Berkeley math prof gives up on marking homework.

[Usagi]

I went to school many decades ago now. But after the 3rd grade I never did homework outside of projects where they wanted me to build something at home. Thanks to standardized testing I was never failed in any grade despite never doing homework. Since in the state I grew up in the standardized end of year tests were used to determine how much funding the public school system I attended got during the next year. I'm not trying to brag but if they failed me they would have had to throw out my end of year scores which would have tanked their funding. I wasn't supposed to know this of course but my father was good friends with the superintendent of my county public school system. Who told us sometime around the time I was in 7th grade.

My Dad would regularly pull rank on the teachers and principles at the schools I attended if they did something to make him angry. He never abused it but if he thought something wrong was going on he could always make one phone call and get any staff member he wanted into trouble. This of course didn't always bode well for me because they'd do things to take it out on me (and the rest of the students since my Dad was rather popular with all my peers). Dad was always volunteering to do stuff at my schools up until I got to 6th grade when they wouldn't let him hang out at the school on his days off doing things like fixing the basketball courts and lots of other misc. stuff the school always claimed they didn't have funding to fix.

Anyway, I'll never forget in the 3rd grade my mean teacher raising a big stink about the fact that I hadn't turned in any homework all week. At the time I was going through some stuff (parents got divorced suddenly, had my Mom one day then the next she was just gone). I pretty much told my teacher I wasn't going to do the work because I already knew the material. She said I was going to be in big trouble after class and gave me detention. Which meant I missed the bus and my Dad had to be called. Then Dad had to drive 2 hours in from where he was working that week (nearest nuclear power plant) to come pick me up. Entire time my teacher is sitting there with a smug look on her face because she just knew I was going to get the ass whoopin' of my life after she ratted me out to my Dad.

Well it didn't turn out that way and I'll never forget what my Dad told her after he got finished yelling at her for calling him at work for no good reason and making him leave work early. He said;

You get him for 8 hours a day. I see him for 2 hours a day if I'm lucky. Home time is our time. Anything you need to teach him you can teach him during that 8 hours. Don't ever bother me with anything like this again

.

Then he took me home and he basically told me "I don't care what you do at home as long as you're taking care of your little siblings and getting passing grades while you're at school".

So after that I just never did homework again for any of my classes and maintained a good GPA even throughout high school. Since I guess word got around that any of my grades that were below a C grade (so all the Fs I got from not turning in homework) were to be thrown out and not spoken of again.

In 8th grade I missed so many days due to regular suspensions from fighting that they were forced to let me return for the last 4 weeks of the school year so my end of grade test grades wouldn't be thrown out and not calculated into the average. I didn't like fighting but I had a bit of a bully problem during those middle school years. So pretty much every day I was having to defend myself from someone. Was lucky if it was just one guy usually it was 3+. Those children never got in trouble because they had rich parents pouring money into things like the football team. So I always ended up being the one sent home for 3 days. I didn't keep up with how many I was out for the 8th grade but I remember it came up to like 2-3 months of missed school. Of course, I didn't do any of the homework they sent during that time either. So all those Fs got tossed out at the end of the year because I was always top 3 (usually #1) on the end of year test scores. They let me come back to sit in in-school suspension for 4 weeks just so I'd be able to eek by on days attended.

In 7th and 8th grade I actually requested them to just let me come into ISS every day since I could actually get work done in there. It was a room where they had dividers between all the desks. So you did your work quietly and got to listen to classical music on the radio. I'd usually finish all class work by 10am then I got to go hang out with the janitor all day mopping floors. At lunch time we'd clean up the lunch room after all the students ate and went back to class. The lunch ladies would always hook me up with free ice cream, snacks and soda. Along with all the left overs I could eat. Much preferred it to dealing with having to be in class with the other students. Then after lunch I could go to the library, check out all the books I wanted then quietly read in the ISS room until it was time to go home. The only time I actually learned anything during my time in public school was when I was in ISS.

The public school system I attended was really bad. It was ranked last in the nation pretty much the entire time I was there. They never spent any money they took in on donations on anything else but the football and wrestling teams. When I graduated from the high school the "computer lab" was still just a bunch of old early-mid 80s computers running CP/M and our text books still had maps of the Soviet Union in them. I never saw a text book that was less than 15-25 years old the entire time I attended public school. Hell every school in the county was still sharing one T1 line when I graduated even though the entire town had gotten cable internet a few years before.

Seeing public schools in other states those didn't look much better than the ones I was forced to attend. Which is why I did everything in my power to ensure my little sister wouldn't have to go through them. We ended up sending her to a charter school instead then later on I saved up enough to send her to a private school. Which got her a head start on college. As of a couple of years ago she's now a doctor. If she'd been forced to attend public school like I was no way that dream would have ever came true for her.

So yeah. Homework has always been stupid busy work in my opinion. I'm not going to say all teachers are dumb but I have two in my immediate family and they're the dumbest members of our family. The worse part is they're also the types that think they're smart and know everything. So it's pretty annoying having to deal with them over the holidays since they're also the types that always want to bring up subjects at the dinner table like politics (which is rude). Although I'd be lying if I said my Dad and I didn't enjoy trolling them (according to the teachers we're both "dumb" because we don't hold any degrees. Despite the fact that we make much more than they do and are actually considered skilled labor).

My Dad has a phrase for people like my old teachers and the ones in my family. He called them "educated dumb asses". In other words: people that think because they read a book means they know everything. Dad had to deal with a lot of them in his last decade or so working at the power plants. They all thought my Dad was dumb because he didn't hold the same degrees they did and because he barely finished high school. But any time shit hit the fan they always came running because they needed my Dad. Since he'd been working in the plants since he was 18 years old and forgot more than most of his peers knew about keeping them running and fixing stuff within them.

My Grandfather was "dumb" as well. Actually couldn't even read and write. But he supervised building most of the power plants on the east coast still supplying probably 90+% of the power being generated today. Specifically, the turbines but also most of the things around them to make them work. Well the mechanical aspects of the plants anyway. He was the smartest men I've ever known and he could barely sign his own name. Instead of learning to read and write he always made sure he had a man working under him that was good at keeping the books. Something he learned while being forced to serve in the Army during Korea after he got a few promotions and ended up being in charge of a bunch of men.

Don't get me wrong I love reading and learning new things. But most of the things I've learned in my life was despite academia and not because of it. Most things in school are a total waste of time. My Dad taught me most of the things he did by throwing me to the wolves then helping me when I screwed up. He encouraged me to take things apart (he and I both enjoyed taking clocks apart) then trying to put them back together. He always had something for me to do around the farm like tearing down an engine and rebuilding it or helping out with putting a new roof on a barn. Always something new to learn and some type of work to be done. I learned a lot more about life and fixing stuff at home than I ever did at my school. Especially when it came to computers/CS and technology in general. When I got my first TRS-80 it was already very out of date compared to top of the line stuff coming out and even that Trash-80 was miles ahead of what they were forcing us to use at my grade school at the time.

 

[DanielBowman]

Dad had to drive 2 hours in from where he was working that week (nearest nuclear power plant)

Is your name Bart?

Homework

Original idea is that one should think about the problems on their own. But yeah, as old Soviet joke says "We meant well, but it ended up as always."

all teachers are dumb

Those who don't know, teach. Big props to exceptions - and those were almost always the most benevolent teachers.

Titles and book "smarts" are crutches for cripples. They know it deep down, they fear someone finds out and thus are unpleasant especially to the self-made men.

 

[hedwards]

As former teacher,
quote Richard Feynmann,
"The efficiency of education is seldomn except in those rare cases where it is superfluxious"

Education is inherently inefficient, if it wasn't, you wouldn't need schools, people would learn on their own. We just do education because the results are very productive.

 

[astyle]

Usagi : Stateside, there was actually fairly recent talk of disbanding the Department of Education - at the very top.

Titles and book "smarts" are crutches for cripples. They know it deep down, they fear someone finds out and thus are unpleasant especially to the self-made men.

Self-made men were humanity's first to physically make it to space and back on the basis of book smarts of an isolated cripple. Well, it was not nearly as bad as Stephen Hawking (whose theories seem to be primarily astronomy-related), but still, it's amazing what you can pull off if you're properly educated.

But if one doesn't even know what a fork bomb is, are they gonna start asking an AI questions that potentially lead to some rather harmful knowledge?

Rome wasn't built in a day. Neither were knowledge bases. For example, knowledge of chemical basis for explosions - it took some time before people realized that you gotta have some pretty good storage for certain chemicals, and enforcement of rules for such storage - in the name of safety.

There's plenty of youtube clips that demonstrate what happens when you're a moron who doesn't know any better.

Sometimes, you see someone with an appetite for learning, and sometimes, you see someone with no appetite for that.

So, what do you do to stimulate the appetite to learn? Especially when you know that your actions have a 50% chance of failing - no appetite to learn, or the appetite is for the wrong thing (anything but learning).

 

[DanielBowman]

on the basis of book smarts

What I meant by book "smarts" was the thing Usagi mentioned - some people just parrot a few books they read with no real understanding, just to appear smart.
Mr. Tsiolkovsky wrote those books. Same for Hawking.

And you can be academic with a lot of titles, never write book, do anything or come up with anything worth of mention and still be really smart. Possible.
More common is the case of midwit who makes his life goal pretending, quite aggressively/arrogantly, he is smarter than he actually is, while shitting on other people because he lives in constant fear for his position.
The titles are not guarantee of smarts. And Einstein would probably not be admitted to any conference today, not having the proper titles.

 

[Crivens]

So, what do you do to stimulate the appetite to learn?

That is the art of teaching, and that is why we should pay teachers good money. Others are simply instructors, repeating what they were instructed to do.

no appetite to learn, or the appetite is for the wrong thing (anything but learning).

Ah, teenagers...

 

[Maturin]

There are way too many things mixed up, not to say confused - maybe because not known, maybe because of ignorance, maybe as an excuse for laziness, maybe because of other reasons.

First of all teaching and learning are not the same.
Starting with what is teached is a very large, controversal but also very important discussion already for itself every society has continously to do in a continous developing so changing world: must (basic reading/writing, basic math), needed (learning to enjoy reading instead of fearing texts longer than half a page, not fearing doing math more complex than addition of single digit positive numbers, understanding of nature, society, political system, history etc. for becoming free independent thinking people interested in and capable of learning many things of their own instead of becoming one-track specialized morons, only), nice to have (arts, music, literature, sports, computers), what's extra for when there is enough time left, unimportant or don't even belong into schools (e.g. religion)

The second point about teaching is, how to teach, since every society has to find a compromise between what's working efficiently and what can be afforded. Every pupil gets his own school and teachers cannot work, since we simply cannot afford it, but classes over 30 pupils with a single teacher only lecturing are inefficient (in schools, not in universities, if the students learned the capability of learning themselves due lectures) nonetheless in many cases we have them.

The crucial point about education is not what is teached, but what is learned.
Which is the methods how is teached and learned.
Picking videos for themselves (deciding, what to learn) and then watch them when they like to is for sure a comfortable way for pupils and students how they can lecture themselves, and videos (partially do, partially only seem to) offer even more benefits. But this method comes with several catches:
Apart from the fact if pupils pick only of their own it's highly probable to they don't learn enough of the right things in time (as I said in a former post, you need to be already an expert to know, what you can skip, and what not. So pupils can simply not decide what's really important, and what's not. All they can decide is, what they like, and mostly what's comfy and easy to them, but not what's important, because unless you learned that you cannot know), videos are highly inefficient in teaching and learning something. Sure, for things better be shown in a visual presentation instead of describing text, pictures can and will those things being grasped faster. But that's not true for everything. In contrary, the fewest things can be presented visually at all.
Anybody ever read a book with lots of humour coming from thoughts and points of view described in the book's text and then being disappointed by the movie experienced exactly that: Such things cannot be shown in pictures. It's text. And since nobody wants to stare at not moving pictures within a movie while some voice telling lots of text, this is only the rare case for very few and short exceptions.

I could write another page on the inefficieny of learning by video, but short:
Videos distract by their pictures of the important stuff. If you want to learn, what option you need to make ls's output sorted by time you can either take a peek into its few kB man containing text, only, finding it's -t within two or three minutes, or you search a video that lectures about ls (already several minutes spent, before you even started to watch the video), then skip all this, 'Hello, I am some weird nerd with an annoying speach incapability, poorly pronouncing, doing wrong accentuation and misplace pauses. Don't be focused only on my pimple I today have, but subscribe to my newsletter...blablabla...ell ess is an old unix command, that... blablabla...' - you already know all that, or are not interested in at all. All you want to know, only, is what option you need to use. But the video lasts over 15 minutes, and somewhere in between may be the option you're looking for. Maybe not. And if not, you have to start all over again, search another video. All this for avoiding to read some text at all cost. Because your brains are that untrained in reading it's like you're too weak because of being too lazy to raise yourself from the couch to get to the bathroom, finding excuses why it's way better and more modern to wear diapers instead of just move yourself the few steps into the bathroom, finding even more excuses when somebody tells you about the inefficiency because of the costs, efforts and inconveniece in the second place of using diapers instead the 'old fashioned greybeard's bathroom from the stoneages.'
Everybody will tell you, videos contain way more information. That's right. Comparing a video's Mbytes to the some kB of a text only file proves that. But most of it is all unimportant, not even wanted information. All you just want to know it's -t, but you also learn what kind of shirt the speaker wears, what wallpaper is in the background, etc. etc. etc.
In over 90% of all cases all you want is actually the text, only - spoken or written, doesn't matter.
But spoken language is always a lot slower than reading a text by yourself (if you don't suffer of some reading debility.) Anybody ever already finished reading subtitles while the voice telling the exact same text is still talking experienced exactly that.
Videos only animate the short term memory. To learn something it must be get into long term memory. Reading a text brings you already closer to this state. And you have to do it yourself: Practicing. Like you cannot learn how to ride a skateboard or play the guitar just by neither reading a book, nor watching videos, only, without practicing. So nothing else can be learned without doing it yourself often enough until you've learned it. You may only get the impression while watching a video you learned so many things. But did you really? You can put it to the test easily: Just pick a two small similar sized subsubjects from a subject you didn't learned yet. For one you pick a text, best a book's chapter, and read the text. For the other pick and watch a video. Then see what you remember the next day. Don't be surprised if you remember more than the half of what you read, while it's very litte, almost nothing of what you've seen in a video.

There are many, a lot many studies prove what everbody knows who learned the "traditional" ways:
There is no more efficient way to learn but reading books and write things down - in your own handwriting; using a computer can come when you already learned how to read and write well.
Ignoring this, because you don't believe in it, because you never experienced it, because you never tested it, because you never actually learned this, or because of you simply refuse to accept this, because it seems too strenuous, or boring, or contradticting your beliefs, or whatever, does not change that this a true fact.
You may repeat the experiment I just told above by repeating to read the text, watch the video, and make some notes on some scrap paper, and see in which case you learn more in shorter time.

For people with kinds of social or communication disorders computers can be a assisting help. But for the majoriy not having such disorders computers and machines are no replacement for real life human contact. In contrary they even may produce such disorders a child may not have developed when not got into contact with computers too soon.
There is more - way more - to human communication than any computer, robot, AI, or any other kind of machine could ever provide, no matter how sophisticated they are:
- subtexts in spoken language
- non verbal communication
- sensibility
- empathy
- emotions
- ...
When you never experienced, learned those, you not only have no idea what I'm talking (which does not make those unexisting), but you also lack a very large and very important part of human communication, of social life, not to say of life and being human.
For somebody only experienced visual media so far, raised with a smartphone and computers since baby times, this all seems to be not true, because it's simply unkown - not learned. Or at least insufficient learned, which can be seen often when people are crapping around insensitively all the time, and then being massively pissed themselves instantly and turning most aggressive if somebody just kindly mentions that's not the best way to talk to each other.
Just because something is unknown doesn't make it neither unexisting nor wrong.
Like only the things known were right is also wrong.
This is also a very crucial point have to be learned, and extremely bad if this is not known.
There is more to learn than what's already known.
Learn there are contradictions.
Learn how to deal with them. Otherwise than simply ignore anything contradicting the things once learned.
Also learn, things once learned can turn out to be wrong - even again.
Learn the world ain't no easy place to grasp. But your brains are capable to deal with it anyway - if you learned how to.
Learn that people trying to sell you simple answers on complex questions, telling you the world ain't that complex if you just believe and trust in them and let them do it for you in contrary most of the times trying to seduce you, most of the times trying to sell you something: junk, not seldom themselves or their very own personal interests, which most of the times is money - your money. And not seldom mocking and laughing at you afterwards, 'You are a mature adult, aren't you? So, you are responsible for your own decisions. So, it's your fault if you were that stupid you've fallen for what I told you. Every clever guy had already known in the first place it's all BS and lies. Harhar!!'

This is something particulary AI chatbots fail to teach, since those don't bring no nonverbal communication, no real empathy, but mechanical gentle verbiage patterns, only, and above all, they do not contradict.
Also those want to sell you something. Most of the times themselves, since it's simply a business to make money, not an altruistic charity.
The best customers are stupid customers, not asking questions but buying anything they were told to buy.

 

[blackbird9]

There's plenty of youtube clips that demonstrate what happens when you're a moron who doesn't know any better.

Just watch any program that contains the phrase "ancient astronaut theorists"...

 

[DanielBowman]

pay teachers good money.

Pay GOOD teachers good money. Teacher unions would implode. Education system is for teachers, not for the kids.

 

[DanielBowman]

There are way too many things mixed up, not to say confused - maybe because not known, maybe because of ignorance, maybe as an excuse for laziness, maybe because of other reasons.

First of all teaching and learning are not the same.
Starting with what is teached is a very large, controversal but also very important discussion already for itself every society has continously in a continous developing so changing world: must (basic reading/writing, basic math), needed (learning to enjoy reading instead of fearing texts longer than half a page, not fearing doing math more complex than addition of single digit positive numbers, understanding of nature, society, political system, history etc. for becoming free independent thinking people interested in and capable of learning many things of their own instead of becoming one-track specialized morons, only), nice to have (arts, music, literature, sport, computers), what's extra for when there is enough time left, unimportant or don't even belong into schools (e.g. religion)

The second point about teaching is, how to teach, since every society has to find a compromise between what's working efficiently and what can be afforded. Every pupil gets his own school and teachers cannot work, since we simply cannot afford it, but classes over 30 pupils with a single teacher only lecturing are inefficient (in schools, not in universities, if the students learned the capability of learning themselves due lectures) nonetheless in many cases we have them.

The crucial point about eduction is not, what is teached, but what is learned.
Which is the methods how is teached and learned.
Picking videos for themselves (deciding, what to learn) and then watch them when they like to is for sure a comfortable way for pupils and students how they lecture themselves, and videos (partially do, partially only seem to) offer even more benefits, but this method comes with several catches:
Apart from the facts if pupils pick only of their own it's highly probable to they don't learn enough of the right things in time (as I said in a former post, you need to be already an expert to know, what you can skip, and what not. So pupils can simply not decide, what's really important, and what's not. All they can decide is, what they like, and mostly that is comfy and easy, but not what's important, because unless you learned that you cannot know), videos are highly inefficient in teaching and learning something. For things better be shown in a visual presentation instead of describing text, pictures can and will those things being grasped faster. But that's not true for everything. In contrary, the fewest things can be presented viusally at all.

I could write another page on the inefficieny of learning by video, but short:
Videos distract by their pictures of the important stuff. Spoken language is always a lot slower than reading a text, while in 99% of all cases it's actually the text you want/need. Videos only animate the short term memory. To learn something it must be get into long term memory. Reading a text brings you already closer to this state. And you have to do it yourself: Practising. Like you cannot learn how to ride a skateboard or play the guitar just by neither reading a book, nor watching videos, only, without practicing, so you cannot learn anything else without doing it yourself often enough until you learned it.
(You can put it to the test easily: Just watch a video on a subject you didn't learned yet. Then see what you remember of it the next day. Don't be surprised if this is very little.)

There are many, a lot many studies prove what everbody knows who learned the "traditional" ways:
There is no more efficient way to learn but reading books and write things down - in your own handwriting; using a computer can come when you already learned how to read and write well.
Ignoring this, because you don't believe in it, because you never experienced it, because you never tested it, because you never actually it learned, or because of you simply refuse to accept this, because it seems too strenuous, or boring, or contradticting your beliefs, or whatever, does not change that this a true fact.

For people with kinds of social or communication disorders computers can be a assisting help, but for the majoriy not having such disorders computers and machines are no replacement for real life human contact. In contrary they even may produce such disorders a child may not have developed when not got into contact with computers too soon.
There is more - way more - to human communcation than any computer, robot, AI, or any other kind of machine could ever provide, no matter how sophisticated they are:
- subtexts in spoken language
- non verbal communication
- sensibility
- empathy
- emotions
- ...
When you never experienced, learned those, you not only have no idea what I'm talking (which does not make those unexisting), but you also lack a very large and very important part of human comunication, not to say of being human.
For somebody only experienced visual media so far, raised with a smartphone and computers since baby times, this all seems to be not true, because it's simply unkown - not learned. Or at least insufficient learned, which can be seen often when people are crapping around insensitively while then being massively pissed themselves instantly if somebody just mentions that's not the best way to talk to each other.
Just because something is unknown doesn't make it neither unexisting nor wrong.
Like only the things known were right is also wrong.
This is also a very crucial point have to be learned, and extremely bad if this is not known.
There is more to learn than what's already known.
Learn there are contradictions.
Learn how to deal with them, otherwise than just ignore anything contradicting the things once learned.
Also learn, things once learned can turn out to be wrong - even again.
Learn the world ain't no easy place to grasp. But your brains are capable to deal with it anyway - if you learned how to.
Learn that people trying to sell you simple answers on complex questions, telling you the world ain't that complex if you just believe and trust in them and let the do instead are most of the times trying to seduce you, most of the times trying to sell you something, some junk, most of the times temselves, or their very own personal interests. And not seldom mocking and laughing at you afterwadrs, 'You are a mature adult, aren't you? So you are responsible for your own decisions. So it's your fault if you've fallen for me, but thanks, har har!!'

This is something particulary AI chatbots fail to teach, since those don't bring no nonverbal communication, no real empathy, mechanical gentle verbiage patterns, only, and above all, they do not contradict.
Also those want to sell you something. Most of the times themselves, since it's simply a business to make money, not an altruistic charity.
The best customers are stupid customers, not asking questions but buying anything they were told to buy.

That is the ideal. Everyone having his own Aristotle like Alexander the Great.
In the meantime tech can help out:
- Really good teachers can make youtube videos
- Chatbots can accustom to individual skill pattern/mood and mimick the Aristotle

Children need a bit of pushing but generally they should learn on their own. Otherwise they are treated as slaves and start resenting the learning itself.

The most important "skill" in life and when getting and keeping a job (at least with smart employers) is INTEGRITY. Motivation (to learn) and IQ are complementary.
Integrity comes from parents primarily but teachers can help.
School is really bad at this - a lot of cheating going on and socialization is on par with prison. You have to be there, sometimes with (future) criminals and mostly those of the same age too.

 

[astyle]

Just watch any program that contains the phrase "ancient astronaut theorists"...

Like a documentary on Galileo?

Nice idea for checking to see how much attention kids can even give to any given topic...

The most important "skill" in life and when getting and keeping a job (at least with smart employers) is INTEGRITY. Motivation (to learn) and IQ are complementary.

I'd say it's the other way around. Integrity is just an ideal. Everybody knows that it's amazing what can be accomplished if you just have the details line up correctly. Integrity is merely the effort it takes to keep all those details in line - just like FreeBSD's process scheduler. Having the smarts to line things up correctly, and the motivation to learn how to line things up correctly - that's what gives rise to the integrity. By itself, integrity as a primary goal is nothing more than OCD.

 

[DanielBowman]

Like a documentary on Galileo?

Nice idea for checking to see how much attention kids can even give to any given topic...


I'd say it's the other way around. Integrity is just an ideal. Everybody knows that it's amazing what can be accomplished if you just have the details line up correctly. Integrity is merely the effort it takes to keep all those details in line - just like FreeBSD's process scheduler. Having the smarts to line things up correctly, and the motivation to learn how to line things up correctly - that's what gives rise to the integrity. By itself, integrity as a primary goal is nothing more than OCD.

OCD, Funny.
However try to employ or befriend someone really smart, very motivated but with little integrity.
At the very least the stupid and lazy guy will not steal from you or kill your reputation....or you if he has integrity aka sense for duty.
But yes, smarter people tend to have higher integrity - see shopping cart return rate at affluent areas.

 

[astyle]

However try to employ or befriend someone really smart, very motivated but with little integrity.

Like someone on a hacker/cracker forum? For smart people, there's this little thing called 'Due diligence'... Smart people know how to play with fire without getting burned - unlike someone who doesn't know any better.

If someone you employ/befriend is a moron or a slacker, you just gotta be the smart one who's got their act together and is ready for a rodeo.

 

[DanielBowman]

Like someone on a hacker/cracker forum? For smart people, there's this little thing called 'Due diligence'... Smart people know how to play with fire without getting burned - unlike someone who doesn't know any better.

If someone you employ/befriend is a moron or a slacker, you just gotta be the smart one who's got their act together and is ready for a rodeo.

Smart people with little to no integrity will burn your house down while playing with the fire and not think twice about it.

Moron or slacker is bad. But very smart and agile azzhole is much much worse. Unless you carefully sandbox him o/c.

 

[Maturin]

Yesterday I mailed a friend of mine a link to a YT video of a german late night "heute show" aired at Oct. 30th.
This german TV show contains short video clips from US american TV, so original english sound track with german subtitles.
I just watched it myself again. But this time I activated YT's AI to automatically give me the english translated subtitels for the original most german, part US english soundtrack, to see what it produces.
Such is an interesting test you could easily and should do, when you do speak fluently both languages and compare both, the original soundtrack, and what AI produced from it:
~90% (estimated - I did not made a scientifically withstandable test) the AI makes a very good job.
But when it makes mistakes, the mistakes are bad and often crucial, completely garble the sense.
Examples: It translated "nett" (polite) to 'n' - simply the single letter n, or "Wolfram" (Tungsten) to 'Wolfrahm', a german male name - even spelled wrong, because even if it was the name, then without the 'h'.
You get such in every second sentence. 10% failure rate may seem to be acceptbale, but it's not. It's a lot. It's too much to be acceptable.
And that's not all. If it once does not get a term right, it produces everytime something else, something completely different on the same term - all wrong. That's worse than just repeating the same error. Because with having the same error everytime, if you finally understood what was actually meant, you later in the retrospective replace it with the right term, and understand what actually was meant. But this way there is no understanding in the retrospective, but total confusion only.

You actually want to let such a thing teach children?
Rely on something unrelyable you can neither see nor judge nor rate if you not already learned enough to see the errors, and learned how to handle them?
Your children?
Or "only" other ones' children?
You actually think, this is really a good idea?
I don't think so.

 

[DanielBowman]

Yesterday I mailed a friend of mine a link to a YT video of a german late night "heute show" aired at Oct. 30th.
This german TV show contains short video clips from US american TV, so original english sound track with german subtitles.
I just watched it myself again. But this time I activated YT's AI to automatically give me the english translated subtitels for the original most german, part US english soundtrack, to see what it produces.
Such is an interesting test you could easily and should do, when you do speak fluently both languages and compare both, the original soundtrack, and what AI produced from it:
~90% (estimated - I did not made a scientifically withstandable test) the AI makes a very good job.
But when it makes mistakes, the mistakes are bad and often crucial, completely garble the sense.
Examples: It translated "nett" (polite) to 'n' - simply the single letter n, or "Wolfram" (Tungsten) to 'Wolfrahm', a german male name - even spelled wrong, because even if it was the name, then without the 'h'.
You get such in every second sentence. 10% failure rate may seem to be acceptbale, but it's not. It's a lot. It's too much to be acceptable.
And that's not all. If it once does not get a term right, it produces everytime something else, something completely different on the same term - all wrong. That's worse than just repeating the same error. Because with having the same error everytime, if you finally understood what was actually meant, you later in the retrospective replace it with the right term, and understand what actually was meant. But this way there is no understanding in the retrospective, but total confusion only.

You actually want to let such a thing teach children?
Rely on something unrelyable you can neither see nor judge nor rate if you not already learned enough to see the errors, and learned how to handle them?
Your children?
Or "only" other ones' children?
You actually think, this is really a good idea?
I don't think so.

90% is really bad for Peace Treaty summit translation.
For me, who doesn't speak the language and would need very expensive translator, it is fine for random TV info.
I used watch bootlegged VHS movies - it was dubbed from English to German and then it had really amateurish voice over in Czech. It was real bad.
There is a whole lore of 'bad translation funny memes' in my country.

LLMs will always make mistakes. However this can be reduced by guardrails and harnesses, especially when the subject is given - not random stream of speech on TV.
And if it makes mistakes, even better - kids love to argue with teachers and catch them at an error.

Yes, I would let Ai teach my kids. I can't afford the best teachers/schools. And the cheaper ones are full of burned out slackers. And there is zero chance it will try to "touch" my kids.
Hopefully the Ai stuff will also allow me to spend more time with them, not offload them to school so I can sit in the office.