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Comment Careful what you wish for (Score 1) 90

Have you seen the horror stories about the "upgrades" to government systems, I'm thinking this one as recent example ?

The specs seem to be written by Steven King or the Brothers Grimm. If I were in charge of updating systems I'd take these as cautionary tales and maybe cling onto my old, working, system and add new functionality around the edges in a more modern way

Comment Re:No (Score 1) 185

Or maybe the kids are smart enough to realize that the old skillsets are less valuable to learn, especially by rote. Find them some new skillsets that are not so easily automated away by AI or that are more relevant to their interests and educate them in those.

Training everyone to live without AI in case it is unavailable some time is like training them to write without a pen just in case the world's ink supply dries up

Even the most educated person needs a strategy to cope when their education is insufficient

Comment Global GDP (Score 1) 22

Global GDP is $105Tn. I daresay it would be higher is India were to lift its billion people out of poverty and empower them to be more productive.

Maybe the world should get together, figure out how to funnel $21Tn to India over the next 5 years as a loan/investment. Seems like that would have a good global payback if they can deliver on their plan (and that could be monitored in stages)

Comment Re:Testing strategy (Score 2) 185

It turns out that, in French, many of the verb conjugations sound the same even if they are spelled differently, I feel that my speaking and listening skills could have progressed farther without a hyper focus on that baggage.

I personally find reading much easier that writing (I suspect many people do) and the reading seems to me to be the key to accelerating vocabulary learning, being able to regurgitate the verb endings could have come later IMO, behind learning to recognize the tense being used and the person being referred to when you see it (which is much easier).

Writing is just not something I do much in any language yet it was front and center in high school French and consumed a lot of time that could have been used for learning to communicate. It even has at least one special tense that is not used much elsewhere in the language. I don't know about other students but for me it also fostered an attitude that learning languages is a pedantic excercise that is completely wrong unless perfect, that really knocked my confidence

Besides, writing was one of the first things that became easier with google translate etc. and it's not generally a realtime endeavour. It just seems far less important than reading, speaking and understanding French. There's only so much time available in a high-school class and I feel it could have been used better. When it comes to learning a language, the ability to hand write a letter to someone who is going to be picky over every detail seems like a pretty edge case to me. Yet, when it came to exam time for me, it was the thing that was most rigorously tested

I get it that back in my day it would have been expensive and perhaps subjective to have a teacher grade a conversation with every student, but that's the kind of thing that AI should be able to do now, so it's time to put down the pens and start actually communicating

Comment Testing strategy (Score 2) 185

I'm convinced my high school French language classes were skewed away from learning useful skills and biased in favor of writing skills because it made it easier to test. The tests are running the show to the detriment of learning.

Educators need to push past outdated written tests and find new ways to assess skills. I suspect that AI could play a role for good in that.

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IBM Advanced Systems Group -- a bunch of mindless jerks, who'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes... -- with regrets to D. Adams

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