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by uhoh-itsmaciek 70 days ago
>Kristen DiCerbo, the organization’s chief learning officer, said AI can only respond to students based on what they ask. And it turns out, she said, “Students aren’t great at asking questions well.”

Ignoring whether or not this is a good idea in the first place, what about inverting the loop? Have the robot drive the interaction.
3 comments
ericd 70 days ago
Yeah, that's weird. I've actually been working on an AI tutor for my kids that I'm thinking about open sourcing, but it drives the conversation in new directions using a concept graph that it can poll via tool use, and find the knowledge frontier for that learner.

It's been fascinating to watch - my kids are really into Slay the Spire, and it had a discussion about a decision tree they use when fighting one of the enemies, and then it used that to bridge to writing some python code and walking them through it. Another time, with dinosaurs, it went with them through the k-pg extinction event, and what really killed the dinosaurs - the kids thought the explosion - it walked them towards the sun dimming, and why food getting more scarce filtered for small mammals, our ancestors, and smaller dinosaurs.

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npodbielski 70 days ago
on one hand I wish I would be smart enough to build something like that.

on the other hand, I was playing a lot Slay the Spire few years back and I would love to talk about with my kids while they play. Going from that it is not job of the parent to explain why dinosaurs are extinct?

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ericd 70 days ago
Ha I love talking with them about it, too, but my 7 yo’s stamina for talking about it is a lot higher than mine. But yeah, not trying to abdicate my parenting role here, just looking to get a little supplemental help, and cover things I forget to sometimes. Also a nice launching point for me to delve deeper into things with them.
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croes 70 days ago
Doesn’t change the fact that the students have to ask for what they need.

If you can’t articulate what you want it becomes a guessing game

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uhoh-itsmaciek 70 days ago
You could prompt them through the material. But you're right, that's only gonna take you so far if you don't know where they're having problems.
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themafia 70 days ago
Then why do you need a language model for this?

How about completing the loop? Pose subject matter questions to them throughout the day, maybe via something like mobile push, collect their answers, immediately grade their results, and then actively reward them for performance.

All of the things brick and mortar schools are uniquely bad at.

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