By a 4-3 margin, the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools on Monday approved an application from Unbound Academy to open a fully online school serving grades four through eight.  Unbound already operates a private school that uses its AI-dependent “2hr Learning” model in Texas and is currently applying to open similar schools in Arkansas and Utah.

Under the 2hr Learning model, students spend just two hours a day using personalized learning programs from companies like IXL and Khan Academy. “As students work through lessons on subjects like math, reading, and science, the AI system will analyze their responses, time spent on tasks, and even emotional cues to optimize the difficulty and presentation of content,” according to Unbound’s charter school application in Arizona. “This ensures that each student is consistently challenged at their optimal level, preventing boredom or frustration.”

Spending less time on traditional curriculum frees up the rest of students’ days for life-skill workshops that cover “financial literacy, public speaking, goal setting, entrepreneurship, critical thinking, and creative problem-solving,” according to the Arizona application.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    2 days ago

    Great, one AI to set problems and another to solve them.

    Those kids are gonna get pretty good at Fortnite though.

    • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      “Want” =/= everybody wants.

      In this case it = “capitalists seek profit at the expense of everyone & everything else”

      • TheMachineStops@discuss.tchncs.de
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        2 days ago

        I know people who use AI in real life a lot, I think it is fine to use ChatGPT to help write an email, but some people use it daily for everything. Now you can find AI in WhatsApp, so I am fully expecting people to talk go each other using Meta AI. I am just tired of seeing it everywhere, it is good for stocks though, just say the word AI and suddenly the stock skyrockets.

        • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml
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          2 days ago

          Yeah for sure. But also, most consumers hate integrated AI - apple is a recent example. LLMs are very useful technology, but they’re being sold as a way to replace workers - and thats why every corporation is racing toward them.

  • childOfMagenta@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    “This ensures that each student is consistently challenged”.

    They will be challenged alright.

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      2 days ago

      I wanna see the Karens losing their mind because the AI teacher dared to mention evolution.

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 days ago

        I don’t think the AI is actually teaching anything. Sounds like the courses exist and are written by people. Then a program just presents the content to them, and it has a set of questions. The only thing that sounds to be maybe AI about it is that if they get a question wrong the computer will give them an easier one next. Meaning someone categorized the questions into hardness levels and likely groups that were similar to ensure it could swap them with an easier/harder question pertaining to the same concept. Really it could just be done with an if statement. Maybe they think saying it is being taught by AI is to make people feel like someone is paying attention to their kid… When really they are just left by themself. We could have done this 20 years ago… but maybe we thought better of it back then.

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    This seems like a great machine to create republican voters, purposefully undereducated and perpetually frightened - the school to joe rogan pipeline

    Arizona State Board for Charter Schools

    Imagine the AMAZING individuals that must make up this group.

    In its Arizona application, Unbound says its bold claims about how much its students will learn are based on the experiment it’s running on students in Texas, inspired by Elon Musk.

    The cancer that had metastasized to all systems

  • DNU@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I also think this sucks massively, yet the possibility of a well made curriculum focused on one Person dies sound enticing. So much less time wasted on stuff one child has no problems with vs another that’s just stuck at some logical step. Ofc no social interaction is such a big - it almost can’t be fixed.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      Yeah, I want to hate it (and I do) but the idea is great. It’s just that there’s no way in hell the AI is doing the same job as a teacher. It’d also be very hard to tell if it’s working correctly. Who’s going to tell them it’s not? The student?

      I do think we need to modify our educational system to better suit people with different needs, but this should be through increased funding for more teachers, not AI to increase profits.

      • DNU@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        TBH my thoughts are almost a bit dystopian, but I think the AI should be implemented to spec the teachers performance vs his pupils and not on the children directly. There are (at least in my country) almost no barriers to what teachers can and can’t do, some AI that checks the children’s homework and tracks what’s going on could be immeasurably valuable to gain insight into the children’s learning behaviour.

        ofc from the (good) teachers perspective this understandably is the beginning of the end. I don’t even want to imagine how a system like that could be abused by bad actors or just plain and simple republicans.

  • sudoer777@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    As someone who is extremely hands on and learns basically nothing from lectures, this actually sounds like a decent idea if it is executed well, especially the Khan Academy integration. I’d rather just sit down and read a textbook and do practice problems and be graded on them than be stuck in a lecture for 7 hours only to have to relearn everything anyways because I lose track of what’s being said in like 5 seconds of the lecture starting.

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    3 days ago

    As students work through lessons on subjects like math, reading, and science, the AI system will analyze their responses, time spent on tasks, and even emotional cues to optimize the difficulty and presentation of content

    This will be a nightmare for any neuro-divergent students, or really any student with atypical learning needs.

    • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Atypical kids being left behind is a feature, not a bug. There’s a shocking amount of parents even in the year of our Lord 2024 who think we’re “too much” of a drain on schooling.

  • NutWrench@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    And by “AI” they’ll just have the kids solve captchas for 2 hours.

    “Which one of these pictures is Jesus?” with pictures of:

    Bacon

    Swastika

    AR15

    Trump

  • w3dd1e@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    “Time for home economics! Today we learn to make pizza. Be sure to use plenty of glue on the dough so the cheese doesn’t slide off!”

  • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Online charter schools are horrifying. There is no expectation that the teacher know or understand the material they are teaching your child. High school is basically working through an online work book by yourself. Teachers use AI to “look up” answers they don’t know yourself.

    It’s hell.

    • Zetta@mander.xyz
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      3 days ago

      But this doesn’t sound like that. This sounds like a model that is using external tools made by humans like Khan Academy to actually do the teaching and just uses the AI model to process how well the person doing the course is understanding it.

      I would be willing to bet serious money that a kid in this program would get a better education than a homeschooler, Because exactly like your earlier point, the vast majority of homeschool parents that teach their kids are fucking morons and only have their kids homeschooled because they’re fucking morons.

      • realitista@lemm.ee
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        2 days ago

        I don’t think homeschooling should be the standard we set for education.

        • Zetta@mander.xyz
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          2 days ago

          I 100% agree with you, I actually don’t think parents should be legally allowed to homeschool unless they get a real teaching education themselves