AI and Student Learning: Higher Homework Scores, Lower Exam Results

So I, I was fascinated by this. This is a study on AI and schooling out of China.

It looked at twenty-six thousand students, grades seven to twelve, and, and they had staggered AI adoptions. You could kind of see what was happening.

And what it found was, quote, "AI adoption raises homework scores by eighteen percent," great, "reduces completion time by thirty percent," so they get their homework done faster, "and then lowers monthly exam scores by twenty percent within six months.

High-stakes entrance exam scores fall by eighteen and twenty-four percent, with a full penalty emerging only after about two years."

So the message of this research out of China, where you were seeing a lot of kids using AI to kind of help them, was that when they were using the AI, they were getting things done faster.

But it turned out that the skills they were learning were not holding, that their actual personal performance, at least in the way we traditionally measure it, was degrading.

Yeah. What do you think when you hear that?

I think the last part, I completely agree.

Um, try to, try to get a kid to do long division right now, you know? The multiplication table is starting to be forgotten.

Doing square roots, my goodness. I mean, it's just basic math is, is being forgotten. Um, does it matter?

That's my question for you. Yeah, I don't think it does.

I don't think it does. Um, but- But there must be some set of skills that matter.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But maybe not those. We're gonna discover new ones.

Just maybe not those. There are a lot of skills that don't matter.

Um, y- you know, people don't... I mean, uh, my first confession, I actually don't know my address.

And I, and every t- I don't really believe that to be true.

It, it's, it's completely true. And, and Janine will tell you and Lori will tell you. Um, uh, one day, I had to pump gas, and it was a few years ago, and, um, uh, they needed my, my zip code. And I panicked. I didn't know my zip code.

Uh, I don't know my telephone number, but I forget these things.

Um, I, I can live with it