Bill Gates, as is well known, is an expert on everything. The media breathlessly reports his thoughts on every subject, assuming that he must be as smart as he is rich. And he is very, very rich.
He predicts that in eighteen months, artificial intelligence will be sufficiently developed to teach reading and writing more effectively and at less cost than a human. this far, none of his educational predictions and initiatives have succeeded, so we will see how this works out.
Soon, artificial intelligence could help teach your kids and improve their grades.
That’s according to billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who says AI chatbots are on track to help children learn to read and hone their writing skills in 18 months time.
“The AI’s will get to that ability, to be as good a tutor as any human ever could,” Gates saidin a keynote talk on Tuesday at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego.
AI chatbots, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, have developed rapidly over the past several months, and can now compete with human-level intelligence on certain standardized tests. That growth has sparked both excitement over the technology’s potential and debate over the possible negative consequences.
Count Gates in the camp of people who are impressed. Today’s chatbots have “incredible fluency at being able to read and write,” which will soon help them teach students to improve their own reading and writing in ways that technology never could before, he said.
“At first, we’ll be most stunned by how it helps with reading — being a reading research assistant — and giving you feedback on writing,” said Gates….
It may take some time, but Gates is confident the technology will improve, likely within two years, he said. Then, it could help make private tutoring available to a wide swath of students who might otherwise be unable to afford it.
That’s not to say it’ll be free, though. ChatGPT and Bing both have limited free versions now, but the former rolled out a $20-per-month subscription plan called ChatGPT Plus in February.
Still, Gates said it’ll at least be more affordable and accessible than one-on-one tutoring with a human instructor.
“This should be a leveler,” he said. “Because having access to a tutor is too expensive for most students — especially having that tutor adapt and remember everything that you’ve done and look across your entire body of work.”
Someone will make money, that’s for sure.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We’ll see if those who work in the development of AI will allow their own children to be taught to read and write by AI.
Of course not.
And now I think we can see why he has invested in the science of reading fad. I wonder if his pawns realize just what they are….his tools to make reading instruction all online?
He definitely has the money to damage education and society and he’s doing a great job of destroying both.
There is plenty of research ,although more is needed, that demonstrates comprehension is better when people read print rather than digital text. The research supports that emergent readers learn better using print sources. The pandemic gave parents an insight into how well their students learn online. Most were eager to reopen schools as soon as possible and abandon online learning.
There is also plenty of evidence that the human to human interaction is pretty darn important.
If there were actual journalists reporting on education instead of of sycophants, Bill Gates would be asked REPEATEDLY how soon private schools like Lakeside School – where he sent his own kids and generously donated to – would be instituting this AI reading program for ALL students to replace teachers there.
Why isn’t Bill Gates asked the obvious question at every single interview to explain why anyone should believe he isn’t simply lying to make him more money, when his own actions prove that what he REALLY believes kids need are what he provided for his own children?
Good freaking question
Many, many years ago, I read a speech by Master of the Universe Billy Gates in which he said that the major costs in education were in facilities and salaries and that both could be dramatically reduced by–drum roll, please–switching to computerized instruction (this from the guy in the–drum roll, please–computer racket).
All these years. All this failure. Same old song and dance. Same irresponsible hype (propheteering) with an aim at profiteering.
cx: Same irresponsible hype (propheteering) with the same aim (profiteering).
By the way when did we ever disagree.
Anyway who cares what the college dropout says. The perfect example of our meritocracy. Tim Paterson who invented DOS should be the Billionaire(he is a millionaire) not the guy whose mother sat on a charity board with John Opel CEO of IBM .
Did young Bill the drop out structure his agreement with IBM
or was that Bill senior President of the State Bar and the head partner in Seattle’s most prestigious law firm specializing in Tech Sector patents.
And speaking of Patents and greed . Bill the “Philanthropist” who dabbles in World Health as well as education was instrumental in convincing Oxford to seek Patents and partner with Astrazeneca instead of open source their first ever Covid vaccine. All heart !
yup. Luck, followed by ruthless leveraging of an accidental monopoly.
As I understand it, Gates bought DOS, and he and Allan tweaked it. Then, they tried to sell it to IBM for, what was it, $15 K, and IBM chose to license it instead. It took off and provided a leverageable monopoly on operating systems. He could then blackmail computer manufacturers into including his word processing and spreadsheet programs on their machines for free (after paying him a fee), thus driving the competition out of business. Sheer, blind luck followed by ruthless leveraging of monopoly power.
Bob Shepherd
When he handed DOS over to IBM software engineers they had to do the tweaking to make it usable with their new line of Personal Computers. They nicknamed it the “Dirty Operating System.
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/a-warning-to-parents-about-online-learning-programs/
Gates’s enthusiasm for computerized learning IN ANY FORM could not in any way have anything whatsoever to do with what business he is in, could it? LMAO. He’s a used car salesman with a line of unverifiable bs about some golden horizon–off there, in the future, on the road ahead. LMAO.
This is getting really old.
Correction:
“He’s a PREACHER with a line of unverifiable bs about some golden horizon–off there, in the future, on the road ahead.
Yes. Well said.
Cyber instruction has always been Gates’ end game as it generates lots of money for Silicon Valley billionaires. He and his billionaire buddies conveniently ignore all the negative studies from the medical community about increased time in front of screens on brains, eyes and emotional stability of young people. After all, sitting in front of a screen all day won’t be a problem for the children of the 1%.
exactly. This is all about good enough “training” for the children of the Proles that also generates big $$$$. Pretty transparently so. Not for the children of the Masters of the Universe.
I am currently a part of an Alice in Wonderland scenario about this which I hope to soon be able to share. I am shocked, perhaps because I’m an old dinosaur, by the speed with which this is being accepted and advocated by some. And they have no conception whatsoever about quality, audience or slippery slopes. Scary stuff. Now THIS is Orwellian.
Reminds me of Orwell’s novel-writing machines in The Ministry of Truth in 1984.
AI – the replacement for girls like those at Epstein’s mansion?
Didn’t I read something about Gates and Epstein?
I volunteer as a reading tutor at a fantastic organization here in CT, New Haven Reads, which celebrated its 20th Anniversary with an event last night. Working with our students isn’t just about helping them with reading. It’s about listening to their hopes and dreams, and helping them make connections; how becoming a more fluent reader and improving comprehension will help them achieve their goals. Why do people still listen to Gates when he’s already caused so much damage to not just our education system but our democracy? A decade ago, I was writing pieces decrying the narrow focus on “college and career ready” when a major goal of public education is supposed to be producing “DEMOCRACY ready” students. Too many of our policymakers seem blinded by wealth over substance when it comes to education policy.
Bingo
Nailed it, Ms. Littman!!! And how wonderful that you are doing the tutoring!
Totally agree. Kids who struggle to read often have other issues distracting them in their lives. As an RTI reading teacher–in a public school–I acknowledge these, help them through some of them, buy them boots and books, get them used bikes. Then guess what happens, they get right to reading: because they’ve been listened to…and they want to be able to read that book. Try having a screen do all that. That’s what teachers do.
Back in the 1970s, teacherless language labs and “programmed instruction” were going to eliminate teachers and revolutionize education. Uh, no. Schools that invested in those language labs ended up trashing them. A lot of money thrown away.
And then, virtual school was going to replace real school. But it turned out that completion rates were very low and people didn’t learn much because they weren’t motivated.
I could go on. But again and again, we get the same bad ideas. Gates DOES NOT GET IT. He doesn’t understand that since time immemorial, teaching and learning have been HUMAN ENDEAVORS, about meaningful personal interactions between a person who is a teacher and a person who is a student.
Gates is a stunted person. We have already experienced enough of the failure of his big ideas.
Oddly, this is closely related to the “science of reading” debates we’ve been educated about here. Getting rid of all them to replace with AI will be easier to manage and more cost-effective, lessening he need for employees to pay and “give” benefits. And the metrics will be so easy to apply and interpret any way they want!
All the language labs ever did for me was to help me work on my Spanish accent in college. Otherwise, they were a deadly waste of time and money. As an ESL teacher, I was required to take my students to the language lab in the 1970s. It was also a waste of time, and the students hated it.
Yeah, but like Online Virtual Schools and the Flipped Classroom, they were quite the vogue. ALL THESE IDEAS ABOUT REPLACING TEACHERS WITH MACHINES HAVE FAILED. Over and over and over again.
Gates is a bit of a low learner, huh?
Always, with this ed tech, one gets the enormous amount of unwarranted, unsubstantiated hype, and then after lots of trouble getting the machines and kids onboarded, there is one day in which the kids are sort of attending to the program, and thereafter, THEY WOULD RATHER HAVE EVERY HAIR ON THEIR BODIES PULLED OUT WITH TWEEZERS than sit in front of the stupid program again. Again and again and again this happens. The hype-spend-crash-repeat cycle.
Children need and love to interact with other humans. A.I. is amazing, but not the solution to everything. How well did we do during the pandemic?
Consider the possibility that AI can substitute. Epstein may have been working on AI to replace the girls at his NYC mansion. Gates et al. could have seen prototypes.
Hello Diane: Over time, Gates has consistently overlooked early-stage child development aspects of education . . . that is, human development . . . that must be woven into children’s education for the first 20 or so years of their lives. And like many of these would-be totalitarians, like Putin or DeSantis, Gates pines for a world fashioned on his own personality defects . . .probably, somewhere in his life, he had a problem with a teacher.
I don’t know who Gates’ PhD advisors are, but they apparently have been loosely developed in the same way; or, if they had a good developmental background themselves, they didn’t realize how important it was to their own background development . . . as persons. I have often thought Gates is a very nice, rich, but also very ignorant man in that regard.
If Fox’s Murdock is the poster-boy for having absorbed capitalism and its transactional principles into what’s left of his character, Gates is the poster-boy for having absorbed scientism, capitalism, and a kind of smoothie technofascism into his.
They both remind me of the metaphor Plato uses in his Republic about soul of the bully man tyrant who, earlier in their life, had a chance to become a . . . well . . . different sort of person. Now, however, if you looked into the tyrant’s soul, you would see the big bully man dragging the half-dead weak man around by the hair. It’s like that now. And . . . funny how everything seems to go back to the Reagan era. CBK
“Gates has consistently overlooked early-stage child development aspects of education . . . that is, human development . . . that must be woven into children’s education for the first 20 or so years of their lives.”
Yes, yes, yes
Gates knows nothing about learning. And yes, he is pushing the science of reading &^%*, because it benefits himself.
Man o man, glad I didn’t have any tea in my mouth when I read that headline.
That mofo just can’t understand can he?
Nope. Totally clueless
I’ll cut him a little slack. Perhaps his reading teacher initials begin with A.I.? Arne Ingersson? Infinitesimal slack.
I would like to propose replacing pompous (self-inflating), pontificating oligarchs with ChatGPT equivalents. “Journalists” can then interview the bots at conferences in front of large audiences and ask them questions about how to fix everything.
Or one could forgo the ChatGPT equivalents and just replace the oligarchs with Magic 8 Balls.
I can see the headlines now!
Economy: Magic 8 Ball says, “As I see it, yes.”
“Outlook hazy. Try again.”
“. . . so we will see how this works out.”
No need to wait, we already know as you pointed out about his other education policy failures. This will be no different.
“Artificial” Intelligence: The ultimate solution to all educational issues…
“Stone walls held the learning we needed,
as cathedrals held God, but now
we carry all knowledge in our hand,
on our wrist, as institutions buckle.
Next the chip.
Where will it ultimately be placed?
On the end of our proboscis so we can
wisely follow our nose, finger tips antennae
direction for the best signal?
Or the tongue.
How do you think wisdom will taste?
But skewered into the brain will be the
logical choice. More direct, and when we say
‘Something is on my mind,’ we’ll really be saying everything.
Finally, when we ask the Fredric Brown question,
‘Is there a God?’ the answer will be the same,
but no longer science fiction:
‘Yes, now.’”
Wow, Jack. That’s AWESOME!!! Thanks for sharing it!!!!
“Step right up. That’s right kids, c’mon in. Get closer. Are you a struggling reader? Do words not come naturally to you? Can’t remember what you just read in the past five sentences? Well, I have the remedy for you! My automatron Fireball XL5 will give you the inspiration, passion, and intrinisic motivation to connect to those pesky words on the page. In fact, it can give you “dictionary-like” recall in minutes. Yessir! It will prep you for the test, the test, and even more tests! That’s what reading is all about! Step right up. To start off, take a red or a blue pill to enter the mind altering matrix that will connect your brain to this AI phenom in minutes. No need for that pesky “human touch” any longer. In fact, this is the wave of the future. No more teachers who can look into your eyes and feel your pain when the words get jumbled even if you are Dyslexic. No more sidebars about ‘when they were a kid and learned to read.’ Not necessary with their long-winded explanations and how they connected other things like gardening, art, music, and science to make understanding organically connected. No more drawing of Oompa Loompa’s based on the description of the passage being read by the man with the funny voices. Not important! Waste of time. Your Lexile number will go up, up, up! That’s what makes reading fun! Step right up. Cash only.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGaCospEPrI
Exactly
Would love to see Bill Gates attend and participate in REAL TEACHER EDUCATOR forums. Halls full of career EDUCATORS from K-16.
He’s only on stages with THINKERS, THOUGHT LEADERS, DISRUPTORS,
CHANGERS, INNOVATORS, OUT OF THE OLD BOX, FOUNDATIONS, HIGHFALUTIN SELF-PROMOTING MILLIONAIRE FUNDED CLASSIFIED “SmarterThanYouAndMe” experts.
His SCHTICK ramblings, slowly & lacking fluency, is pathetic!
Maybe AI could help him with communication skills.
No one would listen if he WERE NOT FILTHY RICH.
Bill Gates publishes his monthly BOOK-REPORTS of his chosen books that he thinks people may like. Have you read his own rather simple writings & basic essay skills? He could benefit from his new “teaching tool – AI”
He is who he is!
REAL EDUCATORS need to stand up to his constant efforts to DISRUPT & exploit public education, syphon student data and benefitting from starved public schools…….who will jump at his Hänsel & Gretel bread crumbs.
Bill Go Away & mess with your own kids!
He’s only on the stage with suck-up “journalists” throwing him sycophantic, prearranged segues to whatever Gates happens to be selling.
“As our audience knows, you almost single-handedly created the computer revolution in America. So, we’re all curious to know, just picking that astonishing brain of yours, what you see happening in the [fill in the blank] space.”
“So glad you asked that.”
“Well, it isn’t every day that one sits on a stage with a genius who can make or break the career of a person who plays a journalist on TV with a crumb from his table–a word or two to the right person, for example.”
Hrs creating these journalists!!
https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-funding.php#:~:text=Since%202000%2C%20the%20Gates%20Foundation,issues%20on%20which%20Gates%20works
Yikes. Not enough for him to have a massive PR factory. Disgusting.
Well said, my thoughts exactly. Gates is totally patronizing in the way he pontificates on and exploits US education. He has gotten away with inserting himself into policy by using his weaponized wealth to buy political will. He is a self-serving corporate vandal.
yup
The effective teaching of reading depends on human interaction between a caring teacher and students. It is “a chemistry between student and teacher” which develops over time. Reading is an ability which needs to be coached like any other ability such as baseball, music or art. It is not a set of isolated skills. The best teachers are coaches who have learned the “art and craft” of teaching reading and any other subject.
The Greatest teacher of reading will always be Socrates. Effective reading teachers use “Socratic questioning” to teach students to read for important facts, make inferences as they read and draw accurate conclusions that they can support from text and their personal background of experience.
If we learned nothing else from the pandemic, we certainly learned that virtual instruction does not work and creates many adverse social and cognitive effects on students of all ages.
I was a Title 1 “reading program coordinator’ in Philadelphia from 1975-1995 and taught reading in classes limited to 10-20 students as a reading specialist with a master’s degree in Psychology of Reading. After that, I supervised teachers as an AP and Principal. If those kinds of computerized reading instruction worked every child in Philadelphia would be able to score well on the state exams. But guess what? Their test scores are worse than ever. So are the standardized tests that are imposed upon them.
Reading is an ability which needs to be coached like any other ability such as baseball, music or art.
But Rich, you haven’t seen the new ChatBOB 2400, which turns any rookie into an MVP hitter by using programmed learning to teach him or her the calculus needed to understand the motions of projectiles like baseballs!
Because that’s how hitting a baseball really works, right?
Bob, I was a baseball coach for many years, too. When an outfielder threw a high fly ball to throw out a runner at third base, I yelled, “What are you doing? Did you flunk geometry? Don’t you know that that the quickest way to reach third base is to throw the ball on a line? A one hop throw works even better!” So we practiced one hop throws on a line.
Did you know that a “rising fast ball” is an optical illusion? It just sinks less than a normally thrown ball as it travels. So our eyes perceive it as if it is rising.
Now, if you like to test me on that, too, I will explain how a coach proved that to me and our whole team back in junior high school way back in 1965.
You see, background of experience matters!
I will share a story with you, Rich. Many years ago, I was driving with my father (who had been a ball player years before) and my then three-year-old daughter. We passed a carnival that had set up alongside the road, and she wanted to go. So, we stopped and walked down the Midway and came to a booth where one threw balls at a target to win prizes. My father paid his dollar and then felt the balls in his hand and then explained to me, “You see? They have put weights in one side of the ball so that they won’t fly straight.” Then, he held the ball by the weighted part and threw it hard and boom, boom, boom, hit the targets, and my daughter took home a big purple bear. LOL.
A working class hero IS something to be.
I can throw a rising fastball. Well, maybe not a very fast ball. Sometimes it rises all the way over the backstop. My fastball teaches crickets to read.
LMAO!!!
It’s been a VERY LONG TIME since I threw a baseball.
Wonderful, Rich! My Dad was a baseball player, and he taught me how to throw all those fancy pitches. LOL.
Ofc, online courses in the calculus of baseballs in motion would be TERRIBLE as coaching for ball players. LOL. It would just confuse them and throw off their game.
Yeah, that old man Experience is still the best teacher! In baseball and reading!
THIS
Gates is the neo-lib dream. You can help struggling impoverished students achieve via specious data-mining scams AND generate fabulous profits!
In other news, but reminiscent of the intellectual level of a pontification by Billy Gates, Jerry Springer has passed.
https://www.theonion.com/nadir-of-western-civilization-to-be-reached-this-friday-1819571030
Bill Gates isn’t the only billionaire that thinks, talks, and acts like he knows everything. Traitor Trump, and Musk do that too. I think if we shared our knowledge of how manipulative billionaires, this list would grow a lot longer.
After I put a period at the end of the previous paragraph, these names came to mind. I wonder if there are any billionaires that don’t think they know it all and use their money to make their crappy thinking into a harsh, bumbling reality that almost always ends up hurting working class people.
Charles Koch
Rupert Murdock
Betsy DeVos
The Wal-Mart Waltons
Bill Gate$ never learned the lesson of the Greek myths–hubri$ will be his downfall. (I hope.) I wrote this 7 years ago. https://resseger.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/story-telling-species/
Love this reference. How often I have thought of the greek tragic protagonist when reading about the rich and flawmous
from this blog post in 2016: Unfortunately for us in RI, we have a Strategic Plan for Public Education 2015-2020 that emphasizes “innovative” teaching/learning via digital programming. In addition, our Commissioner of Education, Ken Wagner, is enthusiastically committed to the full monty of digitized learning, going so far as to praise the use of automated scoring for essay responses on the state assessment, the PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers). Commissioner Wagner’s remarks on this topic can be found on the video of the April 5, 2016 meeting of the RI Council on Elementary and Secondary Education. (The link to the video can be found here.)
When Wagner was making his glowing comments about how great automated scoring is, and how fortunate we are in RI to be able to participate in this for scoring the PARCC, he declared that scoring by algorithm is more efficient and just as good as if not better than scoring by teachers. Hasn’t Wagner read the accounts of college graduates without teaching degrees or experience being recruited on Craigslist by Pear$on to score the tests? The quantity of tests they are expected to score and the rigid criteria they are expected to use cannot possibly result in valid scores for students. So maybe, yes, it doesn’t matter if you switch to computer scoring and don’t have to bother with providing low wages and no benefits to temporary workers who have no idea what they’re doing. Please see this post by Leonie Haimson for further insight on automated scoring.
In terms of the actual validity and reliability of the PARCC testing itself—where is the peer-reviewed research that supports this claim? On the contrary, leading literacy experts have shown that the reading passages on the ELA test are typically 2 grade levels above the grade of the students tested. It should be obvious to anyone who knows about child development and literacy development that in order to deeply analyze text, which is what the PARCC purports to do, the reading material has to be within the student’s comfort zone, not at a frustration level where comprehension is sabotaged. For authentic views on the flawed nature of the PARCC ELA tests, See Russ Walsh and Celia Oyler’s blog post.
There was another comment by the Commissioner that was jaw-dropping. When the high school student on the Council described a loss of instructional time due to insufficient technology in some schools during test administration, so that schedules are interrupted for weeks, Wagner insisted that it’s necessary to get all schools to use the online version, rather than the paper and pencil version of the PARCC, as soon as possible. He insisted that this is important not only for the testing, but for an underlying instructional purpose. He stated:
“We can’t think about student engagement unless we have a serious strategy around digital learning.” (emphasis added) I can’t think of a more misguided understanding of student engagement, can you?
Is part of Rhode Island’s problem, Brown University?
Are there Brown education department faculty who are similar to Harvard’s? Show them Bill Gates’ green?
Another problem – Gina Raimondo, a neoliberal champion for Wall Street.
Then, across the nation, there are the Catholic conferences in states promoting school choice.
All Right now. Don’t you go all Laura Chapman on us. You might be unimpeachably correct.
Linda, as my memory serves, our problems in RI started when Deborah Gist became our Commissioner of Education in 2009. She was a darling of Chiefs for Change, and a Broad Academy grad. This coincided with Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top and the Common Core, and the draconian choices for schools that did not score well on the mass administered state standardized assessments. I was a teacher at the RI School for the Deaf. We were labeled a Persistently Lowest Achieving School based on test scores, when every child in the school had an IEP, some with multiple disabilities, and many from non-English speaking homes. Gist was a divisive and disagreeable Commissioner (though done with a smile), and people heaved a sigh of relief when Ken Wagner, a New York transplant, took over. I tried to warn the Council on Elementary and Secondary Education about him, because I had learned about him from NY public education advocates who had had a terrible time with him and his EngageNY disaster. No one listened.
Thank you, Sheila, for your wisdom and advocacy.
Thanks Sheila for the background info. One of the Brown education university professors visited Ohio to give a speech to mayors. His bio for the event failed to identify him as one of Gates’ Impatient Optimists.
I’m not surprised.
Since media has coverage blackout about right wing politicking by one of the two major conservative religious sects, I recommend Mary Jo McConahay’s new book, “Playing God…”
She attempts to dissuade tribalists from knee jerk defense.
She explains scrutiny of the GOP politics of one of the most powerful power brokers influencing state capitols and D.C. is not, one and the same, with the right wing’s propaganda about faith under attack.
So says the man whose every education endeavor has flipped. He seems to be one of those people with little ability to understand human interaction. Kids need human interaction, PERIOD. I’d would say, but for his polio work, he doesn’t give a dam about people period, only money, his family?, and himself.
failure after failure after failure
This is getting really old, having the dim-witted Gates be the decider for the rest of us.
Well, I cannot tell if AI will compete with us. For now it seems that those work on it were the kind of (in my xperience, mostly business and CS) students who think that if they don’t know the answer to something, then they talk you to death, spewing complete baloney at you in hopes that they will at least some partial credit.
I recommend that y’all go to https://chat.openai.com, create an account and put in your name, and see what you get. When I put in mine, it said, it kne nothing about this poor fella. So I wrote “Máté Wierdl mathematician”, so then came information about my education, current workplace, my main areas, but none of it was true. Not one info.
On the other hand, I think my robot vacuum cleaner is guided by AI, and it’s amazing. It seems to go here and there randomly, so I lave because it would rive me crazy to watch it, but when I come back 2 hours later, the whole apartment is clean.
So I do not understand why they want AI compete with us as humans? Why not focus on boring, inhumane stuff we need to do on a daily basis (like shopping, washing car, entering data into excel sheets, drive a truck up and down all day long on a gigantic corn field, take standardized tests 😉 ), and make it help us out there perfectly.
Leave art, love, music for us.
So beautifully said, Máté!!! And warm regards to you and yours!
Thx, Bob. Good to “see” you.
And you as well. Hope you have recovered fine from your medical issue a while back.
So this means that I can’t interest you in the All New LoveBotBobalina X3400? Your emotional satisfaction guaranteed, or your money back!
“AI chatbots, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, have developed rapidly over the past several months, and can now compete with human-level intelligence on certain standardized tests.”
Good, so instead of our kids, torture AI bots with standardized tests. I am all for it, who isn’t? With the freed up time, kids can have a walk in the woods and swim in the lake.
A profound and spot on suggestion.
As a person who spent his young life endlessly driving tractors around fields, I would like to promote the idea that such mundane work was instrumental in making me a unique, thinking human. If I could recall the thinking I have done while engaged in the mundane, I would be recognized as the intellectual equivalent of Billy Gates hisself. This sort of thinking makes a guy like me a legend in his own mind.
You shoulda done some farm work while you were endlessly driving around! Lazy kid. 😜
I just spent a few weeks for a few summers hanging out near sugar cane fields, technically working, actually chewing and sucking on cane all day getting in everyone’s way. The hardest work I ever did in my life was two days of loading/unloading UPS trucks. I can’t imagine having children today who have to do that kind of work and worse. It says much about how sick our society is. So I have great respect for my peers who actually had to work to help the family.
Roy (or Melissa?), how would you feel about driving tractors all your life? Sounds like a lot of opportunity to think about deep stuff.
Yeah, many people got their motivation for what to do (and what not to do) in their lives after doing some backbreaking or boring jobs. My son only needed 6 six weeks of 16 hours a day frozen fish packing in Alaska, I needed endless grape and apple harvesting while in the Hungarian army.
We were dairy farmers. When I discovered that Cistercians in Kentucky made cheese and kept a dairy for their living, it explained the ease of keeping their vow of silence.
Since our farm had been reclaimed from erosion, there were fields that were essentially good for only pasture, but we were trying to periodically re-seed the pasture. This meant driving cultivation equipment around endlessly. I sort of enjoyed the freedom to think, and occasionally wish for those days to return so I can have some time again.
I understand Melissa-Roy. What I am saying is that AI can help us to some free time. For example, I enjoy my walk in the park while my AI driven vacuum cleaner cleans my apartment.
My grandson is terrified of the AI vacuum cleaner. 🙂
My dogs too. So we leave the place, since not only I do not like vacuuming but I don’t like to see others do it, even if it’s AI.
I worked on a small (250 acre) farm for two summers. Early to bed early to rise in a big way. Excellent food and companionship. I loved it. I was considering going full time with it but everything changed when I committed myself to playing and writing music.
Wow, gitapik. Just went to your site. A guitarist myself, I really appreciate the beauty and skill level of your music. Awesome.
Thanks, Bob. Would love to hear your sounds. Think I remember you mentioning gypsy jazz among others(?). Love that style.
Luthier, too…? Friend of mine was talking about a single piece Koa top he liked on a steel string. Thoughts vs Spruce or Cedar?
Really depends on the sound that you want. I’ve never used Koa for a soundboard, but I’ve read that it produces a very bright sound.
I play a lot of styles, but mostly jazz and classical.
https://www.songtradr.com/robert.prince
Yes, yes. Assign AI bots to take standardized tests and let our kids return to research & special projects rather than multiple-choice thinking.
“Yes, yes. Assign AI bots to take standardized tests and let our kids return to research & special projects rather than multiple-choice thinking”
Three thumbs upon that one!
🖥️👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻🖥️
And, essential to this concept, will be the “Bot Room”. With bot monitors, checking in to ensure screen compliance time…which would only be for show, considering the algorithm which tracks bot eye focus time and placement.
Then, of course, we’d need MurderBot guards (https://us.macmillan.com/series/themurderbotdiaries)
standing ready at the door in the event of any intruders, intending to disrupt the test taking flow.
And all of this would be paid for by generous funding from Gates’ and Zuckerberg’s newly established AI endowment grants!
What could possibly go wrong?!
“With bot monitors, checking in to ensure screen compliance time…”
Bots checking on bots taking the test to make sure, they don’t cheat. 🙂
Remember that chatbot is a Microsoft product and although Gates is no longer running the company he remains heavily invested. He is pushing his brand. What the Silicon Valley types don’t understand is that learning is an organic process that requires interaction among learners. The small school and VAM debacles that Gates started were a failure because Gates, like Musk, Zuckerberg, et al, has no skill at “reading the room.” He can make and sell products, but for Gates everything is from him to us, not at all a reciprocal relationship. Computers and other education technology have had limited success because it leaves out the most crucial part of the learning equation. Humanity.
“Gates, like Musk, Zuckerberg”
Let’s face it, our gene pool and hence evolution itself is flawed. The above people’s genes survived a billion years of evolution because the others without the musky gene let them live and, mind boggingly, even thrive. Since we humans obviously cannot do this, maybe AI will be smart enough to correct the error.
I think that’s what some people are worried about…
Not me. Just egg these people on to get together with their fav AI bot in a room, and let lose their competitiveness. If AI is as good as they claim, we will see some favorable outcomes. Instead of gene surgery, maybe all is needed from the perfect educator AI is to teach manners to these people, which their mothers clearly failed to do, so that they will stop interfering with other people lives, and go back to their homes to count their $.
It’s funny how the most obvious thoughts are always right in front of us all the time. I guess the real question that needs to put to Gates and all the other AI champions is: Can AI make humans better humans?
Maybe they should start with themselves…
lol
I may be a lefty, although I like money as much as anyone, but this is a typical Capitalist notion that those who rise to the upper echelons of wealth must be smarter than than most others in any field they choose to get involved in. Sure, they must have been smart (and often times, lucky) in order to have achieved such great success in their field, but that intelligence is focused on their area of expertise. It does not necessarily translate into all other areas.
So let’s all encourage everyone we know not to fall for those who have lots of money as being experts in everything they choose to get their hands in.
The sad part is that the so-called representatives that are always trolling for ca$h fall for it with no scrutiny or evidence. Students and teachers then all have suffer the consequences of these reckless billionaire fads.
I remind you to look to the other “educational initiatives” that Bill has foisted on public education in the past. I am so glad that I’ve retired from teaching (37 years in public education and 25 as an adjunct for the Michigan Community Colleges) so that I won’t have to struggle to defend our kids from another crackpot idea.
When will we learn to quit running to “successful” or “lucky” business persons who claim they know how to “save” our public schools?
It’s high time that we decide that if we really want to improve our public schools we should ask our professional educators, our certified and qualified public school teachers. If we finally do that we will see our pubic schools return to being the best in the world!
Excellent! Thank you for sharing such wonderful news. I’m so glad to hear that Bill Gates is trying in vain to sell AI as a tutoring product with his usual crystal ball BS because
Bill Gates is always wrong! He never fails to disappoint.
In this case, he’s wrong that everyone wants more work after school, he’s wrong that AI can substitute for a human regarding fostering thinking and learning, he’s wrong that students will do anything other than order the dumb bot to do their homework for them, and he’s wrong that educators want him in any way involved in anything. Keep failing, Bill! I’ll say hi to Melinda for you tonight, dip stick.
How many students has Bill Gates taught to read in a classroom? (not counting if he & Melinda taught their own offspring to read)
The answer: zero.
And then there is this from a Japanese teacher: “Children Full of Life follows the life and teaching of Mr. Kanamori, a 4th grade primary school teacher in Kanazawa, Japan. He gives his students lessons on what he considers to be the most important principles in life: to be happy and to care for other people. His lessons include discussion around teamwork, community, the importance of openness, how to cope, and the harm caused by bullying.” “We come to school to learn kindness.” Can a human learn kindness from AI? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qeprj9vPtSM
Thank you, Sheila. A perfect counterexample to the moronic b–s—t from Gates. And beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
I’m sure that Bill has only the well being of those who can’t afford a private tutor in mind.
No way would he consider AI as a superior substitute to those pesky, quirky, greedy, imperfect Homo Sapiens who are masquerading as “teachers”, nowadays.
He didn’t invent Microsoft and, even if he had, he doesn’t know anything about education. Just another rich businessman who can afford an international platform.
Off topic but noteworthy. Go listen to bob’s music. It is playing in the background while I read emails.
Ironic that Gates and others of his financial status put out so much money and effort to “better” our society when the same or better results would be achieved by paying the same percentage in taxes related to income as the rest of us mortals.
From a man who is totally unaware that human interaction is the most important thing in education. Children learn best when they believe their teacher cares about them, is invested in their future. Most standardized tests are without much value and are often just a money making scheme. Gates had already blown nearly 800 million on failed educational adventures. But of course he’s Bill Gates. Not much you can tell him.
You are so right!
“Children learn best when they believe their teacher cares about them, is invested in their future.”
I subbed, yesterday. I’d worked with this class in the past and have a great rapport with the class. 4th graders.
But there was a new kid in there who I’d never met. He was hanging back at first. I could tell he was shy and nervous but interested. So I took a moment during independent wort time to sit with him. Asked him what he liked about the lesson, if anything at all.
He opened up and it turned out to be extremely bright and funny. The rest of the day went very smoothly. He became very involved. Had a great time.
How will AI account for the shy and withdrawn kids from day to day? For the ones experiencing disruptions at home and in their personal lives?
So many variables in the human condition.
Didn’t he also say that Common Core would be the “savior” of the education world? Just because he’s got lots of money doesn’t mean he knows how to actually teach…in a classroom…with 35 children (more or less)…who live in a city of 25,000 or more…and have to dodge bullets…gangs…or other distractions. Just saying…
Why make it difficult/ The man has no business in a classroom of any size in any location.
Ed,
Bill Gates has never taught. He knows nothing s out teaching. He hires people who believe teaching can be standardized.