say the model is unproven and should not replace traditional classroom instruction. The group behind the platform wants to open two charter schools in Pennsylvania.
AI is going to damage their perception of reality. I got snagged by some AI bait about great white sharks (I'm a bit of a shark nerd). The article had AI generated images of great white sharks, captioned as *great white sharks in blank scenario". None of the sharks were actually Great Whites, they were tiger and bull sharks stretched and stitched together to make what ChatGPT thinks a great white looks like. The sharks were all in situations that were either physically impossible, or behaviorally wrong for great white sharks. Articles like that are dangerous, and they are going to warp perception about what a shark looks like, and what a shark does. If you think it's harmless, imagine a similar article about venomous snakes, or edible mushrooms, where all the identification images are AI generated.
There was something of an earlier effort to do MOOCs. My impression is that they didn't take off, because I stopped hearing about them. But I don't really follow current education, so...
I think that at some point, dramatic improvements to education are probably doable, and that we probably have the technology today.
But I'm kind of skeptical that AI is really the missing piece, at least given the state that it's in today.