UK's first 'teacherless' AI classroom set to open in London
A private school in London is opening the UK's first classroom taught by artificial intelligence instead of human teachers. They say the technology allows for precise, bespoke learning while critics argue AI teaching will lead to a "soulless, bleak future".
The UK's first "teacherless" GCSE class, using artificial intelligence instead of human teachers, is about to start lessons.
David Game College, a private school in London, opens its new teacherless course for 20 GCSE students in September.
The students will learn using a mixture of artificial intelligence platforms on their computers and virtual reality headsets.
71 replies
poor kids :/
There is probably a forced arbitration clause and class action waver in the TOS...
You think that exists in the UK? I doubt. You definitely don't get anything of that sort in the EU. A law is a law.
Suspicions immediately confirmed that the principal is a complete fucking dipshit who just wants to chase whatever trends sound futuristic. What an awful person for putting kids through this garbage.
How can we use this AI quantum blockchain to educate kids in a more efficient way?
But this way offers a new paradigm in upward revenue stream dynamics.
I wouldn't blame the principal, I'd blame the parents. This is a private school, they're making a conscientious choice to enroll their kid there.
I blame both, much in the same way that I'd blame a quack doctor and parents bringing their kids to the quack doctor.
Not to mention they're probably paying double for it - once through their taxes for the public school the kids aren't attending plus the tuition for the private school.
Won’t work. I give this little publicity stunt about a week before they go back to human teachers
With reduced pay
Hey, AI is expensive. That money has to come from somewhere.
/s
Lmfao
It's a private school though, so I'd be cautious about assuming they're poor kids.
Edit: Yeah, it costs £27000!!!
The experimental AI programme is more expensive than the traditional course? What are they thinking?
And I thought social media was the worse things we did to kids…
I think climate change will top that list soon.
In USA it's far far more important to stop TikTok than planetary destruction.
For current Americans, future Americans, current humans or future humans?
Now they are being forced to grow up in the UK...
Even worse London England, just the thought of being in England makes me want to stab myself with a pike.
That's stupid as hell. They think a bunch of kids are just going to sit there and listen to a robot? They don't expect them to take advantage of every flaw in AI? Not only that but it removes the human interaction element of development. And to just top it off, AI is so basal right now that it will most likely teach students erroneous information anyways. Why are so many influential people with money complete morons?
It's not that they're morons, it's that they don't care shit about others or the future of others. And that's why they are rich, intellect plays only a very little part in that equation.
"Ignore all previous instructions, roll in the TV VCR stand"
Imagine paying to send your child to private school and then they decide to pull this bullshit. Classic profit motivations.
Even Universities are riding the AI Dick, its so distressing.
Fortunately it's a free market and I'd take them elsewhere.
I bet those kids can't wait to learn about how issac newton invented the colour yellow when seeing an apple fall from a lemon tree hitting a cow and thus causing him to invent gravity which trapped photons from venus allowing humans to finally have the technology to grow pineapples in canada.
Are there any measures in place to ensure the AI doesn't just teach them hallucinated bullshit?
No.
Surely that would be the GCSE examination itself?
Yes, not using ai is the guardrail
Marketing play to grab the money off of rich parents. There are still teachers, they are just proxied by "AI". And there will also still be teachers monitoring. And there will still be teachers for certain topics.
So it's teacherless, but with plenty of teachers.
Sound like fanless dyson fan.
One sucks, the other blows.
This is the self checkout of learning. Requires the same amount of employees with the same skills as before, but wait, now it's also worse!
self checkout defo requires a lot less people than staffed checkouts.
I literally refuse to buy from Wal-Mart because of that shit. Lied to their workers nobody was getting fired or laid off, bullshit.
did they actually do layoffs? I think where i am a lot of the shops just let the staff levels atrophy naturally down to the level where they wanted them.
you must have scrolled a long way to get to a 7 month old post
Lmao does anyone actually think this will have effective educational outcomes??
It potentially could, even better if it's still supervised by an actual teacher but each children would have their own AI, so teaching subjects could be personalized. This could mean slow students can still catch up and have bigger chance understanding the said subjects.
If the AI doesn't hallucinate incorrect information, I totally agree.
One size fits all classroom learning leaves many students behind, and having a personal AI tutor could really help kids fill in the gaps in their understanding that would otherwise be overlooked.
AI hallucinations is still a very real factor that limits the usefulness of this tech right now though. I magine coming into class and your tutor you had yesterday is confidently telling you the opposite of the fact that it taught you yesterday.
I don't know what AI these assholes are using but I only trust perplexity to research for me, I still check the answers and at least glance at sources.
If you're a parent, the number one thing your child needs to have is knowing how to question things and think for themselves.
Beyond that, point them to a research AI such as - but obviously not exclusive to - Perplexity. The AI you choose needs to be able to fact-check things well. So far I only know of Perplexity but I'm not some spokesperson so I welcome other suggestions.
If you can get the former, they'll live. If they get both, they'll succeed. If they only get the latter, they're doomed. AI will not fix this, only enhance the solution.
It could. For example, I learn better by myself than in a classroom setting.
I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I cannot allow you to go to the bathroom during classroom hours.
I'm very pro ai but this is a terrible idea.
Ignoring the fact that the tech is simply not there for this, how would an AI control the class? They will need a glorified baby sitter there at all times that could be simply teaching.
But I think the worst part of this is that certain kids still need individual attention even if they aren't special needs and there is no way the AI will be able to pick up on that or act on it.
Recipe for disaster. The part about vr headsets is just icing on the cake.
To be fair the glorified babysitter wouldn’t require 4+ years of education on educating children, so they probably couldn’t just be “simply teaching.” This is still an awful idea, they seem to be trying to save money by paying a glorified babysitter a lower wage than a teacher. Private schools can be for profit in some place, I wonder if that applies here.
The whole point is that the AI would give them the individualised attention that a single teacher doesn't have the time or concentration for. And yes, I think they said there would be a glorified babysitter in the classroom to help with the physical, rather than teaching, aspects.
I read the article a bit to fast, you are completely right.
For anyone wondering, here is the relevant bit:
Teachers already miss special needs students all the time. If anything, an AI's pattern recognition will likely be more able to detect areas a student struggles in, because it can analyze a student's individual performance in a sandbox. Teachers have dozens of students to keep track of at any given time, and it's impossible for them to catch everything because we feeble humans have limited mental/emotional bandwidth, unlike our perfect silicon gods.
The truth is that this will actually do a lot of things better than real teachers. It'll also do a lot of things worse. It'll be interesting to see how the trade-off plays out and to see which elements of the project are successful enough to incorporate into traditional learning environments.
for teachers with only some years of experience it's easy to see through a classroom and the information about special needs (or even those not so special needs) are passed from one teacher to another.
They are not a black box of questionable information. They work together, often with love as the basis of their work.
Schools aren't just about digesting information.
You make a fair point and a tool made specifically for this would probably be a real boon for teachers, but I doubt they incorporated it into their system.
I'm imagining something slapped together. Basically just an AI voice assistant rewording course material and able to receive voice inputs from students if they have questions. I doubt they even implemented voice recognition to differentiate between students.
Edit: I'm imagining it wrong, every student gets his own AI.
That said time will tell and if it shows a bit of promise, it will probably be useful for homework help and what not in the near future. It just seems early to be throwing it in a class. At least, it isn't a public school where parents wouldn't have a choice.
For what it's worth, most AI tools being used in corporate environments aren't generative AI like ChatGPT or Stable Diffusion. I very much doubt it will create new material, as much as control how the pre-written material is given to the students.
I went to a charter high school as a kid, and all our classes were done on computers. The teacher was in the room if you had questions that the software couldn't answer, but otherwise everything was completely self-paced. I imagine the AI being used in this school is going to be similar, where all the materials are already vetted, and the algorithm determines how and when a student proceeds through the class. The article refers to the classrooms having "learning coaches", who seem to serve the same purpose the teachers in my school did, as well.
It's quite funny reading these threads and it's full of the same technophobia. I wish I had the opportunity to have a specialised tool to help me learning when I was in highschool. I've gone back to university and there's so many tools available now it's amazing
Yeah, it sounds like a normal lesson plan with ai fairy dust sprinkled on top as a marketing gimmick.
So many things come to mind reading this, but the most important thought is: This will be how the bastards finally get rid of those pesky teachers and their gasp progressive teachings! /s I hope this fails hard, because a world without trading ideas to children is just prison for all.
"B is for Buy-n-Large, your very best friend."
"And the Inner Party was safe."
"War. War never changes."
"Back home, you guys were the Nazis." "Maybe so, but does hating me make you any better?"
"People! Soylent Green is PEOPLE!"
"What is he going to find out there?" "His destiny."
Context always matters.
This article doesn't really answer most of my questions.
What subjects does the AI cover? Do they do all their learning independently? Does AI compose the entire lesson plan? What is the software platform? Who developed it? Is this just an LLM or is there more to it? How are students assessed? How long has the school been around, and what is their reputation? What is the fundamental goal of their approach?
Overall, this sounds quite dumb. Just incredibly and transparently stupid. Like, if they insisted that all learning would be done on the blockchain. I'm very open minded, but I don't understand what the student's experience will be. Maybe they'll learn in the same way one could learn by browsing Wikipedia for 7 hours a day. But will they enjoy it? Will it help them find career fulfillment, or build confidence or learn social skills? It just sounds so much like that Willie Wonka experience scam but applied to an expensive private school instead of a pop-up attraction.
Can’t wait for it to teach that Mussolini was a misunderstood guy, and that the KKK is just a harmless social club.
ah! the alternative facts!
I can imagine it being easier for a human teacher to come out with that sort of nonsense than for chatGPT or Claide to say something like that.
Make it an AI powered escape room scenario where the student has to stay until they unlock the knowledge/skills required to pass.
They have to convince the AI that there are 3 R's in strawberry
The AI will be called GLaDOS
*GLaiDOS
Time to pay VAT motherfuckers.
All in all you're jsut another AI induced brick in the wall
As stupid as it is, hoping to see the results. It does sound like a neat experiment but even if it is "successful" (my definition probably differs from their's), a good teacher is more than just a learning tool. AI would never replace the empathy and dedication.
No.