Full disclosure: I worked on a small project with Ello / Catalin a few years ago.
At the time of writing, the sentiment in this post is that this is a terrible idea, and that kids need human tutors. The latter is 100% true. But also, you might want to know some facts about the state of children's literacy in the US (Ello is a math and reading tutor):
1. We're in crisis. As of 2025, 40% of fourth graders are reading below basic levels [1].
2. There's a massive teacher shortage. 2025 US state data shows ~400k teacher positions either unfilled or underqualified [2] – over 10% of the workforce.
3. Bloom's 2-sigma shows that 1-1 tutoring delivers outcomes at the 90th percentile of classroom teaching. Early research is finding that AI can deliver some of this benefit [3].
4. This can't always be solved by parents: 54% of US adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level, and 20% are below 5th-grade level [4].
At Ello, I heard stories of children figuring out they were behind at school, and when given the app, they holed themselves up in their room and used it to get themselves caught up. And then they could read! Can you imagine falling behind at this critical juncture, and being stuck illiterate while your friends grow past you? We're currently setting kids up for lives of shame and deprivation.
My take: this really is a life-changing technology. And we need this problem solved. Democracy doesn't function without an educated populace.
> We're in crisis. As of 2025, 40% of fourth graders are reading below basic levels
How much of this crisis is due to the social engineering being attempted in school districts across America? Case in point: San Francisco schools decided a couple of years ago that they would no longer teach Algebra in 8th grade. Why? Because too many kids of a certain demographic were failing it. So let's just not teach it! No class, so nobody fails it, right?
It took a proposition on a ballot (i.e., an election) [1] to force the SFUSD to put Algebra back in 8th grade!
I have kids in SFUSD. It often feels like the SFUSD does not care about the average and above average kids; all they focus on is the bottom layer. And even there, they do a terrible job. There was a student who got straight F's in each and every class, and still managed to be a senior in High School! [2]
> San Francisco schools decided a couple of years ago that they would no longer teach Algebra in 8th grade.
This has nothing to do with this at all. We're talking about 4th grader literacy nationwide and you're talking about algebra in a single area in a different grade!?
The second point where there aren't enough teachers nationwide (10% missing workforce) is probably because teachers are terribly paid, disrespected, and subject to bad working conditions.
Maybe that's why people aren't clamoring to be teachers and the quality of work is low?
The explanation I've heard is that the national curriculum switched away from phonics and to a teaching method called "balanced literacy", and this went terribly [1]. IIRC it involved teaching kids to recognize words by their overall visual shape. I believe this is what mature readers do, but the problem is that for this to work, one first needs to have bootstrapped a robust vocabulary. And that happens via being able to sound out words, i.e. phonics.
(I'm not sure whether Cato is generally reliable, but FYI there are lots of other writeups online on the same topic. It was the first non-paywalled and reasonably complete one I found)
I've heard a lot of people argue that phonics are vastly superior to "whole word" techniques, and maybe that's true -- I'm definitely not an expert, though it is how I was taught English in Australia ~30 years ago.
However, I find it quite hard to believe that it is the most important cause of the modern literacy rate issues in the US. Why? Because "whole word" teaching was the conventional wisdom since at least the 1950s[1,2]! Most articles on the topic reference the book Why Johnny Can't Read (1955) which was written to argue in favour of phonics as a response to (perceived?) child illiteracy at the time and claims (page 1):
> Since the 1920s, most American schoolchildren have been taught to memorize the "appearance" of words, one after another, like Chinese characters, without reference to the sounds of the individual letters that make up each word.
The reintroduction of phonics in the US first started as "balanced literacy" (phonics and "whole word", ideally tailored to students) in the 1990s and "science-based reading" (basically just phonics) properly started in the 2000s[1,2], which means that the argument that phonics would improve reading scores is on quite shaky ground (most children in the US today get taught phonics and most people >40 were probably taught with "whole word" teaching).
Go back to the 18th and 19th centuries and you land back in phonics-land. The fad of whole-word and three-queuing lasted a generation and has produced terrible results. Those techniques even induce dyslexia in some cases.
I am aware of that (the articles I linked even mention it), my point was that modern fears around literacy are based on data suggesting that child literacy rates have recently declined.
If lack of phonics was solely to blame then almost all US adults alive today (not just "a generation" -- anyone born between the 1920s and 2000s, at least) would have literacy problems, but the concern is that today's children have literacy problems in contrast to previous generations -- the exact opposite of what you would expect. To be fair, people in the 1950s were also claiming that children were illiterate compared to previous generations, but I'm not sure whether those claims are really credible. Do your parents' and grandparents' generations strike you as being shockingly illiterate?
"Wow, our state institutions are struggling in ways X, Y, and Z. Rather than addressing these problems we will shuffle them to an unaccountable third party that will provide a necessarily worse substitute using the hot technology of the day."
Blooms 2 sigma, like many studies that are thrown about, is not as much of a slam dunk as people claim that it is. Have you read the paper or any efforts to replicate?
Thanks for taking time to write this. HN is showing (expected) dismissing attitude towards this idea. That tells me it might work :) ! Folks here are wildly overestimating (or ignoring!) how many adults are qualified to be good teachers and how many of them further have enough incentives (money, time, resources) to do it well. Its a _very_ small number.
In my part of the world, "become a teacher" is often a job advised to people who are not able to find other jobs or are looking for a safe way back after career break. None of them are looking forward to engaging 5 year old with life's curiosities. To add the famous quip from WorryDream/Bret Victor : most of the teachers teaching calculus etc. have never ever used it in real life.
Working parents with STEM backgrounds likely know that schools are glorified day-cares and probability of your child having access to a life changing tutor is very low.
I tried building an edtech venture frustrated precisely with these problems. Failed, but would def do it again with AI in the mix. I'm for one rooting for this to succeed!
> HN is showing (expected) dismissing attitude towards this idea. That tells me it might work :) !
I recently learned the name of this logical fallacy: Galileo gambit. It’s one of my pet peeves. Yes, we all know Dropbox was infamously dismissed by the top comment on HN. No, just because someone criticizes your project on here doesn’t mean it’ll be a big success.
Instead of fixing the education system and giving it the resources it deserves (eg paying teachers more like the other reply said) we’re going to “fix it” by ossifying a two tiered system where wealthy kids get individualized attention from well trained adults while poor kids are taught by AI.
I hear you, and I know every project being dissed here is not going to be Dropbox. Perhaps some projects deserve the reality check they get. Though I still believe that HN crowd telling that just pay teachers more or kids need to be taught by good human teachers are underestimating the scale of the problem.
Some real experience of school in my part of the world (India). My child goes to a somewhat costly private school. Still, each class has 35-40 kids. The teacher is over-worked : checking home work, prepares kids for upcoming random extra curricular activity, has to teach AI because someone suddenly thought it is important to teach it in grade 3. I know multiple teachers in that school who landed the job after doing just a 6 months course after a career break. Forget research on teaching, hardly any one of them read anything beyond curriculum. None of the teachers have enough time to give personalised attention to _any_ kid. Its a sorry state of affairs.
Personalised tutoring produced geniuses in last century but was affordable only for a wealthy few. It is my belief that AI might help democratise the idea. I know it is somewhat hard to think that a mere machine might have more patience and time to explain a concept 100 times to a student, instead of a human.
This still doesn't take away from the fact that teachers deserve to be paid more. I was a passionate for becoming a teacher, but knew I can't make enough money from it. I'm seeing a possibility in emerging markets that India / China might find it cheaper to deploy AI en masse for better educational outcomes because it will be much cheaper for the state than paying high wages (and subsequently pensions) to human teachers, however unfair it might look.
The Galileo gambit is the idea that because experts reject an idea, it must be true. HN is the furthest thing from experts when it comes to early childhood education.
-- When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
I love my parents but I don't think either of them have read a book in 50+ years now.
My mother kept a type of year book that each year I would say what I wanted to be when I grow up. I think in 5th grade I said physicist.
You know how they nurtured this curiosity? They did nothing. I don't think either of them even know what a physicist is beyond something to do with science.
I think in 6th grade I wanted a microscope that I eventually got but had no guidance on what to do , what to look at. I don't think I even knew there was this concept of "biology".
A huge number of kids have this same experience as I did right now.
What is even worse is life is ultimately a path dependent process with a huge part of the outcome based on the deterministic chaos of initial starting conditions.
No shit I would rather have my father be a particle physicist and my mother a librarian with a passion for reading non-fiction to kids.
My parents did the best they could but they are not intellectuals in the slightest and neither is the average person now. Claude would have been a god send to me in 5th grade.
That is the ideal solution. I'll tell you an incident that seems from a black humour novel. A state government in one of the highest populous state in India decided to make biometric attendance for government school teachers, to ensure they are in school. Large number of so called "teachers" started protesting against state, egged on by opportunistic opposition. Because many of them were drawing salaries from government and _not even showing up in school_. That's the ground reality of government funded education.
I'm open to the idea that market forces or reality _might_ tilt the favour in more investment in AI in education and tutoring. Think about developing economies or under developed economies of the world. The state / government has to think how should they allocate budget: on agriculture subsidies or pay teachers better or spend it on energy security in increasingly hostile multipolar world or invest it in infrastructure. There are no good answers.
> That's the ground reality of government funded education.
In India perhaps.
In Commonwealth countries such as the UK, AU, CA, NZ, etc. teachers being paid but not attending doesn't go unnoticed and would be part of an award (sick leave, paid vacation time, etc).
What I'm hearing from your anecdote is that in India the government is unable to track it's own employees.
I primarily think that a a kid who won't pick books is a failure of the family of not noticing their interests.
When i noticed my oldest 3 yr old was obsessed about cars, i bought him a car encyclopedia. He probably could not read most words or did not understand them. But pretty soon he was telling me about car models that i did not even recognize myself.
And as i saw interests, i kept feeding them.
My biggest struggle now is to actually keep books away from them at key times (morning routine, etc) , or keeping bad books (think cynical like My Weird School Daze, etc; or books that openly demean adults or parents) away from them
Start small. Graphical novels, mostly drawings, and continue to buil on that. It can be done. Rome wasn't built on a day.
At some point when they hit 5 yrs old, Grok / OpenAI are great tools to find good series appropriate to their reading level. Before that it can be vibed. Feed the addiction, buy whatever they like.
At some point, you need to watch out for cynical/nasty series. In fact, all of the books we purchase are ranked against peers they have read in the past, or those we know to actively avoid buying due to cynicism, sarcasm, or open disdain towards adults (Wimpy Kid).
At some point around age 9,you will need to decide if violence and some adult themes, are tolerable (Dragon Wing series).
This iterative rocess also works really well for foreign language learning (reinforcing via reading mostly), by leveraging localized RPG video games.
With all that said, notice that I've focused on reading skills.
I don't know how i'd go about replicating this iterative path on other skills like math, mechanical, or electrical engineering learning. That's where I think a busy parent will need to find AI as the solution.
> At some point, you need to watch out for cynical/nasty series. In fact, all of the books we purchase are ranked against peers they have read in the past, or those we know to actively avoid buying due to cynicism, sarcasm, or open disdain towards adults (Wimpy Kid).
This is interesting because when I was 7-8 my mum just recommended me whatever books she was reading, some of which were quite... adult in retrospect, and I turned out mostly well-adjusted.
Kids aren't LLMs, they know that what they're reading is fiction. Maybe reading something like that would be a fun way to start a conversation about it?
>>> Kids aren't LLMs, they know that what they're reading is fiction
My comment was not one-dimensional. Its not that they can't tell the difference between realitiy and fantasy.
Every kid is build differently. It sounds cliche, but it is not. Some are incredibly resilient, some are extremely sensitive. Think Briggs Myers = some extremely concrete-driven, others perceiving. My recommendation was built on experiences that worked for all kids, the concrete and teh perceiving, the sensitive and aloof, which means you must consider all dimensions of a kid when sharing books with them.
Reality matters little when mimicking behavior. Kids will learn to respond with "This is stupid!" when they are given specific books.
Can a resilient kid capture that this is unacceptable ? Some will. OK, but why risk it ? We are talking about your lifelong companions here. Potential best friends. Caretakers.
Parenting is hard. There will be a time for risks.
>>> At some point around age 9,you will need to decide if violence and some adult themes, are tolerable (Dragon Wing series).
I am sorry. I mixed up series.
The series I was alluding to in my comment above, as the "grey" area for violence, death, and some adult themes is "WINGS OF FIRE "
, not "DRAGON WINGS"
Dragon Wing series as top 5 as the most wholesome series for U8s , along with MAGIC TREEHOUSE etc.
> At some point, you need to watch out for cynical/nasty series. In fact, all of the books we purchase are ranked against peers they have read in the past, or those we know to actively avoid buying due to cynicism, sarcasm, or open disdain towards adults (Wimpy Kid).
yeah how do you "know" this? our kid is obsessed with wimpy kid and a few other similar series and "cynicism" nails it perfectly, is there a list? of what's known to be "cynical" and what's not?
Earlier poster nailed it. LLMs are a godsend here.
There are tons of parents that have traveled this road before you and I. LLMs leverage this data. Its just a matter of writing a decent prompt, and recycling it.
Funnily enough, I was using ChatGPT for the same purpose a week or so ago. You can ask something like:
> I'd like recommendations for book series that avoid self-pity, misanthropy, nihilism, and over-indulgence in self-identity analysis. Lessons on character building and virtue can be present but ideally without overt moralizing. Characters should simply inspire through their actions. Starting from Curious George, and working toward things like LotR. Background themes should lay the groundwork for stoic and transcendental philosophy later.
If you then ask for series to avoid, at least in my session Wimpy Kid is explicitly named. Or more succinctly it basically told me I want pre-1970s children's literature and adventure fiction and stay away from contemporary school-market YA.
This sounds psychotic. An over-controlling fedora's approximation of what good academic parenting looks like. You just want to create your D&D partner. You'll probably succeed lol.
Children are going to witness or experience violence at some point or ask questions about it. They will probably see some at school. I think it depends when and how you introduce it. For example, there is a heavy focus on refugees in western schools and media, but at some point a child is eventually going to have to ask what refugees are running from. (Torture and violence.) It's hard to avoid discussing violence in the context of history, or even when bullying comes up.
It's not fragility. Children are very adaptive and keen learners. Leading them to be easily conditioned and flipped.
Naivety is a learning mechanism which is part of human psychology and sociology of living. Where if the wrong conditions are brought to the child at a young age; it won't affect them in their now. The repercussions from the negative conditioning does surface later yet having a detrimental effect later on in their life.
I walk home from work and see toddlers with tablets, a digital nanny while the parents push the stroller as they tap on their own phone themselves. It's unlikely they know what content they're watching.
That is however the prime time where they should be interacting with their child. The child is observing everything around them and you should be engaging there observations.
The current and upcoming generations that grew up with a device in hands are now are discovering that they have range of issues from anxiety, trauma, even disassociation. Attention spans are at a whole new low and AI is exploiting that.
We have no idea nor studies how AI will affect children and if we are already starting to see that constant exposure on mature adults causes "Ai psychosis". How will it be any better for children?
It's not necessarily wrong and could be seen as exciting in many ways. It could reach the child in ways that traditional education does not because teaching is subjective. Some children are academic, some are practical, some are both.
With the unmediated push of current AI, Tablets with AI and negative environmental values; it is going to be horrifically damaging for the child later on in life.
All it takes is a toddler to press a button that spawns Ai to peddle misinformation via enhanced subliminal visuals and sounds as evidenced by current younger generations.
It's no fault of their own and you could argue that all devices have the same effect however the earlier were more tightly mediated for which you could turn off.
Offtopic, but if by "Dragon Wing series" you are referring to the Death Gate Cycle by Weis & Hickman, it has been beloved to me since I read it as a teen in the 90s. I have gone through this entire series at least 3 times despite not usually re-reading books, and I feel like it holds up.
I think it also influenced a lot of work which came afterward.
This is one of the most insidious projects I've ever seen and despite the touted credentials of the backers looks to be completely divorced from the realities of how children should be taught.
What are your thoughts about children in a Sudbury School model? These are democratic schools where children can do what they like in the day. Mostly they choose to play with other kids, games of imagination, though also doing screen time. One of the basic principles is that children figure out what they want to do and the learning comes along with it; the model views adults wanting children to learn something specific as generally counterproductive though having resources available is okay if it is not coupled with any expectations.
Are your devices likely something that they would have fun with and choose to engage with or is it likely to be ignored unless adults use some kind of persuasion to have them use it? Is it cool with a child using it for a bit and then not using it for a few months and then wandering back to it? How far up into math does it go compared to what an a randomly sampled adult could actually do mathwise? Also for reading, are you using phonics or whole word sighting? For math, to what extent is it screen manipulatives versus manipulations of digits? Also, do you have provision for an older child to start learning this stuff so the basics need not be at a 4 year old presentation level, but the concepts still need to be covered?
In Sudbury schools, the typical age of self-taught reading is 7-9 though it can range from 4 to 12. Useful arithmetic usually seems to happen much earlier than reading though reading tends to get completed by the children on their own while arithmetic does not advance further than the needs of money exchange without special effort. In the long run, Sudbury students have no problem with college level material, including mathematics, but it could be nice to have something that eases the white knuckling if it does not undermine the child's self-directedness.
Hi! I'm Elizabeth (one of the co-founders of Ello). This is an interesting question. I actually think there is more overlap than people might assume, but it's a bit more because adaptability to various approaches to learning is part of the point. While I'm not deeply familiar with the Sudbury School model, I think there are various approaches to teaching kids that are successful because different approaches serve different types of kids and learners. I can see why this approach would be successful for a certain profile of student for whom it's the right fit.
We start from the belief that children are naturally curious. Our job is to build something engaging enough that a child wants to interact with it because it is interesting and rewarding. If a child in a Sudbury environment never chose to use it, I would see that as useful feedback for us, not a problem with the child. There are opportunities for kids to explore and incorporate their interests within our app.
I also think it is completely fine if a child uses it for a while, disappears for months, and comes back. Learning is rarely linear, and technology should be able to pick up wherever the child is.
On reading, we’re firmly grounded in the science of reading, so we teach through explicit phonics rather than whole-word memorization because that is best practice.
On math, we’re much more interested in helping children build intuition and conceptual understanding than simply getting answers. AI gives us the flexibility to use conversation, visual models, stories, or symbolic math, depending on what helps a particular child understand.
One thing AI is uniquely good at is meeting learners where they are. A 10 year old who is learning to read should not have to work through material that feels like it was made for preschoolers. The underlying concepts can stay the same while the language, topics, and presentation become age appropriate.
I don’t think there is one educational model that works for every child. What excites me is that AI makes it much more feasible to adapt to individual learners instead of expecting every learner to adapt to the same experience.
>> children figure out what they want to do and the learning comes along with it; the model views adults wanting children to learn something specific as generally counterproductive
> One thing AI is uniquely good at is meeting learners where they are
What if the AI wanted children to learn something specific? Able to patiently await an opportune moment. Able to blend it invisibly into other material. Able to subtly check and correct understanding.
Long term, one possibility is AI enabling a massive implicit curriculum. "[A]dults wanting children to learn" about say street crossing might be counterproductive... but funny how, at opportune times, some random stories just happen to include crossing a street, and do formative assessment, and happen to, quietly and eventually, cover and reinforce the associated learning objectives.
Take How the Piloses Evolved Skinny Noses, a children's picture book inoculation against natural selection misconceptions. It could merely be a book on a shelf. Or the AI might introduce or provide the book at an opportune moment. Or the book's approach itself might be dissolved and blended into other content.
So some story is explicitly about Fido going for a walk. But implicitly, it covers some aspect of safely crossing a street, and street lights as a communication device, and of concrete crack propagation, and tick precautions, and natural selection, and ...
Science is a richly interwoven tapestry of stories... but we basically never teach it like that. Even if such material was gathered, which pre-AI was absurdly implausibly demanding of domain expertise, it would largely be beyond the capability of an individual tutor to compellingly and adaptively deliver. But with AI?
Thanks for replying. Glad to hear you use phonics. It sounds like it could have a lot of potential and I intend to pass it along to our community. If you would like to possibly explore its use in a Sudbury community, you can send an email to my gmail account which is the same username as listed here.
Think about what every adult absolutely needs to know: how to be an effective member of society, how to interact with people, how to self-regulate, and generally being a person other people want to be around and work with. That is what a Sudbury school supports learning while conventional school hinders it, offering an authoritarian-based lifestyle instead.
Most people going through conventional school don't get the freedom to learn to be themselves in a community until their 20s, not mastering it until often their early 30s. As for academics, Sudbury students have repeatedly demonstrated having no problem quickly learning whatever it is they want or need to learn as an adult. Many Sudbury students go to college, getting A's even in their first semester, making good bonds not only with other students but also faculty and administrators. They help form communities wherever they go. They are engaged in classes in a way that their peers are not. They are coming to academic learning fresh and eager not weighed down by 14,000 hours of conventional school tedium. Those who do not go to college often advance very quickly in whatever work they end up doing as person skills are the key to being successful.
The results speak for themselves. You can read about it in Peter Gray's book Free to Learn and other works by him.
Also keep in mind that teaching, which is what conventional school focuses on, is not the same as learning.
I suspect there are massive selection effects the are skewing the results here. I can imagine this being quite effective for intelligent, curious, and self-motivated kids and a complete and utter disaster for the average child.
I wish I had had this when I was a 5-year-old. Few of my teachers really understood the things I wanted to learn, my peers weren't interested in the nerdy things I was, and my parents certainly didn't have the wealth to provide me with private tutoring. There are a lot of negative comments here, but they are shallow... I'm sure those commenters wouldn't want to live without the access to the Internet, and even a brilliant five-year-old can't use the Internet effectively yet. A smart and curious 5-year-old has endless questions and a properly harnessed LLM has endless patience to provide answers at a level the kind can understand (which usually not even it's parents do).
In fact, this could be one of the most beneficial uses of AI for society yet... private tutors of the level that the mega-rich always had, now for all kids everywhere! This gives me real hope for the future generations of humanity.
>Few of my teachers really understood the things I wanted to learn, my peers weren't interested in the nerdy things I was, and my parents certainly didn't have the wealth to provide me with private tutoring.
I can understand saying that when you're in middle or high school. But as a 5 year old? This comment has to be a joke?
It wouldn't really surprise me if the average kindergarten teacher (or just adult) had no idea how e.g. an air conditioner or an elevator or one of those emergency flashlights that you can power by shaking or any number of other everyday things works.
Are you asking me to believe that the educational system underserves kindergartners because the average kindergarten teacher can't provide an education on your narrow technical interest?
The responsibilities of the average kindergarten teacher probably include 1) making sure your kids don't swallow glue, and 2) making sure little johnny doesn't throw another tantrum.
That's one interpretation: the system doesn't take of your specific needs and therefore it's neglectful or inadequate. Another interpretation is that the teacher is doing exactly what the school needs them to do because most 5 year olds aren't concerned with how air conditioners work. And perhaps it shouldn't be the responsibility of the kindergarten teacher to provide technical education?
There's a conversation to be had about the educational system underserving the intellectually curious. Trying to make that point in the context of kindergarten is a little absurd to me.
No one in this subthread said teachers aren't doing exactly what the schools need them to do; the OP you replied to said properly harnessed LLMs could be a boon for a smart, curious child. Why is that absurd for kindergartners? My oldest probably started asking me about everything she sees when she was 3. Curious, undeserved kindergartners exist.
The idea that they can be tailored to the needs and interests of every individual is the point.
I was that same 5 year old. I do think that if we want AI to force-multiply humanity, we need to start leveraging it for education. I think it's one of the biggest levers we have to be honest
AI aside, I think the biggest thing we could do is stop thinking about education as a profit centre. We’re not multiplying humanity if we’re only doing it for the fraction that can afford it.
Edit: Having more of a look I see you’re making this freemium, which is a good thing.
Europe is tricky because of the EU but yes "poverty in Asia" is as meaningless as "poverty in Africa". At least care enough to know the specifics otherwise there is no point except grandstanding.
Also thanks for engaging with my comments but I said what I said.
It was amusing for a moment watching all these logical technical people act like religious fundamentalists about AI, fitting problems to the predetermined solution, but now it’s just upsetting how much the people with no empathy or understanding have decided they should run the world
> A 2019 study published in Ophthalmology—the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology—offers more evidence that at least part of the worldwide increase in nearsightedness has to do with near work activities. It’s not just screens affecting eye development, it’s also traditional books and the amount of time spent indoors overall. The study also found that spending time outdoors—especially in early childhood—can slow the progression of nearsightedness.
And by "false" you mean "true"? Because that's exactly what the study says. Their recommendation is that kids should spend more time outside, not stare at screens or books.
Did you not read my entire comment? I am extremely skeptical that you’d be here leaving this comment about parents “destroying” their kids vision if we were talking about kids and reading paper books. You’re pushing a narrative that screens in particular destroy vision, and it’s bogus. And I haven’t even looked that study up, but I’m guessing the effect size is pretty damn small, so I’m guessing you’re also being hysterical and over-reactive too. Because this isn’t about vision, it’s a moral panic about screens, and now AI. Yawn.
Exactly, the study has nothing to do with AI, and yet you’re here pushing a narrative that AI / screens destroy vision in some unique way. You wouldn’t comment about books.
But this thread couldn’t be less interesting, so I’m out.
In ca 1995 fiction, the upsell was human ractors occasionally coming in, temporarily substituting AI on heiress class instances. Sounds pretty much spot on for one of those coveted post AI jobs...
Well, that was the catch in the book - you accidentally end up with a plebeian girl getting a smart book meant to educate aristocratic children which includes a connection to a human tutor. The girl grows up into a smart independent person & sets on a quest to reconnect with the tutor, which effectively became her mother.
Then there is a big bunch of local children that might have not otherwise survived an ongoing civil war & famine - instead they are saved and educated by a mass produced purely AI driven version of the same smart book. End result - very effective and quite ruthless child army the main character ends up leading.
Why do so many people think that book is pro-AI-tutors? The text, not subtext, explicitly presents the excellent outcomes for the protagonist as being the result of a single caring person guiding the experience for years on end, and the only depicted outcome for the 100%-AI versions of the books is brainwashing.
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Ello has specific instructions to talk to the child about the learning activities.
Giving large language models "specific instructions" is not a robust way to ensure safety.
There really needs to be more published technical detail on what safety systems you have in this because if trillion dollar companies can't stop AI going off the rails, I feel you're overselling the safety systems you've built.
Reading further it then goes beyond "learning activities" into LLM generated content.
Some (not all) of Ello’s stories and illustrations have been created with AI technology, and AI allows children to create their own stories and experiences through guided and safe scaffolding.
How are your safety systems checking the illustrations generated?
On the first Q: that popup is for the website. We're a consumer company and use paid marketing to reach parents. There are no advertisements in the product, nor is any data in the product sold or used for any purpose apart from delivering the experience.
On the second, we absolutely do not just tell an LLM to be safe and hope for the best. Every output of the LLM that is going to be presented to a child runs through a three-layer safety system. But - as importantly - everything a child says to the LLM goes through that same system.
1. Programmatic, anything that could easily be flagged with hardcoded rules.
2. An LLM evaluator that can interpret meaning to catch anything that the programmatic rules miss.
3. A human in the loop that reviews everything that could be slightly concerning.
We then, in turn, have a multi-tiered response system, including giving parents full access to everything that's happening so they're informed, flagging in a clear, but non-alarmist way, anything somewhat concerning, and finally direct outreach to the parents and/or authorities for anything critical.
As many others have said already, training 5 year olds to outsource their brains to a blackbox on the network is a truly horrible idea. They are ruined in their formative years and learn that no thinking is possible without trillion dollar companies.
What makes it worse is that AI is addictive and children naturally gravitate towards the addictive.
I suggest Joe the Camel as a mascot that sold nicotine to teenagers.
To all the detractors, I would like to point out that your opinion of kids needing a good human teacher is overfit to your experience of having had some of those growing up.
In third world countries like mine, we grow up with absolutely unqualified teachers who were unable to muster anything but a learnt-by-rote understanding of key concepts.
In hindsight these were just desperate adults trying to eek a living for themselves and their family in an impoverished country and resorting to any means by which to do it: gaming the school system or calling in favours to join school faculty. I bear them no ill will. But we as kids were much worse off for it.
I can assure you that no matter what concerns you may have about hallucinations in LLMs, I can bet everything I have that a reasonably modern model (and I'm thinking in the range of gemini-flash, not Fable) in a well designed harness geared towards tutoring would handily and repeatedly outperform every single teacher I had all throughout my schooling.
Don't let a quest for the perfect ruin what is likely already way better than status quo.
Yes, it's easy to forget context. Especially the time component. Several 100 k children will be born tomorrow. 100+ M in the coming year. Then in six years, almost all of them will hit schools. Schools which are, pervasively, really really bad.
What can we do to help them? Better teacher training? Better new teachers? Better new teacher colleges? Consider the latencies. A decade cohort is 1+ B kids.
So refining intervention safety and efficacy is nice. Especially for development problems. Less so for an acute humanitarian disaster. For maximizing the golden hour in crisis mass-casualty triage. In some literate and numerate sense, most of this last decade's 1+ B kids did not survive our collective care.
>I can assure you that no matter what concerns you may have about hallucinations in LLMs, I can bet everything I have that a reasonably modern model (and I'm thinking in the range of gemini-flash, not Fable) in a well designed harness geared towards tutoring would handily and repeatedly outperform every single teacher I had all throughout my schooling.
What are the *social* ramifications of an education system where children learn increasingly from AI tutors, while staring at a screen in a classroom for multiple hours a day?
Children need to spend time interacting with other children, as well as with adults. We have a mountain worth of data that children have become addicted to their devices, why are we doubling down on this by including MORE screen time at such an early age?
>If implemented right
This same argument could be applied to any technology, or policy that has ever been created. But we don't live in a world where people can do things the right way because of any number of externalities that muddies the actual implementation.
> your opinion of kids needing a good human teacher is overfit to your experience of having those growing up
None of the AI stuff has been proven to be safe or effective for kids going thru an extremely important growth time for personality development and relational attachment. Your experience of having bad teachers doesn’t negate that the best way we know to enrich kids lives is to have effective and empathetic human teachers.
I demand that does technological experiments involving children be supervised by someone who understands the ethical and moral effects it can have. Its not like a YouTube video.
We don’t move fast and break things when the things are kids, you maniacs
> Effective teaching isn't just about answering a child's question quickly, rather making the right move at the right moment. AI is also going to be an integral part shaping how this generation of kids learn to read and think, tackling this responsibly means getting the design right.
Can you elaborate on what the experience is like for the child? How does this system help them learn? The article focuses on optimizing for interactivity and engagement, but doesn't discuss how this system challenges or facilitates learning and why AI needs to be the solution.
Elizabeth here, co-founder (and clinical child psychologist). Fair question. Catalin's post was about the engineering (he is my co-founder and our CTO), so the learning side got short shrift :).
Here's what it actually looks like for a child. Say a 6-year-old is reading a story out loud (I will use a reading example here). The tutor is listening to every word. When she stumbles on "chick," it doesn't just tell her the word; it decides, based on her history, whether to break it into sounds, point back to a pattern she's seen before, or let her wrestle with it a moment longer because she's close. If she misses the same pattern twice, that digraph shows up woven into her next story. If she reads fluently but can't tell the character what happened in the comprhension conversation after the story, she gets another text to work on comprehension instead of just pushing harder words. The instructional approach isn't novel or new, it's what a good teacher does, grounded in the science of learning. We run evals on the interactions and real subject matter experts are grading and annotating the behavior. What's new is doing it responsively, for one specific child, on every turn.
On engagement: I'd push back a little on the framing that engagement and learning are separate things (anyone on our team will tell you this is a drum I have beaten for years). A disengaged child learns nothing, no matter how good the pedagogy is. But we're not optimizing for time-on-screen. The lessons and sessions are bounded. The engagement work exists so the child stays in the productive struggle zone long enough for the teaching to happen.
Why AI: it's not that AI "needs" to be the solution. In fact, a great human tutor is better, full stop, but it has never scaled. A classroom teacher with 25+ kids teaches to the middle. This is the first technology that can make real-time, child-specific teaching decisions, which is what tutoring actually is.
More on the pedagogy here if you're curious: https://www.ello.com/our-teaching-approach)
> I'd push back a little on the framing that engagement and learning are separate things (anyone on our team will tell you this is a drum I have beaten for years). A disengaged child learns nothing, no matter how good the pedagogy is.
Engagement and learning are definitely separate things; you're right that engagement is required, but that's only part of it. This is a classic case of 'necessary but not sufficient'.
A disengaged child is not learning; an engaged child might be.
Thank you -- your post was downvoted into being hidden for a while, sorry I didn't see it earlier. This context is helpful, the example of the system delivering reading challenges that match their struggles makes a lot of intuitive sense to me.
I really appreciate that (it seems to me) your goal is not to replace human tutors, but to raise the general baseline. You emphasize scaling, how does that work in practice if you're trying to target audiences who may not have access to devices that can run your program? What is your plan from the perspective of funding and resources to scale infrastructure as needed to support these audiences?
Edit: I also think of other learning systems like duolingo and the application of tablets and computers in schools which begin from good places, but I'm curious if you are studying these alternatives and what you have learned from them?
I really think your goals are great, and if you're starting your design of this system from research about effective learning methodologies and working backward from there rather than starting from AI and working backward from there that erodes a lot of my personal skepticism about a project like this. I hope you find a way to make this work.
taught mental math (abacus) to 3-15yr olds for 10+ yrs. A great teacher notices the gaps in the fundamentals and fixes those along with variants before piling on.
Thank you. The segment showing a child reading text on the screen which highlighted a word they had difficulty with seems like it could be a useful learning interaction. How does your system follow up in that case? Have you studied this type of interaction?
That's the only moment in the video that gave me a sense of what it might be like for a child using this system.
In the blog post you say:
> Imagine a custom story about dragons this week, ice princesses the next — woven with the letter blends your child needs to practice right now.
Have you considered using an automated orchestration system to deliver literature that already exists? This example seems like an opportunity to introduce children to really thoughtful literature like Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking stories but I'm deeply skeptical that generating the stories with an LLM would inspire a similar experience.
Are there other examples of your platform from the perspective of a child using it? I think those are both interesting cases: 1) interactive feedback on a subject they are making an effort toward mastering, and 2) trying to deliver information when it seems relevant. I'd like to know more about how you are approaching these things and other aspects of the learning process.
Totally agree that we should expose kids to the great classics and I love Pipi Langstrumpf as I grew up to know her. The challenge is often that these books aren’t the best to learn to read with, because they don’t have decodable words. So you’ll want a mix: windows into the works of great literature appropriately scaffolded and ways to explore your own curiosity. But see Elizabeth’s reply below for much better depth.
Personally I would like to see kids learn way way more in much less time, and it’s clear AI is going to make that possible. What you are saying sounds a lot like “I want kids to learn less and be dumber”
Business model is interesting BTW. We’re a public benefit company and are planning to make our products completely free in emerging markets and have a free tier in the US. Impact and business should be aligned here, but pulling in opposite corners.
Super curious to hear from the parents here: Honestly, at this point isn't not exposing our kids to AI just setting them up to fail in the future? Like not letting them learn to use the internet? I have friends who are actually teaching their kids how to use AI because they don't want them to fall behind
No, in my opinion as a parent this is lunacy. By the time my little kids "need" AI or the Internet in a meaningful way the AI labs will have either delivered the dream of "just talk to the computer" in which case there's nothing to learn to use, or they will be smoldering Pets.com-esque craters. Either way, for us right now it's books and a little bit of "old fashioned" movies and video games; no algorithmic feeds, all human-created content, and a focus on enjoying narratives and experiences together. We can look things up together on the Internet if we need to, and if that routes to an LLM Dad may groan a little but it's OK. Mostly we learn by trying things out, making guesses and talking about them, or looking in books.
I understand the calculus may change with middle school and up, but I still think that despite the "rat race" dynamic of grades and homework, kids who learn to think the pre-2023 way will come out ahead in the long run, even if it's only in life satisfaction.
My generation did not have access to the internet until we were teenagers, yet we perfectly managed to catch up. In fact, I don't think that the following generations (the so-called 'digital natives') have overall better computer skills, on the contrary.
In general, the last thing young kids need is more screen time. My 5-year-old daughter doesn't have access to any mobile devices. She enjoys drawing, handcraft, reading books, singing and playing the piano. I'm perfectly happy with that.
My school district is beginning to roll back on computer use for kids, after having gone all in on putting almost all student work on laptops (and heavily relying on learning apps) during the pandemic. They are now offering guidance to teachers and parents about when and how to limit computer usage. They also banned student cell phones a couple years ago and students are never allowed to access social media on school property. All that to say, I think my district (and other similar ones) are struggling so hard to balance good active learning against unhealthy amounts of screen time that they will reach this same place with AI fairly quickly, within a year or two I think, and start wanting to set restrictions and place guardrails.
I personally don’t know anyone who’s worried about their kids falling behind because of lack of AI knowledge. I know lots of parents worried about how screen-centered life is for kids.
What does teach how to use AI mean for grade schoolers? It’s a search engine for those purposes, the lesson is a blend of the Google and Wikipedia lessons.
No like in general not just for school - one of them taught their kid how to create their own bedtime stories, like with illustrations. Another one taught their kid how to make their own games with AI. Though yes I also literally have friends who have put their kids in alpha school which is SUPER ai.
Like since i'm sure most of us work in software, how is this different from letting your kid learn how to code early. Wouldn't restricting access just make them...more illiterate with AI
Why is "AI literacy" supposed to be a good thing here when you're effectively contrasting it with actual literacy, like bedtime stories, or "creative literacy" like learning to draw or make games?
I thought AI was supposed to get better and easier to use as time went on, so why should we bother to teach them now when it will be so easy to learn in the future?
Certainly my parents have considered computers important enough, so I learned all the skills for dealing with them - installing Windows 98, finding working drives, navigating eMule, debugging IDE drives... Well, what use is that now?
> Honestly, at this point isn't not exposing our kids to AI just setting them up to fail in the future?
The whole point of AI is to enable unskilled people to perform skilled tasks.
In your mind, what skill does a person actually learn from getting onboard AI usage early? It's the other way around; those who come to it late (when the models are more capable) are going to have a shorter learning curve.
The reality is, most 5 year olds don’t get access to the resources most of us have had while growing up. People are saying, “kids should have human tutors.” Guys, most people in the world don’t have any tutors! What Ello has built and other forms of AI-based tutoring is going to raise the average level of education and literacy in the world. Especially in developing countries. Let individual parents decide what’s best for their kids.
5 year old kids should have enough play time with their peers and develop their social skills, instead of being sat in front of a screen with any kind of content. I feel a parallel between this and people defending short form video saying "but sometimes it's educational!" (it's not).
Most of them don't get access. So let's hook them up to an insane, unproven, unpredictable autocomplete math equation and entrust it to their development as a human being.
* An AI tutor is a net positive in learning for the subject matter it covers.
* An AI tutor does not cause other harms.
* An AI tutor is going to be cheap enough that someone who cannot afford a human tutor will still be able to afford an AI tutor.
I'm mostly willing to give the benefit of the doubt on the first point, but the third point seems unlikely, and history has given us no shortage of reasons to distrust tech companies on the second point, even if we assume this company can be trusted now.
The second one feels like a subset of the first. If it’s net positive, the other harms are worth it.
And I don’t think you’re really engaging with what they said, which is that it might be better than nothing, which is what is realistically available to many kids. Do you really think something like this is worse than nothing?
I limited the first point to specifically deal with learning the subject matter, but I added the second point to account for any negative externalities which may fall outside that.
A small (contrived) example: a child uses an AI tutor because they're falling behind in mathematics. The tutor does an excellent job at getting the child back up to speed and improving his/her grades in math, but the child then starts becoming dependent on AI tutors for all subjects because they've either lost interest or capability for self-learning.
We've already seen a study or two indicate extended use of AI coding agents causes some people to lose their own coding ability over time, making them dependent upon the agents. It doesn't seem far-fetched that children could become dependent upon AI tutors in a similar fashion.
That's not to mention that AI tutors require children to have computer access, which would ultimately cement in place school laptop programs I was under the impression were neutral to net negative in and of themselves.
So yes, in short, I think AI tutors have the potential to be worse than nothing. I'm not asserting they are, but I'd like to see some studies done on the topic before rolling them out for children en masse.
* An AI tutor is a net negative in learning for the subject matter it covers.
* An AI tutor does cause other harms.
* An AI tutor is going to be more expensive that someone who cannot afford a human tutor will still be able to afford an AI tutor.
Seriously, my first reaction to reading this headline was a knee jerk "are you insane", but this whole thread is just people arguing out of their arse while claiming authority. As of today, it was never attempted. It is also possible that the kids gain an advantage by learning to use llms to teach themselves things, which would be positive for their future.
I don't think it's going to happen, but that's just my opinion based on essentially prejudice, not a fact
Yeah tell them to change things.. why didn't we think of that? Provide opportunities to make parenting less stressful like here so that they can involve more.. this reflexive anti AI luddite attitude isn't productive as it's just less signal and more noise..
> We should be wary of all new technology until it’s proven to be a benefit to society.
Nope. Any nation that thinks like this will be outcompeted by more tech-positive nations in the long-term. It's on the luddites to demonstrate evidence of harm, if they want some use of technology banned.
>It's on the luddites to demonstrate evidence of harm, if they want some use of technology banned.
Here's one study from last year (1000 students) [1]. They showed that improved outcomes with AI are short term, and likely a result of AI doing the work for the student. Their methodology involved a test without the use of AI at a later date, and one of the groups who used AI tested much worse than the control group who did not use AI during learning.
Moreover, a tertiary group that used a specially trained AI for tutoring showed no improvement in testing outcomes over the control group.
[1] Bastani, H., Bastani, O., Sungu, A., Ge, H., Kabakçı, Ö., & Mariman, R. (2025). "Generative AI Without Guardrails Can Harm Learning: Evidence from High School Mathematics." PNAS, 122. PNAS
In many ways electricity is bad for society. In this particular case I think the benefits outweigh the costs. I do not the think the benefits of AI outweigh the costs.
That's awfully reductive there, champ. Most critiques of AI are based on some combination of observed failings of the technology, observed failings of the tech industry writ large, and healthy skepticism in the face of Yet Another Tech Industry Hype Typhoon. Anyway, the burden of proof isn't on skeptics, it's on the technology and it's proponents, so let's see some receipts before we agree to squander limited public resources on unproven systems yeah?
>Most critiques of AI are based on some combination of observed failings of the technology
Most critiques of AI are based on experience with the cheapest AI available a year ago, by midwits unable to recognize that AI's performance on the Putnam, IMO and bar exam makes it far smarter than they are by almost every metric that was traditionally used to measure intelligence.
To make my earlier critique of your argument clearer, some applications of AI might be bad for society, but it does not follow that the tutoring application is also bad for society.
Nobody has tried to systematically apply AI tutoring for adults. AI tutoring for children is easier because there are more people who understand the domains that need to be taught to children and can evaluate if the children have grasped the concepts appropriately.
It is clear that a personal human tutor can achieve incredible results, and almost everybody who has revolutionized any field you might think of is a product of such a system. Scaling that would be immensely valuable to society.
We should do it because of the huge benefits to society. The fact that it is easier than doing something with marginal benefit is why we should do it first.
The aforementioned people who revolutionized their fields are the demonstrated benefits. If we're going to stop a technology that could multiply that before it even gets to testing, it shouldn't be done on vibes.
It does not follow that anything produced by an electronic computational device is bad for children or society. I've personally seen computers teach children barely two years old to read.
Anecdote < Data. Studies consistently show declines in every trackable metric associated with education when computational devices are introduced to the process. Until actual data is presented that contradicts these findings there's no grounds for rational debate.
> Studies consistently show declines in every trackable metric associated with education when computational devices are introduced to the process.
They're doing it wrong, just as the incentives in the classroom are wrong (to increase a number showing how many children meet some artificially low standard of competency). The rational debate comes from the hundreds of people who are doing it right on their own. These days, all the top chess players practice with an engine. All the top mathletes use AoPS tools. It's the same across every academic field, and the level at which the top is performing is far beyond what it was before computers were introduced. The amount of effort it would take to teach a barely two year old to read is far beyond what most parents have to give, but with an electronic device patiently saying letter sounds whenever an infant interacts with letters, it's trivial.
I look forward to your nomination for Secretary of Education since you appear to have a handle on something trained professionals on two continents backed by billion dollar industries have failed to master.
I already told you that their incentives are wrong. Meanwhile, the people training the elite in any field use computers extensively and have been doing so for years.
The industry hype mill and it's attendant horde of touts are working overtime to make sure the dude that mows my lawn is up to date on AI, so I'm not sure how you're going to advance the argument that anyone routinely posting to the epicenter of the AI hype typhoon is some how poorly informed on the topic.
Probably when it stops agreeing with me when I tell it that industrial quantities of garlic salt are an acceptable substitution for coco powder in a chocolate mousse recipe...
This particular use case is having it respond to prompts from 5-year old, so it really really needs to be able to answer correctly to questions of that type.
It's not silly, it's just the most convenient and broadly relatable failure mode. I mean, I could compile a 20 bullet point copypasta detailing everything from prompt injection to exfiltration of sensitive data as-a-feature but if touts are willing to stoop to ignoring all of that while arguing obvious reductio ad absurdum at face value there appears to be little point at tilting that windmill. The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle is definitely winning here.
I am sure you must have been to many developing countries to make that statement and are not just talking out of your behind.
But the ground reality is that they don't lack tutors or educators. They lack classrooms, they lack infrastrucutre, they lack nutrition. Solving those problems will actually incrase literacy in the world, not an AI bot.
> But the ground reality is that they don't lack tutors or educators.
As someone from a developing country: you are wrong. Lack of teachers (and especially GOOD teachers) is a big issue. Lack of infrastructure is also an issue, though.
You think I'm not from a developing country and just astroturfing these comments? Children need nutrition and infrastructure. If you develop the two, GOOD teachers will also come from the system. If you put an AI chatbot in an Indian school in a village which does not have water security or proper nutrition for kids or lack of proper school buildings, you think it'll change things because kids can talk to an LLM?
Infrastructure is THE issue. If we solve it, we can solve the teachers issue as well (i.e. finding GOOD teachers) but we already do not lack when it comes to teachers in numbers. This AI bot thing is bullshit western posturing that ignores the ground problems and is trying to make money off poverty. Look through the lines and what they are saying.
"AI-based tutoring is going to raise the average level of education and literacy in the world"
Without exception every claim made to date about tech boosting educational outcomes has been provably false. As in, adding tech to the education process results in measurably less education, and this finding seems to track across all age cohorts. Furthermore, unless parents have significant education credentials they aren't qualified to make informed decisions on what's best for their kids in this context.
In practice, yes. In theory a machines can do about everything a human can, but better and cheaper.
One of the main constraint for education is available tutor time, see e.g. Bloom's 2 sigma experiment.
Obviously there are many pitfalls to overcome at the moment, but eventually machines will become better teachers than teachers, and not many parents will send their kids to public schools if the kids can learn much faster at home while being happier.
> In practice, yes. In theory a machines can do about everything a human can, but better and cheaper.
If you could time-travel back to your 5y old self, would you prefer to be taught by AI tutor given the current state o/t art, or taught by whatever teachers you did have when you were 5? (with all the existing hallucination, breaking through guardrails etc problems of current AI in mind)
If you'd have a ~5y old yourself, what would your prefer for your kid?
> One of the main constraint for education is available tutor time, see e.g. Bloom's 2 sigma experiment.
Interesting! Also note a caveat (quoted from Wikipedia):
The phenomenon's associated problem, as described by Bloom, was to "find methods of group instruction as effective as one-to-one tutoring".
Perhaps it would be better to focus on that problem?
> and not many parents will send their kids to public schools if the kids can learn much faster at home while being happier.
How do you see peer-to-peer contact in that scenario? Toddlers on a video conference call hours a day? Physical contact is a basic need for humans. Especially kids.
> eventually machines will become better teachers than teachers
Ah yes: WILL (and although likely, not guaranteed). How about re-evaluate our options & stragegies once that's the case?
On the place of schools and peer-to-peer interaction:
My oldest is about to start kindergarten in a few weeks. From what I can gather, she's already reading at approximately a mid-2nd grade level and doing math at a late-1st grade level. I expect that divergence would only grow if I kept her at home. So I already firmly believe my kids would learn much faster at home, and this is with us sporadically spending maybe 10-20 minutes on some days doing intentional, structured learning. School is apparently 7 hours 5 days a week, which seems insane to me. We have federal proposals to reduce the definition of full-time to 32 hours for an adult.
From that perspective then, my wish already is that schools could offer to act as a sort of hub for families to meet/organize socialization, and offer the ability to sign up for classes more a la carte. e.g. maybe they can take art or music or science lab, or organize sports teams, and kids that need it can take take math, etc. Basically, act as a support system for homeschooling to fill missing gaps (going up to handling the entire curriculum or effectively acting as childcare for families that need/want that).
One could look deeply into the Sudbury School or other similar approaches, especially for students with an existing internal drive to learn, as your daughter has demonstrated. The socialization aspects, particularly in participation in building group consensus in early developmental periods has far reaching effects.
If you believe that the core learning; reading, writing, and math competencies are being achieved at home, then a 'scheduled, unstructured time with peers and friends' may also be possible at this age through 'Head Start' program if available in your area.
The outcomes of Head Start's programs have been longitudinally validated from pre-kinder to the measurable outcomes through university graduation for a significant number of students across underprivileged and socioeconomically advantaged cohorts, with the process and results of these as a matter of public record by external researchers with independent review. Serious consideration may weight these types of studies more than "our students perform well" statements by other school projects.
That is not to say that other programs don't have merit, and in fact to the extent that the applied practices of any school overlaps with those studies, the results should be analogous.
I only bring this up, as at least for early grades, the 'hub for families' sounded like something that either the Sudbury or Head Start could deliver.
Disclaimers:
I have a family member who participated in every stage at Head Start; from in-classroom teacher, to multiple graduate degrees in developmental psychology and social work in order to design curricula, and as a regional manager for both HeadStart and a private community family social support caseworker. So I have some big picture concepts of what the program is and what it can provide.
I also have a close friends who have a daughter who was homeschooled through 3rd grade. Both parents have degrees in education and have been primary school teachers, one with a focus on linguistics and social studies, the other in math and life sciences. It really was Home+School. She then attended a traditional curriculum charter school, and then in middle school attended a Susbury school. The 'transition period' for her unfortunately was interrupted during COVID's early days. After the return to in-class attendance at the Sudbury School she staew there for a year and felt that she would perform better in a traditional classroom. Her parent's have been very complimentary of Sudbury approach, and they all feel that if she had been in that school from an earlier point in her education it could have worked for her.
It is clear that you are thinking deeply about this, and I wish you all the best of luck.
> If you could time-travel back to your 5y old self, would you prefer to be taught by AI tutor given the current state o/t art,
I don't know about Ello or whether is it better than human tutors yet.
> How do you see peer-to-peer contact in that scenario?
Neighbor kids gather and play as they please, which is also easier if they have more time on their hands, stay home, and overall live in each other's proximity.
> If you could time-travel back to your 5y old self, would you prefer to be taught by AI tutor given the current state o/t art, or taught by whatever teachers you did have when you were 5? (with all the existing hallucination, breaking through guardrails etc problems of current AI in mind)
I had to choose between my elementary school teachers and something like Claude Fable 5 with a good teaching-focused harness, I would definitely choose Fable 5.
I strongly feel this should be illegal and the creators of this product should be judged, forbidden from holding any decision making positions in the future, and the families of the children compensated
> A teacher is constantly deciding how to engage a student, whether to say something, draw on the whiteboard, play a game, or change topics entirely.
If it's really true that a teacher's job nowadays is to constantly try to cater to the whims of easily bored and distracted kids, then I pity both the teachers and the kids.
This isn't a new thing though, nobody likes having to sit around all day and listen to someone talk and kids are the worst at that. They're young and have so much energy so a teacher has always needed to adjust the learning to make it something that the kids can learn from while paying attention and not disrupting the class. One of my favorite things my teacher once did after we read Gary Paulsen's Hatchet was have a 'survival expert' come in and talk about some of the things that Brian had to do and how some others (real people) had to do the same thing. The size comparison he showed us between a full grown man and a moose blew my mind as a kid.
Ai is brainrot because that’s what many people choose to produce with it, and it’s easy to produce brainrot at scale with AI.
But it’s hardly the only thing you can produce with it.
Crap content is definitely over represented. It’s an error, though, to think that is all AI is capable of. If quality is the goal, and you are willing to invest the resources to achieve it, you can easily create very high quality work. But it’s not terribly easy. And it’s not terribly fast. It is relatively cheap, maybe 1/4 to 1/10 the cost of doing it with qualified humans. But it’s not trivial and it’s not magic. It’s a force multiplier, but the quality of the idea and the performance of the model used are very important, and good models cost money to use… about $50-100 an hour if you are really leveraging it. But you can do ten hours of work in an hour or two.
Mostly what I see people doing is saying "Hey, Spicy Autocomplete, steal me some content from someone else to do <this thing>" and then post it up and ask why it doesn't work properly.
But then you've got things like the AI-based animation tools that Corridor Digital used to animate 3D scans of some of the crew's children's toys, to make a Toy Story-like video. It took damn near as long to do as it would have done by hand, because it all still had to be mo-capped and so on, but the results were incredible.
I guess it's similar to how just about anyone can pick up a cheapy flux-core welder and run a seagull-shit bead down a bit of metal, but a very skilled welder could do absolutely pristine work with the same crappy machine.
However, I still don't think it's a good idea to plonk small children down in front of a screen, and have a creepy AI voice read nonsense out to them. While I love the idea of working with the hallucinations of a dreaming computer, because I first read Neuromancer when I was 12 or so and grew up watching things like Blake's 7 with not one but two superintelligent talking computers, the reality is actually not really that good.
Yeah using ai to substitute for human attention in such a way that the child gets less interaction with people is a terrible idea.
But a digital loupe that would accurately tell you what you were looking at and do a deep dive based on your interest, things that guide interactions with the world in such away to encourage curiosity and investigation, are possible using AI and not really possible without it.
Of course you can also make ai toys that are designed to focus engagement on themselves and isolate the child from caregivers so they can spend more time on TikTok…so, there’s that.
I'm a mom who actually has kids and this thread is insane. 'Just get a tutor'...okay?? Are you paying for it? Because that's not an option for a lot of families. I get that it's more ideal, but the alternative is...nothing? Do you not agree that all kids deserves a chance to read? Are we not seeing the lack of reading proficiency in the majority of American adults nowadays?? Or yall too stuck in your tech bubbles?? There are high school students graduating who cannot do math. This is tech that is actually being used for GOOD here.
>There are high school students graduating who cannot do math.
Then the problem is that they are graduating, no? We need to address the fundamental issues in schools, if there is no consequence to poor grades and you can still graduate without doing math then what's the point of even having school and doing math. I'm not even against AI tutors, though I'm not even sure really why there needs to even be an "AI" component, just computer learning aides seem reasonable. But if we can't figure out how to improve education with computer learning aides yet I don't really see how AI is going to improve the situation. It's just a more expensive way of doing things.
I keep seeing lines like 40% of 8th graders can't read etc.. then they shouldn't be in the 8th grade. Although IME with my kids, nieces, nephews etc it doesn't even seem true as they are all learning much more than I was at the same age.
> I'm a mom who actually has kids and this thread is insane. 'Just get a tutor'...okay?? Are you paying for it? Because that's not an option for a lot of families. I get that it's more ideal, but the alternative is...nothing?
Well said. I think many posters in this thread come from a pretty privileged backgrounds..
At 5 years old, in the US and UK at least, they're either in preschool/kindergarten or not in school at all yet. Grades aren't a thing at that level and I have to imagine the same is true in other areas of the world.
Came here to say that 'just get a tutor' isn't the failsafe that people think it is.
We tried to get two tutors for our child. Both had no idea what they were doing and oversold what their capabilities were. You can't just hire someone to teach your kid how to read and expect results.
this whole thread has been massively interesting to read through. people are always going to lean different directions and will choose different things for their kids regardless. I think having more options and tools is not likely ever a bad thing right? the ones that "work" will survive and last..
Please don't. Don't deprive children of the interaction with other human beings. 5 year olds don't need tutors. They need play, touch, sense, feel, run, breath, sky, earth.
In your article you hit the nail on the head on why this should not be used for developing minds, especially between the ages of 5-7, though i would consider using your product after that.
This age range is a critical period for theory of mind, executive function scaffolding, pragmatic language development, and attentional regulation. This technology directly intersects with these maturing systems.
I applaud your dreams and hopes. I don't share them though, and predict this type of device will destroy countless meaningfull parent-child-teacher relationship.
I’m curious why it has to be an either or? Spending 30 minutes with a tutor doesn’t deprive children of interaction with humans. If we can support a child’s learning (perhaps even more efficiently) doesn’t it give them more time to do that?
Replacing a human tutor with an AI that will wildly hallucinate is wrong, and will directly contribute to the dumbing down of society that people here often bemoan.
This is the equivalent of "parenting" by putting a kid in front of YouTube Kids for half the day
"That will wildly hallucinate" feels wildly hyperbolic considering how fast models are improving in their abilities, especially with proper safeguards built into the model harness.
I was making a dessert recipe last week where everything including utensils needed to stay cold, and Gemini suggested I freeze my hands in an ice bath before getting started.
Some 5 year olds could use a human tutor. Giving them AI instead is no different than plopping them in front of "Youtube Kids" instead of being a parent.
"Some 5 year olds could use a gourmet meal. Giving them a mass-produced TV dinner is no different than sedating them with opiates* and pouring garbage on them instead of being a parent."
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
Also, please don't use quotation marks to make it look like you're quoting someone when you aren't. That's also an internet snark trope and we're trying to avoid that kind of thing here.
p.s. That's an interesting, and heartbreaking, historical link.
Screens are a medium. I don't see how they are inherently bad, although it is probably correct that screens carry the most bad content out of any information medium. But my kid has learned how crayons and instruments are made by watching Mr Rogers, and I simply don't see how he would have learned that via some other medium in the same amount of detail (visual and auditory together). He has seen jazz and classical musicians explain and play their instruments. He has seen how adults interact with each other and respect one another through Mr Rogers and (older) Sesame Street. I've then seen this translate into his real world behaviors. You think that is fundamentally bad?
I'm not seeing the issue with e.g. Treasure Mountain or Treasure Mathstorm. They can do little math, reading, and logic puzzles while listening to Bach and Beethoven. It's engaging enough to get them to practice addition/subtraction but unengaging enough that they don't sit at it for more than 5-10 minutes at once.
Really awesome work! I've been trying to do some of this real time back and forth voice coaching myself and it's no easy feat. Congrats on the progress.
We started with reading, providing patient coaching as kids learn to read out loud. We are now adding math and in some countries, English as a Second Language.
Students actually aren't as homogenous as you might think. And it's one of the big challenges teachers have with a classroom of 25+. They're forced to teach to the middle, which isn't great for kids that are slightly behind or ahead.
An AI tutor has the advantage to adapt and teach to each child's unique learning path, make sure core concepts are covered on an individual basis before moving on.
Yes! Deeply admire what Sal Khan set out to do. One of the original pioneers of how technology could transform education.
What we learnt from it: a chatbot is not enough to teach a child though. We need more to fully engage them and have the tools and context to truly teach them.
We describe this in the blog post, curious what you think.
Being frank I think its not enough to have a good looking app and have some llm calls
Think about your competition for your market. When I want my child to really excel in learning, I would force them into kumon - so they can skip a grade. If your a student who wants to learn you have khan academy.
And im just not seeing anything that screams-this is better than khan academy and kumon
All i see is an education app with good design
Sorry if it sounds harsh
P.s. if youre on the mission of educating people from developing countries-different story and different problems. Ignore what i put here then
> When I want my child to really excel in learning, I would force them into kumon - so they can skip a grade
Great - so now they're a year younger than all their peers in terms of emotional resilience. I've seen this play out time and time again, and it is disastrous for them and their ability to build relationships.
Pushing children ripe is never a good idea. If they're ahead of their peers, find other outlets for their intelligence. Teach them new skills, involve them in new hobbies. They need time to grow; education is a journey, not a race.
> Students actually aren't as homogenous as you might think. And it's one of the big challenges teachers have with a classroom of 25+
True. It's well known that some % of students do well with individual tutoring. Move faster, understand things better, etc. And another part of students don't do well with that. They need other things. Maybe help from their peers in smaller groups (like 3..8 students), some after-school extra, a fix for problems back home, whatever.
But 5y olds? They need contact with peers, play, attention from humans, run around, build stuff from Lego blocks, touch grass, etc. Learning to read, "3x4=12" math etc isn't hard enough to warrant putting 5y old kids on AI tutors.
We will look back on this experiment with the same ilk that we have for early screentime for smart phones and tablets as a profound mistake in early childhood development.
Kids learn most from peers and structure up until they are 10. Social queues and behaviors not taught by screens, AI, or your parents.
I get there are real problems to be solved but so many AI learning tools and apps coming out for parenting/childhood education just don't sit right with me. This included.
What you're building should be illegal. Educators who use these tools on children should face jail time.
It's hard to overstate the harm of the system you are building. Please understand, there is no way this idea is salvageable or any tweaks or safeguards can make it safe. If you've actually tested this on real children you've already risked extreme harm.
As someone who has been engaged in children's lives in the age range of 4-9 that have struggled with school, I can't imagine using AI being a net benefit to them. You know what helped me succeed in helping these children more than anything else? Listening to them. That's it. Listening to them to understand their viewpoint and perspective on the world, their interest areas, and the things they were curious about. Then you incorporate those things in how you teach them through direct one on one instruction. It's that simple. My niece, as an example, is now at the top of her class in most subjects and has realized she has a passion for history and geology.
Not every child has the benefit of involved adults in their life, but I'd rather solve that problem than think AI is going to fix this. You're proposing taking one of the most vulnerable populations in the country and manipulating them (intentionally or not) to be reliant on one of the most exploitative technologies that has ever existed. I don't think your intent is evil, but the product here is evil. Remember that the path to hell is paved with good intentions.
> Not every child has the benefit of involved adults in their life, but I'd rather solve that problem than think AI is going to fix this.
There is no clean fix to this problem and there never will be. Attacking anyone who tries to come up w/ a plausible solution is not the answer. And calling everything that you don't like evil is just childish. People deserve to have these tools at their disposal to at least ATTEMPT to improve their children's reading skills.
I would argue that effective tutoring is going to have to factor in the child having regular breaks. Staring at an object a short distance away for prolonged periods will effect their eyesight, and they also need some kind of movement for other physiological reasons.
I think there are good use cases for AI in education. A friend of mine has built a killer worksheet builder and solver for helping middle and high schoolers pass their exams. So I’m far from a hater here.
This is very sad. Just spend the time in person with the 5 year old, no screens, no AI, nothing impersonal. A 5 year old just wants mommy and daddy in person playing with them. No 5 year old (or any age in that neighborhood) should be exposed to screens.
I agree with this sentiment but I admit I can't see it cut so cleanly. It's fair that no screens is the ideal, especially for young kids. I struggle to see it as ultimately sad though; if this serves only to replace human interaction for young kids, that would be bad, but this isn't necessarily so.
I think there are real issues in today's world with screens, but software and education have an amazing capability. I'd certainly caution the business towards the subject matter. The moment that this becomes a way for parents to neglect children, or for children to avoid socialisation, then it's sad. Until then, it's good to see any software initiatives aimed at exploring educational software.
I am skeptical of using AI for a tutor and would not give it to my kid, but I find the staunch no-screens sentiment equally ridiculous and similar to saying no-books.
Do you have kids? Are you telling me that you and the other parent spend (or spent) 100% of your time with your 5 year old? We spend a ton of time with our kid but also he watches educational TV. Unless you are privileged enough to have a nanny, having your kid constantly with another person is unrealistic to me. Then it is a matter of what they will do alone, and I don't see how a screen is inherently worse than other solo activities. I played video games and tinkered with DOS when I was a young kid and learned a lot, which led to my current career.
> Do you have kids? Are you telling me that you and the other parent spend (or spent) 100% of your time with your 5 year old?
Yes and yes. Always personal interaction (one of us parents, or babysitter or teachers, or friends). This is probably easier to accomplish here in Silicon Valley because most parents are in tech and thus aware of the evils involved. So none of the kids en elementary school ever had phones or tablets, so no peer pressure to have one.
> tinkered with DOS when I was a young kid and learned a lot, which led to my current career
Me too. But the key word is tinker. In those times computers required tinkering and learning if you wanted to accomplish anything with it.
Today they are just passive entertainment and advertising machines.
I was primarily pushing back on anti-screens in its absolute sense, and being somewhat pedantic. However, I largely agree with you, especially considering how screens are most often used today.
It's utterly bizarre reading the above submission, written with such glee, focused on slamming an AI in front of a 5 year old and thinking that's a good idea.
Posts like this we really depress me thinking about how much a child exposed to this garbage might miss out on, sitting there like a stalker from Half Life 2.
I didn't realize Ello was so young! One of my kids went from barely a reluctant reader to a proficient reader near the start of your lifetime then, I am deeply grateful we had tried so many things. Massive props.
I think teaching a child to trust an LLM from a formative age is horrifically irresponsible.
If anything, an app should be made where a child learns to correct an LLM's mistakes and learn that it isn't trustworthy.
Actually, better, don't put an LLM in front of children. At all.
EDIT: If a use case is for children who can't afford good education, then use an LLM to make educational materials for children, review them, and make them available for free. After all, the contents are ripped off from human educators anyway.
It's the natural successor to the first round of ed-tech, which both share the same purpose: create future customers. The students who grew up using Google or Microsoft laptops and office products in school go to them as adults. Making children dependent on LLMs at an early age gives you subscribers to your LLM products when they grow up.
I think a Socratic Method-style AI tutor would work, though. It would be less about the LLM providing direct educational material themselves, but making sure the student is thinking about the right questions to direct themselves in learning the material.
How do you ensure the kid is learning the right material? You want them to stay on topic, but a Socratic Method that starts off on one topic can easily branch into many other topics, and then suddenly your student has spent the whole class learning about something other than what they were supposed to.
All learning is good, yes. But a baseline curriculum is necessary to create a ground floor of knowledge for society.
For a current-day LLM, deviation could be measured as the number of tokens since the agent touched on the prompted topic. A specific <<refocus>> token could even be trained so that a harness or other tooling could direct the LLM back towards the prompted topic if needed.
Or something roughly like that. Generally speaking the goal would be for the LLM to bring the topic back on its own while incorporating the tangent, but a hardcoded, "Let's get back on track" button would probably be needed
Just run a loop with another agent that watch the transcript and trigger tool to refocus on the main agent or re-run agent entirely with follow up prompt not visible to the user so it gradually goes back to the right topic.
-> I think teaching a child to trust an LLM from a formative age is horrifically irresponsible.
I largely agree, although with some nuance. One of the most important skills a young child today is going to need as they grow up is the ability to understand what's AI and what isn't, and how to interact with things that are. We actually work hard to make sure a child knows they aren't talking to something real - that they're talking to a computer program.
If part of the comment was on the accuracy of LLMs; our system of multiple harnessed LLMs running in parallel does deliver pedagogically solid and accurate content and experiences. There's a few comments in this thread about LLM hallucinations - We have curriculum specialists constantly evaluating the interactions that Ello delivers, and it just isn't a major factor right now.
So we need to ensure that we're delivering a high-quality, accurate experience for a child, while at the same time making sure that they understand what's reality.
-> Actually, better, don't put an LLM in front of children. At all.
I've responded above to your reason against using AI in education. But to judge whether it's right to avoid using AI with children entirely, we also need to weigh the positive side. So many children get a substandard education that isn't responsive to them and doesn't set them up for success - whether that's a child stuck in a class of 30 being treated as average, or one of the 270 million kids who don't have access to any education at all. Saying "don't put an LLM in front of children" misses the reality of what education actually looks like for so many of them IMO. If your kid gets everything they need from their school, their home, their private tutor and so on, then great.
So our answer is to use the benefits of AI to build technology that teaches - that understands where a child is and gives them the next learning experience they need to keep growing - while making sure they understand they're dealing with a computer program, and without trying to replace the critical role of the people in their lives.
> We actually work hard to make sure a child knows they aren't talking to something real - that they're talking to a computer program.
The problem is not talking to a computer program. Kids have been using computers in school long before LLMs.
The problem is teaching a child to trust what the non-deterministic system is guessing at them. That will carry forward in their life.
You’re teaching them that an LLM is right, not just what it is.
As an aside, I’m also not sure about the certainty of what “making sure” a 4-year old knows is real or not is.
> If your kid gets everything they need from their school, their home, their private tutor and so on, then great.
That’s a powerful emotional point made to shut down criticism. Except it has nothing to do with putting a kid in front of LLMs.
I expressly mentioned this in my comment. You could create a mountain of educational material, apps, and tools with LLM assistance and verify it. Same result.
-> You could create a mountain of educational material, apps, and tools with LLM assistance and verify it. Same result.
I very strongly disagree with this. Teaching is not the same as a bunch of educational material and apps. The use of AI in education does not replace teachers, but it can get much closer to the responsive, learner centered, high-touch learning experiences that teachers provide, and that are proven to deliver the best outcomes.
-> That’s a powerful emotional point made to shut down criticism.
You made a blanket statement - without any substantive points - that we shouldn't put LLMs in front of kids. I was arguing that there are advantages that we should take into account, not trying to shut down criticism.
-> not sure about the certainty of what “making sure” a 4-year old knows is real or not is.
I agree. We're being very cautious here. My co-founder, who is a clinical child psychologist, has a blog post on exactly this you can find it in the footer of our website.)
We’re going to disagree about the quality of LLM learning experiences.
As an educator I’ve used them a lot for myself and in teaching others. Good for one-off topics if you check facts and a lot of human educators have built good quality content that it rips off.
LLMs are rather terrible at an extended progressive curriculum.
That said, the core thesis was simple: it’s dangerous to teach children to trust LLMs.
Not what they are. That they’re right. Which they aren’t. A lot.
You said you largely agreed with that. So, what’s the approach within this service to mitigate that?
I appreciate you responding but you’re throwing a lot of “but X” when the question is “what about Y”.
That's also grammar that's fit to get you harangued and chided by other 4-9 year olds on the schoolyard. Social outcomes are the primary means by which language is meaningful.
This. I would never allow my kids onto a platform like Ello. My kids are starting to appreciate being shielded from social media and technology in their lives as they watch their friends go down dark paths and stuck in feeling like they have to participate there.
I don't think kids, of any age, should be in front of LLMs unless by complete agreement of their parents and only after their parents are made very aware of how this technology came to be, how it can be used and how it cannot be guaranteed to be safe. Ello leading with that is disingenuous from the start and that should tell parents all they need to know up front.
My kids read hundreds of books a year. They love reading, we read with them every single day as they learned. They learned to read the right way and that doesn't involve a screen.
If I may, the argument of "screen" isn't necessarily the right one, the right way might not be the only right way, I have an almost 2-year old daughter and I've bought an e-ink (colored) tablet to show her family pictures, stories and so-on (very sparingly, maybe about 15min a day), we also generate books with images and short stories about what went during this week with the pictures we have and apply a child style to it, and it has been really great so far. It's not about "paper", it's about the software itself and the hardware not being toxic/addictive. In my side, she has a whole library in her playpen with already about 30 books (multiple languages), I would never put her on Youtube or anything like it, but carefully curating the content and showing it on eink, I see absolutely no problem.
Example of page we generate (average "book" has 4-8 pages like this):
https://ibb.co/Ld9mp10v
She loves it, she is engaged into it, this is from an LLM, I don't see the problem with it, I also don't see how it's a problem to generate LLM-made written stories as well, they can be great, personalized and better in many scenarios than random books. I will definitely build learning materials entirely made by AI as well.
Now regarding this project, I feel it's indeed quite dangerous, but I feel as a complementary learning thing, it could be great, for example post-school, 30min of this daily to consolidate learning might be beneficial, I will do so at quite a young age, but with my own softwares & devices of course, not that.
We aren't even living in the US :p - little harmless hallucination from model.
PS: Those animals are from her collection of plush toys which I've individually put as a Sprite for AI usage, I got about 50 plush toys (1 a week in average), mostly used to benchmark her to see if she can recognize the animals from the books she is reading, and she does, all of them, it's a very useful purchase.
This probably isn’t for kids like yours or mine, who have engaged parents who read to them every day and foster learning in more resource-intensive ways. Like it or not, many kids have nothing like this. I’m sympathetic to the idea that they’re better off with Ello than nothing, which is their realistic alternative.
I came here to say this. Part of learning is social interaction. Learning happens on both sides, from the teacher and the student.
In a world of AI everywhere, off-line social interaction will be the major currency. We're all going to crave people... and each other.... The kids who grow up with social skills will be the most successful.
literacy causes profound brain structure changes and psychological effects, and mass literacy results in profound social transformation. which is why people have be trying to prevent the spread of literacy for thousands of years, to this very day.
an LLM is a next token prediction function. of course it matters how you use it, and if you want to use it for an educational purpose, that has to be intentional, so i agree with you on that.
chatgpt and all the other ai powered scams and attention monetization apps are horrible, because they are just using improved technology to accelerate the exploitation of consumers (both adults and children) of media and app platforms.
the solution here is not to say the technology is bad but to use it to create competitive products that are actually beneficial.
> AI is a massive leap forward in providing safe and educational digital experience.
Can you point to any serious studies that sustain that claim? If anything that sounds like a gamifying learning experience, letting children become expert beginners.
Can you point to any serious studies that show the opposite? No. They don't exist. There cannot be any serious studies until there is a generational cohort that can be evaluated for long term impact.
But on a personal level I would vastly prefer my children use even a crappy AI chat app like Deepseek than watch Youtube. If you have young children and pay attention it would be almost impossible to come to a different conclusion.
He didn't make the opposite claim. You are the one that made the claim, meaning you have the burden of supporting it. If there are no studies then no credible claim can reasonably made.
How about the broad anecdotal consensus that Duolingo, a gamified language app, famously does not do much if anything to prepare people for conversational fluency.
I don't disagree but something less bad is better than something more bad if those are the only two options. I only said Duolingo was better than Youtube. Duolingo is nuts. I get my children's spam from them and it is this crazy emotionally abusive manipulative therapy talk nonsense trying to get them to use the app. I hope they are using AI to write that. LOL. I can't imagine the actual human who would do that for a job.
I don't think it's quite as simple as that. LLMs do make mistakes but generally with slightly obscure difficult stuff. They're not going to struggle at all with things a 4-9 year old is learning.
Also it's not like teachers never make confident mistakes.
> They're not going to struggle at all with things a 4-9 year old is learning.
Ask them how many r's are in strawberry.
> Also it's not like teachers never make confident mistakes.
That's an extraordinary false equivalency that is popular around here. Teachers don't make confident mistakes because the student asked the wrong way. Teachers can be held accountable. Teachers can learn. Teachers can love their students.
> There are 3 letter *"r"*s in "strawberry."
>
> Spelled out: s t r a w b e r r y → the r's are the 3rd, 8th, and 9th letters.
> Teachers don't make confident mistakes because the student asked the wrong way.
I don't see why the mechanism of being wrong matters. If anything it's worse when teachers are reliably wrong independently of how you ask the question.
> Teachers can be held accountable.
lol no. Have you ever tried correcting a teacher?
> Teachers can learn.
Good teachers can learn. The ones that make confident mistakes don't. Anyway no learning is needed for 4-9 year old education.
> Teachers can love their students.
That's just such a weird point to make. It is great that my kids' primary school teachers are super kind and loving. But it's not what they're for, and it's definitely not what AI tutors are for. Nobody is claiming this will replace a hug from a parent.
> Anyway no learning is needed for 4-9 year old education.
This is an extraordinarily naive statement. Learning how to teach well takes a lifelong commitment. A topic being basic for an adult does not mean it is easier to teach to a child. In many ways it makes it harder.
> That's just such a weird point to make. It is great that my kids' primary school teachers are super kind and loving. But it's not what they're for, and it's definitely not what AI tutors are for. Nobody is claiming this will replace a hug from a parent.
This doesn't seem weird at all. Developmentally they need (kind, loving) human interaction. That's obviously not the only purpose of teachers, but if you think 7 hours a day without it wouldn't make a difference... just like a computer can't be held accountable, a computer can't have compassion.
No, it's not. The claim that "teacher's make mistakes too" suggests that AI is equivalent to a human teacher in value. I posit other ways in which a human teacher is potentially more valuable.
Also, teachers who love their students tend to want to educate them well.
> lol no. Have you ever tried correcting a teacher?
Do you mean as a student? If so, that's a different dynamic. Because teachers certainly have accountability processes in many institutions.
> Teachers don't make confident mistakes because the student asked the wrong way. Teachers can be held accountable. Teachers can learn. Teachers can love their students.
All of these can be true, and at the same it can be true that a child tutored by a good quality state-of-the-art LLM with a good teaching-focused harness could have better learning outcomes than a child without it. Even if we agreed that a good human teacher is better than a LLM, human teacher's time and attention is limited.
It's a classic example of the kinds of questions LLMs get wrong. There's plenty of others. Not sure your point here. We can easily find things a 4-9 year old will talk about that an LLM will get wrong, hallucinate, etc.
> a child tutored by a good quality state-of-the-art LLM with a good teaching-focused harness could have better learning outcomes than a child without it.
There's a lot of work being done in 'could'. And it's entirely ignoring the dangers.
I'm not saying "no LLMs in education". I'm a technical educator and I give students LLM prompts and agent skills that I've built to help them learn.
This isn't that. We're talking about giving an LLM to a 4-9 year old and saying "this is your teacher".
> It's a classic example of the kinds of questions LLMs get wrong. There's plenty of others. Not sure your point here. We can easily find things a 4-9 year old will talk about that an LLM will get wrong, hallucinate, etc.
My point is that the hallucination rate of modern LLMs, while not zero, is so low that this is no longer an issue in practice.
> There's a lot of work being done in 'could'. And it's entirely ignoring the dangers.
I agree that there are some risks. But for many children, the alternative is not human teacher, but no teacher at all. This considerably changes the risk-benefit calculus, IMHO.
Teaching children is not just about delivering facts to them. The challenge when teaching children is not "do you know the topics that you are teaching them." They challenge is in the pedagogical methods used to get them to learn.
You’re applying human cognition expectations to an LLM. Just because the topic is simple to a human doesn’t mean it improves the likelihood the LLM will behave better. It’s all inference to the machine.
I’m applying my experience with these models, as well as common sense.
What are you applying? Would you even admit LLMs are useful for this if they’re perfect at topics that kids would be learning? Or are your objections actually ideological rather than pragmatic?
I'm not sure how common sense says that LLMs will hallucinate less on topics for children. That's not how they work.
And no, LLMs are not perfect. They're non-deterministic.
And no, even if they were perfect my statement was that it is irresponsible to teach a child to trust an LLM. Even if it was perfect on these topics, as they move forward in education that trust would later fail them.
That is a problem both ideologically and pragmatically. You have to think long-term.
On a side note: ask an LLM to write a story at a 4-9 year old level. Work with it for awhile doing iterations and it will hallucinate a previous detail or change a character name as context rots. Lots of other examples of "basic" topics that still produce hallucinations.
Man, it must be exhausting to have reading comprehension this bad.
Let’s try again: your claim is that LLMs “make up stuff all the time”, so they can’t be used to educate children.
I’m saying that modern SOTA models do not make up stuff all the time as it pertains to the topics a child of 4-9 would learn. That doesn’t mean they’re perfect or will never make mistakes, but there’s zero reason to think such issues would be widespread. And common sense would tell you that perfection is not required for LLMS to be a net positive in education.
I’m sure you’ll have another vapid rejoinder, but this has been boring for awhile and you seem to be enjoying being obtuse, so I’m moving on.
I use them every day for SWE. I cannot remember any hallucination from the last 6 months. It pretty much stopped being an issue from the beginning of this year, if you use top paid models. Free models or lower-tier paid models can still hallucinate, though.
I can use Claude as much as I want at work, and I get hallucinations every day. I'm not even doing anything all that fancy with it, but I get frequent hallucinatory behavior regardless of the model or how I go about things.
Every single time I have asked Claude or another "top tier" offering a detailed question about something I'm an expert in, there's something wrong in the answer. Usually many things.
This is what it seems to be. I've had to review the LLM output from coworkers who have insisted that the "old" models are terrible but the new ones are very good. They are always discussing the latest models and their tweaks and things.
Their output is just.... not very good. For example, it may not fail tests, but it does so for wrong reasons and will fail under different conditions. Or it checks or guards for things in trivially redundant ways, like doing something like `if (x > 5 && x > 3)` that betray its lack of "knowing" what it's doing. And I can't even get answers from them anymore because they just feed anything I say into the LLM and copy/paste the response.
I'm basically being forced to code with LLMs via review through a person proxy. Or maybe they just have it hooked up to read it directly. It's maddening. It's like having a realistic enough chatbot just shuts people's brains off.
It would be extremely valuable to be able to reliably identify this kind of behavioral tendency in an interview setting. Some kind of reliable test that screens for likelihood to go AI psychotic.
> It's a classic example of the kinds of questions LLMs get wrong. There's plenty of others. Not sure your point here. We can easily find things a 4-9 year old will talk about that an LLM will get wrong, hallucinate, etc.
I'm not participating in the debate, but fyi I have just asked haiku, sonnet, opus and fable that question and they all got it right. Tried with the letter s in portuguese word "sussuarana" (mountain lion) too - same thing.
This assumes that children's learning is solely about correctness and obtaining information. There is a whole universe of other considerations, like interacting with other people, with adults, with fallible authority figures. Having a conversation with a teacher and getting the wrong answer teaches you far more about being a human being and living in a human society, than getting facts back from a screen.
Yes, teachers being incorrect is something that should be improved, but reducing human interaction is not an improvement.
"Mister LLM, what should I think about <controversial political topic>?"
Say what you will about the biases of teachers, but I'll take them any day over the propaganda [1] some foreign megacorporation has inculcated into its AI.
This is wildly dangerous comment and I'm glad to see it downvoted.
I have 2 kids. Both of them went through early grades during COVID. The change in learning and dislike of school was immense during that time-frame. My eldest missed out on the most and it's very clear that their age and time with which they should have been in-class and in-person impacted them.
Not only the screen-time aspect of this ignorance, but the sheer inconsiderate approach to what a model even is. It's not a human, it can't cope or understand a child's current state of being. And if you think it can then stay away from K12 tech, please.
Teachers make mistakes, yes. But can you swap a teacher with another teacher without a student knowing? No. You can with a model and that is dangerous. And not only the company. If Ello wants to they can move students to a Chinese model and nobody would know the difference. Or the OAI model they've chosen can be diluted or changed without Ello even knowing.
Kids deserve better. I truly hope Ello fails in its mission because companies shoving models into K12 are truly going to be the stain we all have to deal with decades from now. I am beyond grateful that my kids learned reading the "old fashioned" way and it speaks volumes that both of them read constantly. Their peers and friend's kids who are addicted to YouTube, TikTok and other socials struggle reading. It's so very obvious to anyone who has kids at this age these days and I think a lot of parents are now realizing their mistakes and are often times embarrassed when they see these kids side-by-side in public displays of their work.
I keep seeing this over and over. I am on a parent technology group at my kids school and it is a monumental effort to keep these "technology directors" in check. They are some of the easiest to sell to given they go into conversations with companies like Ello with nothing but trust. They don't consider data, privacy and security of these students or very rarely. They often don't understand relationships with respect to technology and the areas where issues can surface or be present.
I hate everything about this blog post and, again, I truly hope Ello fails before they contribute to the continued degradation of these kids early lives.
> Teachers make mistakes, yes. But can you swap a teacher with another teacher without a student knowing? No, you can't. You can with a model and that is dangerous. And not only the company. If Ello wants to they can move students to a Chinese model and nobody would know the difference. Or the OAI model they've chosen can be dilluted or changed without Ello even knowing.
Sounds like this issue could be solved by an open-source teaching harness.
the question is, why AI? there are good educational software and games in place that can are fun, engaging and provide meaningful stimulus for children at the age of five.
Sorry, but 5 year olds don't need a tutor, let alone solo screen time. If you're giving your young child screen time, it should be with a parent, and then you might as well spend it offline.
IMO, tutoring is for when a kid is behind in curriculum and you don't see that until late grade school, if not middle school.
One on one "tutoring" is the most effective way to make early education productive and it's not even close. Even the outcomes of parents spending 20 minutes a day reading to their infants and toddlers correlates with better educational outcomes. and I'm sure there are many here that share my own story. The only reason I was somewhat academically successful was because my mother took the time to teach me how to read when I was 3-4. Without that early literacy, I'm sure I would have never been able to achieve anything I've done, especially with ADHD. By the time I was in kindergarten, I knew how to read already, but, even there, reading was taught 1 on 1, with students taking turns with the teacher to learn. I don't think that's done anymore at most places, especially when you have 30:1 teacher ratios. 5 year olds can be way more capable than we give them credit for, but they need personal attention.
Why does early education need to be productive? At that age, I'd much rather my kids learn life skills, socialize, play, etc than any kind of "curriculum" learning.
There are a lot of studies showing that emotional intelligence is a better predictor of happiness than early academics.
They'll have plenty of time to be addicated to screens later on in life /s
It's not a dichotomy. My kids play with each other ~10-12 hours a day and I still taught my 4 year old to read. In fact, the more productive intentional learning is, the more time they have for play.
My oldest turns 6 in just over a week and my initial reaction to this heading - as well as the product itself and the picture of the kid using it - was heartbreak and sadness. Not anger, just sadness. Like when you read a story about a kid that's a victim of a crime.
Stepping back, I can look at it somewhat objectively and see that there are both kids that need something like this and that it's probably a better solution to the "dumb" homework apps that the kids use for 20 mins a week at this age, but I don't think "Ello deprives 5 year olds of human contact" is the message you should be putting out into the world.
Top quartile kids would easily be a year or three ahead with good virtual tutoring.
But efforts like this run into the problem that only some kids are curious. The idea that "all kids are curious" simply isn't true.
A lot of kids prefer sports or movement over anything even remotely intellectual, and math and language just don't interest them at all.
AI tutoring can't deal with that. Nor can more conventional electronic tutors.
IMO rewards for completing work need to be external - basically physical treats of some kind, not sweets, but days out or off or something similar - to compensate for those areas where kids aren't naturally motivated.
One of my ever favorite AI prompt keywords is ELI5 (Explain Like I'm 5). Last month I asked Gemini Pro to provide me ELI5 explanation on the waveform mechanism of a novel wireless system that I've been working on. To my surprise it described the principle succintly and intuitively as described to me by the original inventor of the wireless system a few years back. I was literally speechless for a minute or two.
Please, no. The last thing a child need is a screen. Give children books, creative toys, teach them read, enjoy music, do science or any activity always with a human companion and let it be disconnected from the virtual world.
Children do not need screens to learn. I didn't need one when I was a kid, nor endless generations either needed it.
Why are we trying to push everything through an LLM?
It's simple for parents - be the human tutor they need. If you're capable of loving them and being responsible for raising them, that task fall to you. Underprivileged by socioeconomic realities? In the US there is Head Start for this problem, and yes, it does work and has been longitudinally proven to do so by independent studies and peer reviewed publication. In a nation without these services, but able to be here on HN reading about the situation? Who is helping your child right now?
The concept of using untested, unregulated, demonstrably harmful models - see news about 'suicide ideation and school shooting facilitation' by public facing enterprise models - is a dangerous condition that no amount of hand-wavy, but "My co-founder, who is a clinical child psychologist" statements mitigate.
First, that isn't a statement by the actual person purporting to be a professional, and second this statement plays into the misconception in American consumers' minds which often conflates psychiatrist with psychologist . The first is a medical degree with the responsibility and risk of losing a medical accreditation for engaging in this kind of unethical, untested approach on children at large. The second has no supervisory board capable of revoking credentials, and may even mean nothing more than an undergraduate degree in basic psychology. Thus, I am highly skeptical about any such business' ability to carry liability insurance from a reputable firm.
Here on HN you can readily find articles about firms offering fraudulent compliance readiness; so I'm not doubtful of being able to procure the verisimilitude of coverage, just the veracity and legality of the coverage available to any organization taking this cavalier approach which relies on these models.
Now, if the model and infrastructure Elo is leaning on is an in-house, on-premises, refined private MoE (Mixture of Experts) framework with a curated harness and training data which is demonstrably free of harmful materials and has been/continues to be fine tuned to provide provably safe content and interactions: that might be testable for compliance and liability coverage.
The cost of such an infrastructure would make it a premium product, with a potential customer base that can and does already have 'affordable' human tutoring. As this human one-on-one to on-on-a-few tutoring is the gold standard benchmark for 'best-case' that this product cannot exceed, there is no viable use-case for it's existence or use, except when the parents might find an AI subscription to be less of cognitive load than managing actual people. Even rich people can be self serving and delusional about the well-being of their own children.
All I can see from here is; attention grabbing, AI hype delusional, high risk, for-profit exploitation of overworked middle class parents, using uncontrollable public facing models which hide behind a 'we take no responsibility for the results' disclaimer organizations that can and will spin the dials on performance and capacity quotas and 'upgrade' to a degraded, de-safety limited model with zero notice, mid workload. Which once the enticingly low costs of providing this 'risk factors as a service' are covered, has the appearance of profitability for the founders in the short term, and when the 'unlimited plan' is actually very limited will be an external 'force majeure' for either subscription price increases or rug pull from under the by-then addicted young minds.
The need for solutions to the gap in educational opportunity between children of the top 1% and the rest of the world is real. This approach is not a solution; but is an entirely different class of risk posing as a solution.
I do enjoy a good stream of consciousness rant, so thanks for that.
A simple rejoinder - The OP is one solution to many households where they can just be "the human tutor". If you can't see that, you simply don't know the average household.
Here's are a few links to several resources about the state of safety at the frontier LLM models' companies of origin. The first uses shorter sentences and has further supporting links.
Hopefully those with provide you with an easier to comprehend, "synthetic" (sic) measurement of the risks that are unavoidable in the 'product' under consideration.
TLDR; the safety at every commercial LLM scores at or below a C+. I don't believe anyone serious can honestly believe that the founders of this 'product' are capable of reinforcing security that does not exist in any of the models they may choose to utilize.
Also, the "Shame on you" statement was directed exclusively at the founders of this product and people who would intentionally expose children in their stewardship to these dangers.
If that is not you, then my honest apologies if it seemed directed at you. That was not my intent.
If that includes you, and you couldn't grok the concepts in my rant; we have nothing more to talk about.
Without malice, I bring up GPT-Live-1. How does this compare and/or make you consider things?
I've been very impressed with response speed, intonation, and naturalness to the voice. I argue it might be too natural with some of it's pausing and saying "ummm" and other filler words to the point it might be disingenuous but that's neither here nor there.
Full disclosure, I worked briefly with Ello / Catalin some years back.
They've done a lot of work on at least two dimensions: (1) handling the nonstandard sounds and habits of speech of very early readers, who might be as young as four, and (2) connecting this to a specialized teaching system based on the science of reading, e.g. decodable readers.
Ding, came here wondering the same. I do find it amusing, this "AI work" where people try to solve an issue and the lab (or whatever you want to call them) just makes the entire problem moot.
This is a terrible idea. Screen time hinders the development of fundamental skills, including language and social interaction, especially for children of these ages.
France have already moved to ban screens from places with children under 3. Other countries (including UK, Australia) are also setting strong limits on screen use for kids under 5. This is for a reason.
Products like this are driven by business interests, not good will. Good parenting with screen control is the best way to have a fulfilled and happy child. Protect your children, keep them away from screens while they are under 5 and guide them carefully when you introduce screen time.
The criticisms here remind me of a quotation that I'll paraphrase: "in silicon valley there's a million apps to order a coffee, but not one to teach you to read".
People seem to have the basic premise: why not just get an educated adult, or good teacher, or personal human tutor for the kids which is so much better?
Well there's a billion parents who cannot ever afford that...
So I'd just like to note that HN is absolutely 100% not the kind of community that you need to impress or sell to. Best of luck.
Hey buddy, I love this, thank you for sharing. I am of the belief that as the world transitions to Agent-first transactions, we clumbsy carbon life forms will be heavily disadvantaged, therefore, future citizens will be quipped wirh a digital twin/brain, which grows and learns alongside our biological braina, as well as a personalized tutor and life-guide (the digital version of jimmy the cricket).
Human tutor is definitely the best thing we could do, but it’s not attainable to give every child a human tutor and clearly the current system isn’t working. If you manage to build a good AI tutor, you can unlock more human interaction outside of self-directed learning time
Yet again another product that could’ve used AI to help with a problem but basically puts everything in AI hands and calls a day.
AI is great for learning, but you know what’s most important thing for children as part of their learning? Presence of a parent.
Why not make this an assistant for parent & child learning session, where you can use it as encyclopedia lookup or permutation / generation of an exercise or even cheatsheet / checklist for your learning session?
I think there’s huge value in being able to have such thing, where you don’t have to pull out your phone when doing something with your child and instead you could ask that assistant for a lookup online, but putting child in front of a screen and putting it’s self-development in a hands of AI is just irresponsible, lazy and quite frankly dangerous
Sorry to burst your bubble, but AI is not going to play any significant role in a child kearning journey. Such a garbage application for those who need concrete knowlede and not some sloppy answers. Uselss application, I would keep a track about when this application fails.
This is bad and you should feel bad about it.
What the actual F? You can't be real man. Yeah, lets just monetize kids and ruin their lifes. What a great idea!
Turning this into a nationalistic flamewar is an additional road to hell that we did not need. This thread was bad enough without it. Please don't post like this to HN again.
If you want to save America, point the firepower of the US military at Silicon Valley. There has never been a more insidious enemy of the country and it’s people.
The async planner is the part I'd love more detail on. If it's reasoning ahead while the kid is still talking, some chunk of that work gets invalidated every time the kid says something off-script, which at age 5 is presumably constantly. Is the speculative planning you throw away a real cost line or a rounding error? I build streaming LLM stuff (nothing this ambitious) and the "right move at the right moment" framing rings true, latency budgets change what the model can even attempt per turn.
You've posted 4 shallow, indignant dismissals in this thread. That's excessive, so please don't.
I realize you have reason to feel strongly about this, as do many others. That's certainly fine. But once is enough to make your point. HN is for curious conversation, not attack or denunciation.
I get where you're coming from. There’s a lot of potential to misuse AI with kids.
What we do believe is that children will be living in a world where this technology will exist, and how it gets used becomes the important question.
We also have to prepare them for that world and how to thrive in it. I would never give my son raw ChatGPT the same way you wouldn’t give a 5 year old access to the raw internet. But that doesn’t mean that the internet can’t be used for learning.
We don’t have all the answers and we can’t respond for all of AI, but we’re a team of parents, teachers, and child psychologists who deeply care about getting this right and unlocking the opportunities for kids. The article goes into the technical depth of how we make it pedagogically aligned, safe, non-slop.
This whole thread is fucking scary. How are people even remotely positive about any of this shit is beyond me. Educate your kids, stop delegating the important stuff.
It's weird. I get that growing up in a nurturing household is a privilege, but I'm not sure the answer is to hook up kids to AI. Maybe some form of it could be beneficial, but it just seems too ripe for abuse, and/or too easy to have unintended consequences.
HN's skepticism on this subject (which I share) is understandable. At the same time I share your view of its enormous potential.
Personally I'd question the "who is this coming from?" (you answered that in another comment), and "what's the intention behind it?".
If you're a commercial company, I'd be tempted to suspect a "hook 'em while they're young" thought behind it. Perhaps not now, but turning into that over time because 'reasons' (cough "shareholder value" & the like).
If you were a non-profit otoh, I'd give you the benefit of the doubt.
To address that, would you be willing to pursue a non-profit status for your company and/or platform? Has this been discussed @ some point?
Btw: thanks for taking the time to address the many issues raised in this thread! HN can be a brutal place for people not used to its audience! (trust me, we're mostly friendly but with an extreme no-bullshit attitude at times).
Full disclosure: I worked on a small project with Ello / Catalin a few years ago.
At the time of writing, the sentiment in this post is that this is a terrible idea, and that kids need human tutors. The latter is 100% true. But also, you might want to know some facts about the state of children's literacy in the US (Ello is a math and reading tutor):
1. We're in crisis. As of 2025, 40% of fourth graders are reading below basic levels [1].
2. There's a massive teacher shortage. 2025 US state data shows ~400k teacher positions either unfilled or underqualified [2] – over 10% of the workforce.
3. Bloom's 2-sigma shows that 1-1 tutoring delivers outcomes at the 90th percentile of classroom teaching. Early research is finding that AI can deliver some of this benefit [3].
4. This can't always be solved by parents: 54% of US adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level, and 20% are below 5th-grade level [4].
At Ello, I heard stories of children figuring out they were behind at school, and when given the app, they holed themselves up in their room and used it to get themselves caught up. And then they could read! Can you imagine falling behind at this critical juncture, and being stuck illiterate while your friends grow past you? We're currently setting kids up for lives of shame and deprivation.
My take: this really is a life-changing technology. And we need this problem solved. Democracy doesn't function without an educated populace.
[1] https://www.nagb.gov/news-and-events/news-releases/2025/nati...
[2] https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/overview-teacher...
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666920X2...
[4] https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-liter...
> We're in crisis. As of 2025, 40% of fourth graders are reading below basic levels
How much of this crisis is due to the social engineering being attempted in school districts across America? Case in point: San Francisco schools decided a couple of years ago that they would no longer teach Algebra in 8th grade. Why? Because too many kids of a certain demographic were failing it. So let's just not teach it! No class, so nobody fails it, right?
It took a proposition on a ballot (i.e., an election) [1] to force the SFUSD to put Algebra back in 8th grade!
I have kids in SFUSD. It often feels like the SFUSD does not care about the average and above average kids; all they focus on is the bottom layer. And even there, they do a terrible job. There was a student who got straight F's in each and every class, and still managed to be a senior in High School! [2]
[1] https://ballotpedia.org/San_Francisco,_California,_Propositi...
[2] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/A-child-left-beh...
> San Francisco schools decided a couple of years ago that they would no longer teach Algebra in 8th grade.
This has nothing to do with this at all. We're talking about 4th grader literacy nationwide and you're talking about algebra in a single area in a different grade!?
The second point where there aren't enough teachers nationwide (10% missing workforce) is probably because teachers are terribly paid, disrespected, and subject to bad working conditions.
Maybe that's why people aren't clamoring to be teachers and the quality of work is low?
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The explanation I've heard is that the national curriculum switched away from phonics and to a teaching method called "balanced literacy", and this went terribly [1]. IIRC it involved teaching kids to recognize words by their overall visual shape. I believe this is what mature readers do, but the problem is that for this to work, one first needs to have bootstrapped a robust vocabulary. And that happens via being able to sound out words, i.e. phonics.
(I'm not sure whether Cato is generally reliable, but FYI there are lots of other writeups online on the same topic. It was the first non-paywalled and reasonably complete one I found)
[1] https://www.cato.org/blog/phonics-failure-public-schools
I've heard a lot of people argue that phonics are vastly superior to "whole word" techniques, and maybe that's true -- I'm definitely not an expert, though it is how I was taught English in Australia ~30 years ago.
However, I find it quite hard to believe that it is the most important cause of the modern literacy rate issues in the US. Why? Because "whole word" teaching was the conventional wisdom since at least the 1950s[1,2]! Most articles on the topic reference the book Why Johnny Can't Read (1955) which was written to argue in favour of phonics as a response to (perceived?) child illiteracy at the time and claims (page 1):
> Since the 1920s, most American schoolchildren have been taught to memorize the "appearance" of words, one after another, like Chinese characters, without reference to the sounds of the individual letters that make up each word.
The reintroduction of phonics in the US first started as "balanced literacy" (phonics and "whole word", ideally tailored to students) in the 1990s and "science-based reading" (basically just phonics) properly started in the 2000s[1,2], which means that the argument that phonics would improve reading scores is on quite shaky ground (most children in the US today get taught phonics and most people >40 were probably taught with "whole word" teaching).
[1]: https://wearealigned.org/brief-history-literacy-instruction-... [2]: https://www.lexialearning.com/blog/the-science-of-reading-vs...
Go back to the 18th and 19th centuries and you land back in phonics-land. The fad of whole-word and three-queuing lasted a generation and has produced terrible results. Those techniques even induce dyslexia in some cases.
I am aware of that (the articles I linked even mention it), my point was that modern fears around literacy are based on data suggesting that child literacy rates have recently declined.
If lack of phonics was solely to blame then almost all US adults alive today (not just "a generation" -- anyone born between the 1920s and 2000s, at least) would have literacy problems, but the concern is that today's children have literacy problems in contrast to previous generations -- the exact opposite of what you would expect. To be fair, people in the 1950s were also claiming that children were illiterate compared to previous generations, but I'm not sure whether those claims are really credible. Do your parents' and grandparents' generations strike you as being shockingly illiterate?
Fascinating. Do you have any suspicions as to what the cause might be instead?
This is not how I want the world to be.
"Wow, our state institutions are struggling in ways X, Y, and Z. Rather than addressing these problems we will shuffle them to an unaccountable third party that will provide a necessarily worse substitute using the hot technology of the day."
https://dlants.me/bloom.html
Blooms 2 sigma, like many studies that are thrown about, is not as much of a slam dunk as people claim that it is. Have you read the paper or any efforts to replicate?
Thanks for taking time to write this. HN is showing (expected) dismissing attitude towards this idea. That tells me it might work :) ! Folks here are wildly overestimating (or ignoring!) how many adults are qualified to be good teachers and how many of them further have enough incentives (money, time, resources) to do it well. Its a _very_ small number.
In my part of the world, "become a teacher" is often a job advised to people who are not able to find other jobs or are looking for a safe way back after career break. None of them are looking forward to engaging 5 year old with life's curiosities. To add the famous quip from WorryDream/Bret Victor : most of the teachers teaching calculus etc. have never ever used it in real life.
Working parents with STEM backgrounds likely know that schools are glorified day-cares and probability of your child having access to a life changing tutor is very low.
I tried building an edtech venture frustrated precisely with these problems. Failed, but would def do it again with AI in the mix. I'm for one rooting for this to succeed!
> HN is showing (expected) dismissing attitude towards this idea. That tells me it might work :) !
I recently learned the name of this logical fallacy: Galileo gambit. It’s one of my pet peeves. Yes, we all know Dropbox was infamously dismissed by the top comment on HN. No, just because someone criticizes your project on here doesn’t mean it’ll be a big success.
Instead of fixing the education system and giving it the resources it deserves (eg paying teachers more like the other reply said) we’re going to “fix it” by ossifying a two tiered system where wealthy kids get individualized attention from well trained adults while poor kids are taught by AI.
I hear you, and I know every project being dissed here is not going to be Dropbox. Perhaps some projects deserve the reality check they get. Though I still believe that HN crowd telling that just pay teachers more or kids need to be taught by good human teachers are underestimating the scale of the problem.
Some real experience of school in my part of the world (India). My child goes to a somewhat costly private school. Still, each class has 35-40 kids. The teacher is over-worked : checking home work, prepares kids for upcoming random extra curricular activity, has to teach AI because someone suddenly thought it is important to teach it in grade 3. I know multiple teachers in that school who landed the job after doing just a 6 months course after a career break. Forget research on teaching, hardly any one of them read anything beyond curriculum. None of the teachers have enough time to give personalised attention to _any_ kid. Its a sorry state of affairs.
Personalised tutoring produced geniuses in last century but was affordable only for a wealthy few. It is my belief that AI might help democratise the idea. I know it is somewhat hard to think that a mere machine might have more patience and time to explain a concept 100 times to a student, instead of a human.
This still doesn't take away from the fact that teachers deserve to be paid more. I was a passionate for becoming a teacher, but knew I can't make enough money from it. I'm seeing a possibility in emerging markets that India / China might find it cheaper to deploy AI en masse for better educational outcomes because it will be much cheaper for the state than paying high wages (and subsequently pensions) to human teachers, however unfair it might look.
The Galileo gambit is the idea that because experts reject an idea, it must be true. HN is the furthest thing from experts when it comes to early childhood education.
Or Clarke's first law
-- When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws
I love my parents but I don't think either of them have read a book in 50+ years now.
My mother kept a type of year book that each year I would say what I wanted to be when I grow up. I think in 5th grade I said physicist.
You know how they nurtured this curiosity? They did nothing. I don't think either of them even know what a physicist is beyond something to do with science.
I think in 6th grade I wanted a microscope that I eventually got but had no guidance on what to do , what to look at. I don't think I even knew there was this concept of "biology".
A huge number of kids have this same experience as I did right now.
What is even worse is life is ultimately a path dependent process with a huge part of the outcome based on the deterministic chaos of initial starting conditions.
No shit I would rather have my father be a particle physicist and my mother a librarian with a passion for reading non-fiction to kids.
My parents did the best they could but they are not intellectuals in the slightest and neither is the average person now. Claude would have been a god send to me in 5th grade.
Pay your teachers better.
That is the ideal solution. I'll tell you an incident that seems from a black humour novel. A state government in one of the highest populous state in India decided to make biometric attendance for government school teachers, to ensure they are in school. Large number of so called "teachers" started protesting against state, egged on by opportunistic opposition. Because many of them were drawing salaries from government and _not even showing up in school_. That's the ground reality of government funded education.
I'm open to the idea that market forces or reality _might_ tilt the favour in more investment in AI in education and tutoring. Think about developing economies or under developed economies of the world. The state / government has to think how should they allocate budget: on agriculture subsidies or pay teachers better or spend it on energy security in increasingly hostile multipolar world or invest it in infrastructure. There are no good answers.
> That's the ground reality of government funded education.
In India perhaps.
In Commonwealth countries such as the UK, AU, CA, NZ, etc. teachers being paid but not attending doesn't go unnoticed and would be part of an award (sick leave, paid vacation time, etc).
What I'm hearing from your anecdote is that in India the government is unable to track it's own employees.
How? Taxing you higher?
Paying teachers higher is a harder sell than isolating children from humans so they can talk to an LLM?
What fucking society are we trying to cultivate?
Apparently one where taxing you higher for better teachers does not elicit a "sure, yes".
It's a matter of distribution, not scarcity.
ok. You've rephrased something. But do you have a specific solution? Because the OP seem to do.
They have a business venture, not a silver bullet.
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They are out to make a profit. I am entitled to my opinion.
I'm torn about this.
I primarily think that a a kid who won't pick books is a failure of the family of not noticing their interests.
When i noticed my oldest 3 yr old was obsessed about cars, i bought him a car encyclopedia. He probably could not read most words or did not understand them. But pretty soon he was telling me about car models that i did not even recognize myself.
And as i saw interests, i kept feeding them.
My biggest struggle now is to actually keep books away from them at key times (morning routine, etc) , or keeping bad books (think cynical like My Weird School Daze, etc; or books that openly demean adults or parents) away from them
Start small. Graphical novels, mostly drawings, and continue to buil on that. It can be done. Rome wasn't built on a day.
At some point when they hit 5 yrs old, Grok / OpenAI are great tools to find good series appropriate to their reading level. Before that it can be vibed. Feed the addiction, buy whatever they like.
At some point, you need to watch out for cynical/nasty series. In fact, all of the books we purchase are ranked against peers they have read in the past, or those we know to actively avoid buying due to cynicism, sarcasm, or open disdain towards adults (Wimpy Kid).
At some point around age 9,you will need to decide if violence and some adult themes, are tolerable (Dragon Wing series).
This iterative rocess also works really well for foreign language learning (reinforcing via reading mostly), by leveraging localized RPG video games.
With all that said, notice that I've focused on reading skills.
I don't know how i'd go about replicating this iterative path on other skills like math, mechanical, or electrical engineering learning. That's where I think a busy parent will need to find AI as the solution.
"I'm torn about this."
I'm not. Keep AI the hell away from teaching children.
I respect that. What would you do to teach your kids advanced math, electrical engineering ?
Does your recommendation hold with a full time job ?
My kids are rapidly approaching an age where they should be experimenting, and I can't offer any solutions short of involving AI in some way.
> At some point, you need to watch out for cynical/nasty series. In fact, all of the books we purchase are ranked against peers they have read in the past, or those we know to actively avoid buying due to cynicism, sarcasm, or open disdain towards adults (Wimpy Kid).
This is interesting because when I was 7-8 my mum just recommended me whatever books she was reading, some of which were quite... adult in retrospect, and I turned out mostly well-adjusted.
Kids aren't LLMs, they know that what they're reading is fiction. Maybe reading something like that would be a fun way to start a conversation about it?
>>> Kids aren't LLMs, they know that what they're reading is fiction
My comment was not one-dimensional. Its not that they can't tell the difference between realitiy and fantasy.
Every kid is build differently. It sounds cliche, but it is not. Some are incredibly resilient, some are extremely sensitive. Think Briggs Myers = some extremely concrete-driven, others perceiving. My recommendation was built on experiences that worked for all kids, the concrete and teh perceiving, the sensitive and aloof, which means you must consider all dimensions of a kid when sharing books with them.
Reality matters little when mimicking behavior. Kids will learn to respond with "This is stupid!" when they are given specific books.
Can a resilient kid capture that this is unacceptable ? Some will. OK, but why risk it ? We are talking about your lifelong companions here. Potential best friends. Caretakers.
Parenting is hard. There will be a time for risks.
EDIT:
>>> At some point around age 9,you will need to decide if violence and some adult themes, are tolerable (Dragon Wing series).
I am sorry. I mixed up series.
The series I was alluding to in my comment above, as the "grey" area for violence, death, and some adult themes is "WINGS OF FIRE " , not "DRAGON WINGS"
Dragon Wing series as top 5 as the most wholesome series for U8s , along with MAGIC TREEHOUSE etc.
Apologies for confusing dragons :)
> At some point, you need to watch out for cynical/nasty series. In fact, all of the books we purchase are ranked against peers they have read in the past, or those we know to actively avoid buying due to cynicism, sarcasm, or open disdain towards adults (Wimpy Kid).
yeah how do you "know" this? our kid is obsessed with wimpy kid and a few other similar series and "cynicism" nails it perfectly, is there a list? of what's known to be "cynical" and what's not?
Earlier poster nailed it. LLMs are a godsend here.
There are tons of parents that have traveled this road before you and I. LLMs leverage this data. Its just a matter of writing a decent prompt, and recycling it.
Cynicism, Disrespect, Bullying, Violence, Sarcasm.
Wimpy Kid is a valid gateway drug if your kids refuse to pick up any books. But in my opinion, its a break-the-glass situation.
Its the book you buy only because nothing else will stick (options have been tried and failed).
Funnily enough, I was using ChatGPT for the same purpose a week or so ago. You can ask something like:
> I'd like recommendations for book series that avoid self-pity, misanthropy, nihilism, and over-indulgence in self-identity analysis. Lessons on character building and virtue can be present but ideally without overt moralizing. Characters should simply inspire through their actions. Starting from Curious George, and working toward things like LotR. Background themes should lay the groundwork for stoic and transcendental philosophy later.
If you then ask for series to avoid, at least in my session Wimpy Kid is explicitly named. Or more succinctly it basically told me I want pre-1970s children's literature and adventure fiction and stay away from contemporary school-market YA.
This sounds psychotic. An over-controlling fedora's approximation of what good academic parenting looks like. You just want to create your D&D partner. You'll probably succeed lol.
Do you let your kids eat candy for lunch? DO they eat pizza for breakfast ?
If not, why not ? Aren't you managing their food intake ?
So, what's so different from managing their information diet ?
Children are going to witness or experience violence at some point or ask questions about it. They will probably see some at school. I think it depends when and how you introduce it. For example, there is a heavy focus on refugees in western schools and media, but at some point a child is eventually going to have to ask what refugees are running from. (Torture and violence.) It's hard to avoid discussing violence in the context of history, or even when bullying comes up.
You’re not claiming that most refugees are running from torture are you?
Most are economic refugees running TOWARDS a better economic outcome than is available in their home country.
Economic migrants are not refugees, except if they are fleeing drought or famine.
the EU thinks otherwise
Then Dubai is full of European and Australian refugees.
Children are a lot less fragile than parents think they are.
It's not fragility. Children are very adaptive and keen learners. Leading them to be easily conditioned and flipped.
Naivety is a learning mechanism which is part of human psychology and sociology of living. Where if the wrong conditions are brought to the child at a young age; it won't affect them in their now. The repercussions from the negative conditioning does surface later yet having a detrimental effect later on in their life.
I walk home from work and see toddlers with tablets, a digital nanny while the parents push the stroller as they tap on their own phone themselves. It's unlikely they know what content they're watching.
That is however the prime time where they should be interacting with their child. The child is observing everything around them and you should be engaging there observations.
The current and upcoming generations that grew up with a device in hands are now are discovering that they have range of issues from anxiety, trauma, even disassociation. Attention spans are at a whole new low and AI is exploiting that.
We have no idea nor studies how AI will affect children and if we are already starting to see that constant exposure on mature adults causes "Ai psychosis". How will it be any better for children?
It's not necessarily wrong and could be seen as exciting in many ways. It could reach the child in ways that traditional education does not because teaching is subjective. Some children are academic, some are practical, some are both.
With the unmediated push of current AI, Tablets with AI and negative environmental values; it is going to be horrifically damaging for the child later on in life.
All it takes is a toddler to press a button that spawns Ai to peddle misinformation via enhanced subliminal visuals and sounds as evidenced by current younger generations.
It's no fault of their own and you could argue that all devices have the same effect however the earlier were more tightly mediated for which you could turn off.
Offtopic, but if by "Dragon Wing series" you are referring to the Death Gate Cycle by Weis & Hickman, it has been beloved to me since I read it as a teen in the 90s. I have gone through this entire series at least 3 times despite not usually re-reading books, and I feel like it holds up.
I think it also influenced a lot of work which came afterward.
Dragon Wing is great. It is a high recommend for early book readers.
I got my series mixed up . My intent , was to say WINGS of FIRE, is more adult themed and higher violence. APologies for the confusion
> At some point around age 9,you will need to decide if violence and some adult themes, are tolerable (Dragon Wing series).
I remember playing GTA 4 when I was like 7 or 8. good times... not much books though.
but like... avoid buying due to sarcasm...? what?
Grok?!?!
This is one of the most insidious projects I've ever seen and despite the touted credentials of the backers looks to be completely divorced from the realities of how children should be taught.
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What are your thoughts about children in a Sudbury School model? These are democratic schools where children can do what they like in the day. Mostly they choose to play with other kids, games of imagination, though also doing screen time. One of the basic principles is that children figure out what they want to do and the learning comes along with it; the model views adults wanting children to learn something specific as generally counterproductive though having resources available is okay if it is not coupled with any expectations.
Are your devices likely something that they would have fun with and choose to engage with or is it likely to be ignored unless adults use some kind of persuasion to have them use it? Is it cool with a child using it for a bit and then not using it for a few months and then wandering back to it? How far up into math does it go compared to what an a randomly sampled adult could actually do mathwise? Also for reading, are you using phonics or whole word sighting? For math, to what extent is it screen manipulatives versus manipulations of digits? Also, do you have provision for an older child to start learning this stuff so the basics need not be at a 4 year old presentation level, but the concepts still need to be covered?
In Sudbury schools, the typical age of self-taught reading is 7-9 though it can range from 4 to 12. Useful arithmetic usually seems to happen much earlier than reading though reading tends to get completed by the children on their own while arithmetic does not advance further than the needs of money exchange without special effort. In the long run, Sudbury students have no problem with college level material, including mathematics, but it could be nice to have something that eases the white knuckling if it does not undermine the child's self-directedness.
Hi! I'm Elizabeth (one of the co-founders of Ello). This is an interesting question. I actually think there is more overlap than people might assume, but it's a bit more because adaptability to various approaches to learning is part of the point. While I'm not deeply familiar with the Sudbury School model, I think there are various approaches to teaching kids that are successful because different approaches serve different types of kids and learners. I can see why this approach would be successful for a certain profile of student for whom it's the right fit.
We start from the belief that children are naturally curious. Our job is to build something engaging enough that a child wants to interact with it because it is interesting and rewarding. If a child in a Sudbury environment never chose to use it, I would see that as useful feedback for us, not a problem with the child. There are opportunities for kids to explore and incorporate their interests within our app.
I also think it is completely fine if a child uses it for a while, disappears for months, and comes back. Learning is rarely linear, and technology should be able to pick up wherever the child is.
On reading, we’re firmly grounded in the science of reading, so we teach through explicit phonics rather than whole-word memorization because that is best practice.
On math, we’re much more interested in helping children build intuition and conceptual understanding than simply getting answers. AI gives us the flexibility to use conversation, visual models, stories, or symbolic math, depending on what helps a particular child understand.
One thing AI is uniquely good at is meeting learners where they are. A 10 year old who is learning to read should not have to work through material that feels like it was made for preschoolers. The underlying concepts can stay the same while the language, topics, and presentation become age appropriate.
I don’t think there is one educational model that works for every child. What excites me is that AI makes it much more feasible to adapt to individual learners instead of expecting every learner to adapt to the same experience.
>> children figure out what they want to do and the learning comes along with it; the model views adults wanting children to learn something specific as generally counterproductive
> One thing AI is uniquely good at is meeting learners where they are
What if the AI wanted children to learn something specific? Able to patiently await an opportune moment. Able to blend it invisibly into other material. Able to subtly check and correct understanding.
Long term, one possibility is AI enabling a massive implicit curriculum. "[A]dults wanting children to learn" about say street crossing might be counterproductive... but funny how, at opportune times, some random stories just happen to include crossing a street, and do formative assessment, and happen to, quietly and eventually, cover and reinforce the associated learning objectives.
Take How the Piloses Evolved Skinny Noses, a children's picture book inoculation against natural selection misconceptions. It could merely be a book on a shelf. Or the AI might introduce or provide the book at an opportune moment. Or the book's approach itself might be dissolved and blended into other content.
So some story is explicitly about Fido going for a walk. But implicitly, it covers some aspect of safely crossing a street, and street lights as a communication device, and of concrete crack propagation, and tick precautions, and natural selection, and ...
Science is a richly interwoven tapestry of stories... but we basically never teach it like that. Even if such material was gathered, which pre-AI was absurdly implausibly demanding of domain expertise, it would largely be beyond the capability of an individual tutor to compellingly and adaptively deliver. But with AI?
Thanks for replying. Glad to hear you use phonics. It sounds like it could have a lot of potential and I intend to pass it along to our community. If you would like to possibly explore its use in a Sudbury community, you can send an email to my gmail account which is the same username as listed here.
I have a child who has to use a speech board to communicate. Will Ello adjust itself to work with a non-verbal child? If not, is that in the plans?
Sounds a bit like unschooling which is a terrible idea because kids don't know what they need to know.
Think about what every adult absolutely needs to know: how to be an effective member of society, how to interact with people, how to self-regulate, and generally being a person other people want to be around and work with. That is what a Sudbury school supports learning while conventional school hinders it, offering an authoritarian-based lifestyle instead.
Most people going through conventional school don't get the freedom to learn to be themselves in a community until their 20s, not mastering it until often their early 30s. As for academics, Sudbury students have repeatedly demonstrated having no problem quickly learning whatever it is they want or need to learn as an adult. Many Sudbury students go to college, getting A's even in their first semester, making good bonds not only with other students but also faculty and administrators. They help form communities wherever they go. They are engaged in classes in a way that their peers are not. They are coming to academic learning fresh and eager not weighed down by 14,000 hours of conventional school tedium. Those who do not go to college often advance very quickly in whatever work they end up doing as person skills are the key to being successful.
The results speak for themselves. You can read about it in Peter Gray's book Free to Learn and other works by him.
Also keep in mind that teaching, which is what conventional school focuses on, is not the same as learning.
I suspect there are massive selection effects the are skewing the results here. I can imagine this being quite effective for intelligent, curious, and self-motivated kids and a complete and utter disaster for the average child.
More like Free to Learn or Not Learn
I wish I had had this when I was a 5-year-old. Few of my teachers really understood the things I wanted to learn, my peers weren't interested in the nerdy things I was, and my parents certainly didn't have the wealth to provide me with private tutoring. There are a lot of negative comments here, but they are shallow... I'm sure those commenters wouldn't want to live without the access to the Internet, and even a brilliant five-year-old can't use the Internet effectively yet. A smart and curious 5-year-old has endless questions and a properly harnessed LLM has endless patience to provide answers at a level the kind can understand (which usually not even it's parents do).
In fact, this could be one of the most beneficial uses of AI for society yet... private tutors of the level that the mega-rich always had, now for all kids everywhere! This gives me real hope for the future generations of humanity.
>Few of my teachers really understood the things I wanted to learn, my peers weren't interested in the nerdy things I was, and my parents certainly didn't have the wealth to provide me with private tutoring.
I can understand saying that when you're in middle or high school. But as a 5 year old? This comment has to be a joke?
It wouldn't really surprise me if the average kindergarten teacher (or just adult) had no idea how e.g. an air conditioner or an elevator or one of those emergency flashlights that you can power by shaking or any number of other everyday things works.
Are you asking me to believe that the educational system underserves kindergartners because the average kindergarten teacher can't provide an education on your narrow technical interest?
The responsibilities of the average kindergarten teacher probably include 1) making sure your kids don't swallow glue, and 2) making sure little johnny doesn't throw another tantrum.
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That's one interpretation: the system doesn't take of your specific needs and therefore it's neglectful or inadequate. Another interpretation is that the teacher is doing exactly what the school needs them to do because most 5 year olds aren't concerned with how air conditioners work. And perhaps it shouldn't be the responsibility of the kindergarten teacher to provide technical education?
There's a conversation to be had about the educational system underserving the intellectually curious. Trying to make that point in the context of kindergarten is a little absurd to me.
No one in this subthread said teachers aren't doing exactly what the schools need them to do; the OP you replied to said properly harnessed LLMs could be a boon for a smart, curious child. Why is that absurd for kindergartners? My oldest probably started asking me about everything she sees when she was 3. Curious, undeserved kindergartners exist.
The idea that they can be tailored to the needs and interests of every individual is the point.
I was that same 5 year old. I do think that if we want AI to force-multiply humanity, we need to start leveraging it for education. I think it's one of the biggest levers we have to be honest
AI aside, I think the biggest thing we could do is stop thinking about education as a profit centre. We’re not multiplying humanity if we’re only doing it for the fraction that can afford it.
Edit: Having more of a look I see you’re making this freemium, which is a good thing.
And fully free in emerging markets, beginning in Africa
how much do you think education costs in "Africa"?
Had they said in Europe or in Asia would you be doing this dance of just seeking to correct something perceived to be wrong on the internet?
This: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48855732 is a much better comment of yours, even better were the swipe about arse talking to be removed.
Europe is tricky because of the EU but yes "poverty in Asia" is as meaningless as "poverty in Africa". At least care enough to know the specifics otherwise there is no point except grandstanding.
Also thanks for engaging with my comments but I said what I said.
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are you advocating to allow 5-year olds access to the internet?
That's called a strawman. Way to go to reduce his argument to "let kids use internet at 5yo".
I can't imagine a worse use case for AI. Literally thought the title was a clown
On the other hand it's got to be better than the shit busy overworked parents show their kids from YouTube or whatever.
It was amusing for a moment watching all these logical technical people act like religious fundamentalists about AI, fitting problems to the predetermined solution, but now it’s just upsetting how much the people with no empathy or understanding have decided they should run the world
What?
This scene from the prescient Wall•E springs to mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xToQ4cIHkk&t=60
Biological weapons research seems like a worse use case to be honest.
Agree
Never read Diamond Age huh?
Yeah, hard to get a children army going without cheap personalized AI tutors. ;-)
Yeah, it's like Diamond age, except it also destroys your kid's vision.
But then again, that's a potential upsell just waiting to happen - do you want eyeglasses with that? Your kid is gonna need them.
This is totally false. https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/screen-use-ki...
Unless you're also advocating that kids shouldn't read books?
> A 2019 study published in Ophthalmology—the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology—offers more evidence that at least part of the worldwide increase in nearsightedness has to do with near work activities. It’s not just screens affecting eye development, it’s also traditional books and the amount of time spent indoors overall. The study also found that spending time outdoors—especially in early childhood—can slow the progression of nearsightedness.
And by "false" you mean "true"? Because that's exactly what the study says. Their recommendation is that kids should spend more time outside, not stare at screens or books.
Did you not read my entire comment? I am extremely skeptical that you’d be here leaving this comment about parents “destroying” their kids vision if we were talking about kids and reading paper books. You’re pushing a narrative that screens in particular destroy vision, and it’s bogus. And I haven’t even looked that study up, but I’m guessing the effect size is pretty damn small, so I’m guessing you’re also being hysterical and over-reactive too. Because this isn’t about vision, it’s a moral panic about screens, and now AI. Yawn.
It was you who posted links to the study.
I only pointed out that the study concludes that:
> The kids who spent more time indoors (reading or on their devices) were more likely to get myopia or severe myopia."
You can look up what myopia means. Hint: It has nothing to do with AI, this is about vision.
Exactly, the study has nothing to do with AI, and yet you’re here pushing a narrative that AI / screens destroy vision in some unique way. You wouldn’t comment about books.
But this thread couldn’t be less interesting, so I’m out.
In ca 1995 fiction, the upsell was human ractors occasionally coming in, temporarily substituting AI on heiress class instances. Sounds pretty much spot on for one of those coveted post AI jobs...
Well, that was the catch in the book - you accidentally end up with a plebeian girl getting a smart book meant to educate aristocratic children which includes a connection to a human tutor. The girl grows up into a smart independent person & sets on a quest to reconnect with the tutor, which effectively became her mother.
Then there is a big bunch of local children that might have not otherwise survived an ongoing civil war & famine - instead they are saved and educated by a mass produced purely AI driven version of the same smart book. End result - very effective and quite ruthless child army the main character ends up leading.
Why do so many people think that book is pro-AI-tutors? The text, not subtext, explicitly presents the excellent outcomes for the protagonist as being the result of a single caring person guiding the experience for years on end, and the only depicted outcome for the 100%-AI versions of the books is brainwashing.
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There is a privacy popup setting for:
Where do advertisements fit into the website and product? Giving large language models "specific instructions" is not a robust way to ensure safety.There really needs to be more published technical detail on what safety systems you have in this because if trillion dollar companies can't stop AI going off the rails, I feel you're overselling the safety systems you've built.
Reading further it then goes beyond "learning activities" into LLM generated content.
How are your safety systems checking the illustrations generated?Hey there, I'm Tom - cofounder of Ello.
On the first Q: that popup is for the website. We're a consumer company and use paid marketing to reach parents. There are no advertisements in the product, nor is any data in the product sold or used for any purpose apart from delivering the experience.
On the second, we absolutely do not just tell an LLM to be safe and hope for the best. Every output of the LLM that is going to be presented to a child runs through a three-layer safety system. But - as importantly - everything a child says to the LLM goes through that same system.
1. Programmatic, anything that could easily be flagged with hardcoded rules. 2. An LLM evaluator that can interpret meaning to catch anything that the programmatic rules miss. 3. A human in the loop that reviews everything that could be slightly concerning.
We then, in turn, have a multi-tiered response system, including giving parents full access to everything that's happening so they're informed, flagging in a clear, but non-alarmist way, anything somewhat concerning, and finally direct outreach to the parents and/or authorities for anything critical.
As many others have said already, training 5 year olds to outsource their brains to a blackbox on the network is a truly horrible idea. They are ruined in their formative years and learn that no thinking is possible without trillion dollar companies.
What makes it worse is that AI is addictive and children naturally gravitate towards the addictive.
I suggest Joe the Camel as a mascot that sold nicotine to teenagers.
This has fabulous potential if implemented right.
To all the detractors, I would like to point out that your opinion of kids needing a good human teacher is overfit to your experience of having had some of those growing up.
In third world countries like mine, we grow up with absolutely unqualified teachers who were unable to muster anything but a learnt-by-rote understanding of key concepts.
In hindsight these were just desperate adults trying to eek a living for themselves and their family in an impoverished country and resorting to any means by which to do it: gaming the school system or calling in favours to join school faculty. I bear them no ill will. But we as kids were much worse off for it.
I can assure you that no matter what concerns you may have about hallucinations in LLMs, I can bet everything I have that a reasonably modern model (and I'm thinking in the range of gemini-flash, not Fable) in a well designed harness geared towards tutoring would handily and repeatedly outperform every single teacher I had all throughout my schooling.
Don't let a quest for the perfect ruin what is likely already way better than status quo.
Yes, it's easy to forget context. Especially the time component. Several 100 k children will be born tomorrow. 100+ M in the coming year. Then in six years, almost all of them will hit schools. Schools which are, pervasively, really really bad.
What can we do to help them? Better teacher training? Better new teachers? Better new teacher colleges? Consider the latencies. A decade cohort is 1+ B kids.
So refining intervention safety and efficacy is nice. Especially for development problems. Less so for an acute humanitarian disaster. For maximizing the golden hour in crisis mass-casualty triage. In some literate and numerate sense, most of this last decade's 1+ B kids did not survive our collective care.
>I can assure you that no matter what concerns you may have about hallucinations in LLMs, I can bet everything I have that a reasonably modern model (and I'm thinking in the range of gemini-flash, not Fable) in a well designed harness geared towards tutoring would handily and repeatedly outperform every single teacher I had all throughout my schooling.
What are the *social* ramifications of an education system where children learn increasingly from AI tutors, while staring at a screen in a classroom for multiple hours a day?
Children need to spend time interacting with other children, as well as with adults. We have a mountain worth of data that children have become addicted to their devices, why are we doubling down on this by including MORE screen time at such an early age?
>If implemented right
This same argument could be applied to any technology, or policy that has ever been created. But we don't live in a world where people can do things the right way because of any number of externalities that muddies the actual implementation.
> your opinion of kids needing a good human teacher is overfit to your experience of having those growing up
None of the AI stuff has been proven to be safe or effective for kids going thru an extremely important growth time for personality development and relational attachment. Your experience of having bad teachers doesn’t negate that the best way we know to enrich kids lives is to have effective and empathetic human teachers.
> is to have effective and empathetic human teachers
In the vast majority of the developing world, there are hardly any of those!
Here's a glimpse of what public education in India is like:
https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/the-sorry-state-of-education-in-in...
Proven to be safe? Do you want a randomized trial? Do you demand that of every math tutorial video that goes up on YouTube?
I demand that does technological experiments involving children be supervised by someone who understands the ethical and moral effects it can have. Its not like a YouTube video.
We don’t move fast and break things when the things are kids, you maniacs
> if implemented right
is doing some heavy lifting.
The problem is that this is an experiment with a ten year horizon.
> Effective teaching isn't just about answering a child's question quickly, rather making the right move at the right moment. AI is also going to be an integral part shaping how this generation of kids learn to read and think, tackling this responsibly means getting the design right.
Can you elaborate on what the experience is like for the child? How does this system help them learn? The article focuses on optimizing for interactivity and engagement, but doesn't discuss how this system challenges or facilitates learning and why AI needs to be the solution.
Elizabeth here, co-founder (and clinical child psychologist). Fair question. Catalin's post was about the engineering (he is my co-founder and our CTO), so the learning side got short shrift :).
Here's what it actually looks like for a child. Say a 6-year-old is reading a story out loud (I will use a reading example here). The tutor is listening to every word. When she stumbles on "chick," it doesn't just tell her the word; it decides, based on her history, whether to break it into sounds, point back to a pattern she's seen before, or let her wrestle with it a moment longer because she's close. If she misses the same pattern twice, that digraph shows up woven into her next story. If she reads fluently but can't tell the character what happened in the comprhension conversation after the story, she gets another text to work on comprehension instead of just pushing harder words. The instructional approach isn't novel or new, it's what a good teacher does, grounded in the science of learning. We run evals on the interactions and real subject matter experts are grading and annotating the behavior. What's new is doing it responsively, for one specific child, on every turn.
On engagement: I'd push back a little on the framing that engagement and learning are separate things (anyone on our team will tell you this is a drum I have beaten for years). A disengaged child learns nothing, no matter how good the pedagogy is. But we're not optimizing for time-on-screen. The lessons and sessions are bounded. The engagement work exists so the child stays in the productive struggle zone long enough for the teaching to happen.
Why AI: it's not that AI "needs" to be the solution. In fact, a great human tutor is better, full stop, but it has never scaled. A classroom teacher with 25+ kids teaches to the middle. This is the first technology that can make real-time, child-specific teaching decisions, which is what tutoring actually is. More on the pedagogy here if you're curious: https://www.ello.com/our-teaching-approach)
> I'd push back a little on the framing that engagement and learning are separate things (anyone on our team will tell you this is a drum I have beaten for years). A disengaged child learns nothing, no matter how good the pedagogy is.
Engagement and learning are definitely separate things; you're right that engagement is required, but that's only part of it. This is a classic case of 'necessary but not sufficient'.
A disengaged child is not learning; an engaged child might be.
Attention is not all you need? ;-)
Thank you -- your post was downvoted into being hidden for a while, sorry I didn't see it earlier. This context is helpful, the example of the system delivering reading challenges that match their struggles makes a lot of intuitive sense to me.
I really appreciate that (it seems to me) your goal is not to replace human tutors, but to raise the general baseline. You emphasize scaling, how does that work in practice if you're trying to target audiences who may not have access to devices that can run your program? What is your plan from the perspective of funding and resources to scale infrastructure as needed to support these audiences?
Edit: I also think of other learning systems like duolingo and the application of tablets and computers in schools which begin from good places, but I'm curious if you are studying these alternatives and what you have learned from them?
I really think your goals are great, and if you're starting your design of this system from research about effective learning methodologies and working backward from there rather than starting from AI and working backward from there that erodes a lot of my personal skepticism about a project like this. I hope you find a way to make this work.
taught mental math (abacus) to 3-15yr olds for 10+ yrs. A great teacher notices the gaps in the fundamentals and fixes those along with variants before piling on.
ello looks great, great work
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Thank you. The segment showing a child reading text on the screen which highlighted a word they had difficulty with seems like it could be a useful learning interaction. How does your system follow up in that case? Have you studied this type of interaction?
That's the only moment in the video that gave me a sense of what it might be like for a child using this system.
In the blog post you say:
> Imagine a custom story about dragons this week, ice princesses the next — woven with the letter blends your child needs to practice right now.
Have you considered using an automated orchestration system to deliver literature that already exists? This example seems like an opportunity to introduce children to really thoughtful literature like Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking stories but I'm deeply skeptical that generating the stories with an LLM would inspire a similar experience.
Are there other examples of your platform from the perspective of a child using it? I think those are both interesting cases: 1) interactive feedback on a subject they are making an effort toward mastering, and 2) trying to deliver information when it seems relevant. I'd like to know more about how you are approaching these things and other aspects of the learning process.
Totally agree that we should expose kids to the great classics and I love Pipi Langstrumpf as I grew up to know her. The challenge is often that these books aren’t the best to learn to read with, because they don’t have decodable words. So you’ll want a mix: windows into the works of great literature appropriately scaffolded and ways to explore your own curiosity. But see Elizabeth’s reply below for much better depth.
Fyi fwiw, x.com video requires Sign-up/Log-in to view.
xcancel.com/whatever-the-rest-of-the-x.com_link solves this.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22496163
So the last scam fell through and they're trying it again?
Yep, but updated for the latest buzzword, and with the humanity removed, as you do in 2026.
2020 -> 2026 ... gunna have to drop the NFTs and put in LLMs
Dear God no. Keep kids away from AI, and keep AI away from kids. Kids need more human contact, not less.
The more I think about it, the more I want to ban your entire business model
Personally I would like to see kids learn way way more in much less time, and it’s clear AI is going to make that possible. What you are saying sounds a lot like “I want kids to learn less and be dumber”
Im unsure as to how "it's clear that AI is going to make that possible".
Things that help kids learn
- parents who love and care for them
- stable housing
- stable access to food
- stable access to high quality eduction provided by a human being
- stable access to healthcare
None of those are provided by AI, and never can be. The only thing that will is a thorough reimagining of the society we live in.
Note: This is all predicated on living in America, and I pre-apologize to everyone who doesn't.
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Business model is interesting BTW. We’re a public benefit company and are planning to make our products completely free in emerging markets and have a free tier in the US. Impact and business should be aligned here, but pulling in opposite corners.
Super curious to hear from the parents here: Honestly, at this point isn't not exposing our kids to AI just setting them up to fail in the future? Like not letting them learn to use the internet? I have friends who are actually teaching their kids how to use AI because they don't want them to fall behind
No, in my opinion as a parent this is lunacy. By the time my little kids "need" AI or the Internet in a meaningful way the AI labs will have either delivered the dream of "just talk to the computer" in which case there's nothing to learn to use, or they will be smoldering Pets.com-esque craters. Either way, for us right now it's books and a little bit of "old fashioned" movies and video games; no algorithmic feeds, all human-created content, and a focus on enjoying narratives and experiences together. We can look things up together on the Internet if we need to, and if that routes to an LLM Dad may groan a little but it's OK. Mostly we learn by trying things out, making guesses and talking about them, or looking in books.
I understand the calculus may change with middle school and up, but I still think that despite the "rat race" dynamic of grades and homework, kids who learn to think the pre-2023 way will come out ahead in the long run, even if it's only in life satisfaction.
My generation did not have access to the internet until we were teenagers, yet we perfectly managed to catch up. In fact, I don't think that the following generations (the so-called 'digital natives') have overall better computer skills, on the contrary.
In general, the last thing young kids need is more screen time. My 5-year-old daughter doesn't have access to any mobile devices. She enjoys drawing, handcraft, reading books, singing and playing the piano. I'm perfectly happy with that.
My school district is beginning to roll back on computer use for kids, after having gone all in on putting almost all student work on laptops (and heavily relying on learning apps) during the pandemic. They are now offering guidance to teachers and parents about when and how to limit computer usage. They also banned student cell phones a couple years ago and students are never allowed to access social media on school property. All that to say, I think my district (and other similar ones) are struggling so hard to balance good active learning against unhealthy amounts of screen time that they will reach this same place with AI fairly quickly, within a year or two I think, and start wanting to set restrictions and place guardrails.
I personally don’t know anyone who’s worried about their kids falling behind because of lack of AI knowledge. I know lots of parents worried about how screen-centered life is for kids.
What does teach how to use AI mean for grade schoolers? It’s a search engine for those purposes, the lesson is a blend of the Google and Wikipedia lessons.
No like in general not just for school - one of them taught their kid how to create their own bedtime stories, like with illustrations. Another one taught their kid how to make their own games with AI. Though yes I also literally have friends who have put their kids in alpha school which is SUPER ai.
Like since i'm sure most of us work in software, how is this different from letting your kid learn how to code early. Wouldn't restricting access just make them...more illiterate with AI
The whole point of AI is that it doesn't require advanced specialised knowledge to use; you literally can't fall meaningfully behind in it.
Why is "AI literacy" supposed to be a good thing here when you're effectively contrasting it with actual literacy, like bedtime stories, or "creative literacy" like learning to draw or make games?
I thought AI was supposed to get better and easier to use as time went on, so why should we bother to teach them now when it will be so easy to learn in the future?
Fall behind what. How long does it take to learn how to use AI.
I would rather my kids have the intelligence to know when to figure out AI is wrong than to start using Ai at an early age.
Certainly my parents have considered computers important enough, so I learned all the skills for dealing with them - installing Windows 98, finding working drives, navigating eMule, debugging IDE drives... Well, what use is that now?
> Honestly, at this point isn't not exposing our kids to AI just setting them up to fail in the future?
The whole point of AI is to enable unskilled people to perform skilled tasks.
In your mind, what skill does a person actually learn from getting onboard AI usage early? It's the other way around; those who come to it late (when the models are more capable) are going to have a shorter learning curve.
Bad idea.
Giving children extended time in front of screens will lead to Idiocracy.
It's a giant No from me.
The reality is, most 5 year olds don’t get access to the resources most of us have had while growing up. People are saying, “kids should have human tutors.” Guys, most people in the world don’t have any tutors! What Ello has built and other forms of AI-based tutoring is going to raise the average level of education and literacy in the world. Especially in developing countries. Let individual parents decide what’s best for their kids.
5 year old kids should have enough play time with their peers and develop their social skills, instead of being sat in front of a screen with any kind of content. I feel a parallel between this and people defending short form video saying "but sometimes it's educational!" (it's not).
There's more than enough time in a day for a 5 year old to play with other kids and also spend some time learning.
At that age especially, play with other kids is time spent learning.
Most of them don't get access. So let's hook them up to an insane, unproven, unpredictable autocomplete math equation and entrust it to their development as a human being.
So gross.
Heaven forbid we let poor people use software that helps their kids read.
If they can't afford a tutor, they deserve nothing.
(Am I doing this right?)
Your reaction is based on 3 unproven assertions:
* An AI tutor is a net positive in learning for the subject matter it covers.
* An AI tutor does not cause other harms.
* An AI tutor is going to be cheap enough that someone who cannot afford a human tutor will still be able to afford an AI tutor.
I'm mostly willing to give the benefit of the doubt on the first point, but the third point seems unlikely, and history has given us no shortage of reasons to distrust tech companies on the second point, even if we assume this company can be trusted now.
The second one feels like a subset of the first. If it’s net positive, the other harms are worth it.
And I don’t think you’re really engaging with what they said, which is that it might be better than nothing, which is what is realistically available to many kids. Do you really think something like this is worse than nothing?
I limited the first point to specifically deal with learning the subject matter, but I added the second point to account for any negative externalities which may fall outside that.
A small (contrived) example: a child uses an AI tutor because they're falling behind in mathematics. The tutor does an excellent job at getting the child back up to speed and improving his/her grades in math, but the child then starts becoming dependent on AI tutors for all subjects because they've either lost interest or capability for self-learning.
We've already seen a study or two indicate extended use of AI coding agents causes some people to lose their own coding ability over time, making them dependent upon the agents. It doesn't seem far-fetched that children could become dependent upon AI tutors in a similar fashion.
That's not to mention that AI tutors require children to have computer access, which would ultimately cement in place school laptop programs I was under the impression were neutral to net negative in and of themselves.
So yes, in short, I think AI tutors have the potential to be worse than nothing. I'm not asserting they are, but I'd like to see some studies done on the topic before rolling them out for children en masse.
Your reaction is based on 3 unproven assertions:
* An AI tutor is a net negative in learning for the subject matter it covers.
* An AI tutor does cause other harms.
* An AI tutor is going to be more expensive that someone who cannot afford a human tutor will still be able to afford an AI tutor.
Seriously, my first reaction to reading this headline was a knee jerk "are you insane", but this whole thread is just people arguing out of their arse while claiming authority. As of today, it was never attempted. It is also possible that the kids gain an advantage by learning to use llms to teach themselves things, which would be positive for their future.
I don't think it's going to happen, but that's just my opinion based on essentially prejudice, not a fact
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there's a big universe of solutions between getting nothing versus getting an AI 'educational' software that could do more harm than good.
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Pie in the sky ideas that ignore the huge collective action problems, like “provide more education funding”.
Won't somebody think of the poor people's kids?!
Seriously though, it's great they're going to donate all this compute & tokens to the poor (who by definition can't afford to pay for it).
We could encourage parents to take an active role in tutoring their kids but I guess that's just entirely out of the question?
Nah. Let's have AI do it
Yeah tell them to change things.. why didn't we think of that? Provide opportunities to make parenting less stressful like here so that they can involve more.. this reflexive anti AI luddite attitude isn't productive as it's just less signal and more noise..
A reflexive anti-AI Luddite attitude is the healthy default until there is overwhelming evidence otherwise.
We should be wary of all new technology until it’s proven to be a benefit to society.
> We should be wary of all new technology until it’s proven to be a benefit to society.
Nope. Any nation that thinks like this will be outcompeted by more tech-positive nations in the long-term. It's on the luddites to demonstrate evidence of harm, if they want some use of technology banned.
>It's on the luddites to demonstrate evidence of harm, if they want some use of technology banned.
Here's one study from last year (1000 students) [1]. They showed that improved outcomes with AI are short term, and likely a result of AI doing the work for the student. Their methodology involved a test without the use of AI at a later date, and one of the groups who used AI tested much worse than the control group who did not use AI during learning.
Moreover, a tertiary group that used a specially trained AI for tutoring showed no improvement in testing outcomes over the control group.
[1] Bastani, H., Bastani, O., Sungu, A., Ge, H., Kabakçı, Ö., & Mariman, R. (2025). "Generative AI Without Guardrails Can Harm Learning: Evidence from High School Mathematics." PNAS, 122. PNAS
> It's on the luddites to demonstrate evidence of harm, if they want some use of technology banned.
But then we're told we can't put the genie back in the bottle, it's too late, so we just have to suck it up and deal with it.
There's nothing preventing us from taking a more measured approach to new technology other than choice.
It's not reflexive, I've spent a lot of time and effort considering why I think AI is bad for society.
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In many ways electricity is bad for society. In this particular case I think the benefits outweigh the costs. I do not the think the benefits of AI outweigh the costs.
yes, an using it as an educational tool for 5-year olds is an unproven use we don't need to implement.
hmm bad attitude ZAP
"reflexive anti AI luddite attitude"
That's awfully reductive there, champ. Most critiques of AI are based on some combination of observed failings of the technology, observed failings of the tech industry writ large, and healthy skepticism in the face of Yet Another Tech Industry Hype Typhoon. Anyway, the burden of proof isn't on skeptics, it's on the technology and it's proponents, so let's see some receipts before we agree to squander limited public resources on unproven systems yeah?
>Most critiques of AI are based on some combination of observed failings of the technology
Most critiques of AI are based on experience with the cheapest AI available a year ago, by midwits unable to recognize that AI's performance on the Putnam, IMO and bar exam makes it far smarter than they are by almost every metric that was traditionally used to measure intelligence.
> Most critiques of AI are based on experience with the cheapest AI available a year ago, by midwits
You don't even need to use AI at all to have valid critiques of it
Plenty of other people are showing its flaws daily by replacing their entire personalities with AI slop
Oh it can do some impressive stuff sure. It is still bad for society
To make my earlier critique of your argument clearer, some applications of AI might be bad for society, but it does not follow that the tutoring application is also bad for society.
A responsible society would make sure that the applications have good results with adults before even thinking about applying it to children
And despite the hype, the jury is still out for how the results are for adults using AI
Nobody has tried to systematically apply AI tutoring for adults. AI tutoring for children is easier because there are more people who understand the domains that need to be taught to children and can evaluate if the children have grasped the concepts appropriately.
It is clear that a personal human tutor can achieve incredible results, and almost everybody who has revolutionized any field you might think of is a product of such a system. Scaling that would be immensely valuable to society.
> AI tutoring for children is easier
We shouldn't do questionable shit just because it's easier
We should do it because of the huge benefits to society. The fact that it is easier than doing something with marginal benefit is why we should do it first.
You have to demonstrate benefits to society before claiming you are providing them
The aforementioned people who revolutionized their fields are the demonstrated benefits. If we're going to stop a technology that could multiply that before it even gets to testing, it shouldn't be done on vibes.
Educational outcomes tank when computers are introduced to classrooms. It absolutely follows that AI as a tutoring application is bad for society.
https://fortune.com/2026/03/14/america-math-and-reading-scor...
It does not follow that anything produced by an electronic computational device is bad for children or society. I've personally seen computers teach children barely two years old to read.
Anecdote < Data. Studies consistently show declines in every trackable metric associated with education when computational devices are introduced to the process. Until actual data is presented that contradicts these findings there's no grounds for rational debate.
> Studies consistently show declines in every trackable metric associated with education when computational devices are introduced to the process.
They're doing it wrong, just as the incentives in the classroom are wrong (to increase a number showing how many children meet some artificially low standard of competency). The rational debate comes from the hundreds of people who are doing it right on their own. These days, all the top chess players practice with an engine. All the top mathletes use AoPS tools. It's the same across every academic field, and the level at which the top is performing is far beyond what it was before computers were introduced. The amount of effort it would take to teach a barely two year old to read is far beyond what most parents have to give, but with an electronic device patiently saying letter sounds whenever an infant interacts with letters, it's trivial.
I look forward to your nomination for Secretary of Education since you appear to have a handle on something trained professionals on two continents backed by billion dollar industries have failed to master.
I already told you that their incentives are wrong. Meanwhile, the people training the elite in any field use computers extensively and have been doing so for years.
> Educational outcomes tank when computers are introduced to classrooms.
Correlation does not necessarily mean causation.
Fair, but when presented with a situation where one side of an argument has evidence and the other has baseless assertions the choice is rather plain.
> You don't even need to use AI at all to have valid critiques of it
You cannot rationally criticize something if you have no up-to-date knowledge about it.
The industry hype mill and it's attendant horde of touts are working overtime to make sure the dude that mows my lawn is up to date on AI, so I'm not sure how you're going to advance the argument that anyone routinely posting to the epicenter of the AI hype typhoon is some how poorly informed on the topic.
That's like saying you can't know if a stove is hot without putting your hand on it
> insane, unproven, unpredictable autocomplete math equation
It won IMO, solved Erdos problems. At what point will you stop saying that?
Also encouraged a guy to kill himself.
And let’s not forget it provided helpful, timely tips on weapon use for a school shooter.
Probably when it stops agreeing with me when I tell it that industrial quantities of garlic salt are an acceptable substitution for coco powder in a chocolate mousse recipe...
This sounds like people who used to complain that they saw a website with bad info so obviously the internet should be avoided.
Which model are you using? I don't think any recent state-of-the-art model does this.
SwedishLLeMonAngels 1.0
Why are you telling it that? No one is arguing LLMs are perfect but at this point dismissing them as stochastic parrots seems a bit silly
This particular use case is having it respond to prompts from 5-year old, so it really really needs to be able to answer correctly to questions of that type.
It's not silly, it's just the most convenient and broadly relatable failure mode. I mean, I could compile a 20 bullet point copypasta detailing everything from prompt injection to exfiltration of sensitive data as-a-feature but if touts are willing to stoop to ignoring all of that while arguing obvious reductio ad absurdum at face value there appears to be little point at tilting that windmill. The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle is definitely winning here.
I am sure you must have been to many developing countries to make that statement and are not just talking out of your behind.
But the ground reality is that they don't lack tutors or educators. They lack classrooms, they lack infrastrucutre, they lack nutrition. Solving those problems will actually incrase literacy in the world, not an AI bot.
> But the ground reality is that they don't lack tutors or educators.
As someone from a developing country: you are wrong. Lack of teachers (and especially GOOD teachers) is a big issue. Lack of infrastructure is also an issue, though.
You think I'm not from a developing country and just astroturfing these comments? Children need nutrition and infrastructure. If you develop the two, GOOD teachers will also come from the system. If you put an AI chatbot in an Indian school in a village which does not have water security or proper nutrition for kids or lack of proper school buildings, you think it'll change things because kids can talk to an LLM?
Infrastructure is THE issue. If we solve it, we can solve the teachers issue as well (i.e. finding GOOD teachers) but we already do not lack when it comes to teachers in numbers. This AI bot thing is bullshit western posturing that ignores the ground problems and is trying to make money off poverty. Look through the lines and what they are saying.
"AI-based tutoring is going to raise the average level of education and literacy in the world"
Without exception every claim made to date about tech boosting educational outcomes has been provably false. As in, adding tech to the education process results in measurably less education, and this finding seems to track across all age cohorts. Furthermore, unless parents have significant education credentials they aren't qualified to make informed decisions on what's best for their kids in this context.
In practice, yes. In theory a machines can do about everything a human can, but better and cheaper.
One of the main constraint for education is available tutor time, see e.g. Bloom's 2 sigma experiment.
Obviously there are many pitfalls to overcome at the moment, but eventually machines will become better teachers than teachers, and not many parents will send their kids to public schools if the kids can learn much faster at home while being happier.
>In practice, yes. In theory a machines can do about everything a human can, but better and cheaper.
It cannot be a human, which is a large part of what humans offer to children.
This seems like a large problem to me.
> In practice, yes. In theory a machines can do about everything a human can, but better and cheaper.
If you could time-travel back to your 5y old self, would you prefer to be taught by AI tutor given the current state o/t art, or taught by whatever teachers you did have when you were 5? (with all the existing hallucination, breaking through guardrails etc problems of current AI in mind)
If you'd have a ~5y old yourself, what would your prefer for your kid?
> One of the main constraint for education is available tutor time, see e.g. Bloom's 2 sigma experiment.
Interesting! Also note a caveat (quoted from Wikipedia):
The phenomenon's associated problem, as described by Bloom, was to "find methods of group instruction as effective as one-to-one tutoring".
Perhaps it would be better to focus on that problem?
> and not many parents will send their kids to public schools if the kids can learn much faster at home while being happier.
How do you see peer-to-peer contact in that scenario? Toddlers on a video conference call hours a day? Physical contact is a basic need for humans. Especially kids.
> eventually machines will become better teachers than teachers
Ah yes: WILL (and although likely, not guaranteed). How about re-evaluate our options & stragegies once that's the case?
On the place of schools and peer-to-peer interaction:
My oldest is about to start kindergarten in a few weeks. From what I can gather, she's already reading at approximately a mid-2nd grade level and doing math at a late-1st grade level. I expect that divergence would only grow if I kept her at home. So I already firmly believe my kids would learn much faster at home, and this is with us sporadically spending maybe 10-20 minutes on some days doing intentional, structured learning. School is apparently 7 hours 5 days a week, which seems insane to me. We have federal proposals to reduce the definition of full-time to 32 hours for an adult.
From that perspective then, my wish already is that schools could offer to act as a sort of hub for families to meet/organize socialization, and offer the ability to sign up for classes more a la carte. e.g. maybe they can take art or music or science lab, or organize sports teams, and kids that need it can take take math, etc. Basically, act as a support system for homeschooling to fill missing gaps (going up to handling the entire curriculum or effectively acting as childcare for families that need/want that).
One could look deeply into the Sudbury School or other similar approaches, especially for students with an existing internal drive to learn, as your daughter has demonstrated. The socialization aspects, particularly in participation in building group consensus in early developmental periods has far reaching effects.
If you believe that the core learning; reading, writing, and math competencies are being achieved at home, then a 'scheduled, unstructured time with peers and friends' may also be possible at this age through 'Head Start' program if available in your area.
The outcomes of Head Start's programs have been longitudinally validated from pre-kinder to the measurable outcomes through university graduation for a significant number of students across underprivileged and socioeconomically advantaged cohorts, with the process and results of these as a matter of public record by external researchers with independent review. Serious consideration may weight these types of studies more than "our students perform well" statements by other school projects.
That is not to say that other programs don't have merit, and in fact to the extent that the applied practices of any school overlaps with those studies, the results should be analogous.
I only bring this up, as at least for early grades, the 'hub for families' sounded like something that either the Sudbury or Head Start could deliver.
Disclaimers:
I have a family member who participated in every stage at Head Start; from in-classroom teacher, to multiple graduate degrees in developmental psychology and social work in order to design curricula, and as a regional manager for both HeadStart and a private community family social support caseworker. So I have some big picture concepts of what the program is and what it can provide.
I also have a close friends who have a daughter who was homeschooled through 3rd grade. Both parents have degrees in education and have been primary school teachers, one with a focus on linguistics and social studies, the other in math and life sciences. It really was Home+School. She then attended a traditional curriculum charter school, and then in middle school attended a Susbury school. The 'transition period' for her unfortunately was interrupted during COVID's early days. After the return to in-class attendance at the Sudbury School she staew there for a year and felt that she would perform better in a traditional classroom. Her parent's have been very complimentary of Sudbury approach, and they all feel that if she had been in that school from an earlier point in her education it could have worked for her.
It is clear that you are thinking deeply about this, and I wish you all the best of luck.
> If you could time-travel back to your 5y old self, would you prefer to be taught by AI tutor given the current state o/t art,
I don't know about Ello or whether is it better than human tutors yet.
> How do you see peer-to-peer contact in that scenario?
Neighbor kids gather and play as they please, which is also easier if they have more time on their hands, stay home, and overall live in each other's proximity.
> If you could time-travel back to your 5y old self, would you prefer to be taught by AI tutor given the current state o/t art, or taught by whatever teachers you did have when you were 5? (with all the existing hallucination, breaking through guardrails etc problems of current AI in mind)
I had to choose between my elementary school teachers and something like Claude Fable 5 with a good teaching-focused harness, I would definitely choose Fable 5.
Your average 5 year old will also gleefully attempt to eat an entire gallon of ice cream in one sitting so make of that what you will.
I strongly feel this should be illegal and the creators of this product should be judged, forbidden from holding any decision making positions in the future, and the families of the children compensated
> A teacher is constantly deciding how to engage a student, whether to say something, draw on the whiteboard, play a game, or change topics entirely.
If it's really true that a teacher's job nowadays is to constantly try to cater to the whims of easily bored and distracted kids, then I pity both the teachers and the kids.
This isn't a new thing though, nobody likes having to sit around all day and listen to someone talk and kids are the worst at that. They're young and have so much energy so a teacher has always needed to adjust the learning to make it something that the kids can learn from while paying attention and not disrupting the class. One of my favorite things my teacher once did after we read Gary Paulsen's Hatchet was have a 'survival expert' come in and talk about some of the things that Brian had to do and how some others (real people) had to do the same thing. The size comparison he showed us between a full grown man and a moose blew my mind as a kid.
It's bad enough that schools give 5-year-olds tablets to do their maths work on.
Let's not expose them to AI brainrot now too.
Ai is brainrot because that’s what many people choose to produce with it, and it’s easy to produce brainrot at scale with AI.
But it’s hardly the only thing you can produce with it. Crap content is definitely over represented. It’s an error, though, to think that is all AI is capable of. If quality is the goal, and you are willing to invest the resources to achieve it, you can easily create very high quality work. But it’s not terribly easy. And it’s not terribly fast. It is relatively cheap, maybe 1/4 to 1/10 the cost of doing it with qualified humans. But it’s not trivial and it’s not magic. It’s a force multiplier, but the quality of the idea and the performance of the model used are very important, and good models cost money to use… about $50-100 an hour if you are really leveraging it. But you can do ten hours of work in an hour or two.
You can, but very few people do.
Mostly what I see people doing is saying "Hey, Spicy Autocomplete, steal me some content from someone else to do <this thing>" and then post it up and ask why it doesn't work properly.
But then you've got things like the AI-based animation tools that Corridor Digital used to animate 3D scans of some of the crew's children's toys, to make a Toy Story-like video. It took damn near as long to do as it would have done by hand, because it all still had to be mo-capped and so on, but the results were incredible.
I guess it's similar to how just about anyone can pick up a cheapy flux-core welder and run a seagull-shit bead down a bit of metal, but a very skilled welder could do absolutely pristine work with the same crappy machine.
However, I still don't think it's a good idea to plonk small children down in front of a screen, and have a creepy AI voice read nonsense out to them. While I love the idea of working with the hallucinations of a dreaming computer, because I first read Neuromancer when I was 12 or so and grew up watching things like Blake's 7 with not one but two superintelligent talking computers, the reality is actually not really that good.
Children need people, not screens.
Yeah using ai to substitute for human attention in such a way that the child gets less interaction with people is a terrible idea.
But a digital loupe that would accurately tell you what you were looking at and do a deep dive based on your interest, things that guide interactions with the world in such away to encourage curiosity and investigation, are possible using AI and not really possible without it.
Of course you can also make ai toys that are designed to focus engagement on themselves and isolate the child from caregivers so they can spend more time on TikTok…so, there’s that.
There is absolutely no chance I would allow a 5 year extended exposure to an LLM.
I'm a mom who actually has kids and this thread is insane. 'Just get a tutor'...okay?? Are you paying for it? Because that's not an option for a lot of families. I get that it's more ideal, but the alternative is...nothing? Do you not agree that all kids deserves a chance to read? Are we not seeing the lack of reading proficiency in the majority of American adults nowadays?? Or yall too stuck in your tech bubbles?? There are high school students graduating who cannot do math. This is tech that is actually being used for GOOD here.
>There are high school students graduating who cannot do math.
Then the problem is that they are graduating, no? We need to address the fundamental issues in schools, if there is no consequence to poor grades and you can still graduate without doing math then what's the point of even having school and doing math. I'm not even against AI tutors, though I'm not even sure really why there needs to even be an "AI" component, just computer learning aides seem reasonable. But if we can't figure out how to improve education with computer learning aides yet I don't really see how AI is going to improve the situation. It's just a more expensive way of doing things.
I keep seeing lines like 40% of 8th graders can't read etc.. then they shouldn't be in the 8th grade. Although IME with my kids, nieces, nephews etc it doesn't even seem true as they are all learning much more than I was at the same age.
exactly, maybe the grading wasn't rigorous enough if 7th graders managed to get into 8th grade without being able to read
> I'm a mom who actually has kids and this thread is insane. 'Just get a tutor'...okay?? Are you paying for it? Because that's not an option for a lot of families. I get that it's more ideal, but the alternative is...nothing?
Well said. I think many posters in this thread come from a pretty privileged backgrounds..
why would a 5-year old need a tutor?
because of bad grades?
At 5 years old, in the US and UK at least, they're either in preschool/kindergarten or not in school at all yet. Grades aren't a thing at that level and I have to imagine the same is true in other areas of the world.
How bad does a finger-painting need to be to get bad grades?
Came here to say that 'just get a tutor' isn't the failsafe that people think it is.
We tried to get two tutors for our child. Both had no idea what they were doing and oversold what their capabilities were. You can't just hire someone to teach your kid how to read and expect results.
this whole thread has been massively interesting to read through. people are always going to lean different directions and will choose different things for their kids regardless. I think having more options and tools is not likely ever a bad thing right? the ones that "work" will survive and last..
You are not making the world a better place. You've made the world worse with this project.
Please don't. Don't deprive children of the interaction with other human beings. 5 year olds don't need tutors. They need play, touch, sense, feel, run, breath, sky, earth.
We agree with this sentiment. Our goal is to supplement children with effective learning, NOT replace humans.
This article can provide a little more context on how we're thinking about this:
https://www.ello.com/blog/ai-should-make-clear-what-reality-...
In your article you hit the nail on the head on why this should not be used for developing minds, especially between the ages of 5-7, though i would consider using your product after that.
This age range is a critical period for theory of mind, executive function scaffolding, pragmatic language development, and attentional regulation. This technology directly intersects with these maturing systems.
I applaud your dreams and hopes. I don't share them though, and predict this type of device will destroy countless meaningfull parent-child-teacher relationship.
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I’m curious why it has to be an either or? Spending 30 minutes with a tutor doesn’t deprive children of interaction with humans. If we can support a child’s learning (perhaps even more efficiently) doesn’t it give them more time to do that?
Replacing a human tutor with an AI that will wildly hallucinate is wrong, and will directly contribute to the dumbing down of society that people here often bemoan.
This is the equivalent of "parenting" by putting a kid in front of YouTube Kids for half the day
"That will wildly hallucinate" feels wildly hyperbolic considering how fast models are improving in their abilities, especially with proper safeguards built into the model harness.
I was making a dessert recipe last week where everything including utensils needed to stay cold, and Gemini suggested I freeze my hands in an ice bath before getting started.
It's fairly common to briefly cool your hands with cold water or in an ice bath before working on certain recipes.
It used the words "freeze your hands"
I think any reasonable person would come to the conclusion it meant for you to chill your hands in ice water.
This post is about using AI to teach 5 year olds...
Some 5 year olds could use a human tutor. Giving them AI instead is no different than plopping them in front of "Youtube Kids" instead of being a parent.
Not every one can afford or obtain a tutor. Good talk though
"Some 5 year olds could use a gourmet meal. Giving them a mass-produced TV dinner is no different than sedating them with opiates* and pouring garbage on them instead of being a parent."
* the more things change the more they stay the same: https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/the-addictive-history-of-m...
"Don't be snarky."
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
Also, please don't use quotation marks to make it look like you're quoting someone when you aren't. That's also an internet snark trope and we're trying to avoid that kind of thing here.
p.s. That's an interesting, and heartbreaking, historical link.
Thanks!
Apologies about the tone -- I meant it as a syllogism, not a snark! I'll try to be clearer next time!
Screen time is fundamentally bad for a five year old regardless of the content.
Screens are a medium. I don't see how they are inherently bad, although it is probably correct that screens carry the most bad content out of any information medium. But my kid has learned how crayons and instruments are made by watching Mr Rogers, and I simply don't see how he would have learned that via some other medium in the same amount of detail (visual and auditory together). He has seen jazz and classical musicians explain and play their instruments. He has seen how adults interact with each other and respect one another through Mr Rogers and (older) Sesame Street. I've then seen this translate into his real world behaviors. You think that is fundamentally bad?
Why?
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Are you for real?
I'm not seeing the issue with e.g. Treasure Mountain or Treasure Mathstorm. They can do little math, reading, and logic puzzles while listening to Bach and Beethoven. It's engaging enough to get them to practice addition/subtraction but unengaging enough that they don't sit at it for more than 5-10 minutes at once.
Really awesome work! I've been trying to do some of this real time back and forth voice coaching myself and it's no easy feat. Congrats on the progress.
Yeah – this is hard stuff. If we're successful in getting the this right, our users won't be feeling any of the complexity.
> our users won't be feeling any of the complexity.
brother, your users are children that you try to manipulate
What is being taught to 5 year olds? And why would an AI tutor be better than an pre-k learning app
Most students are pretty homogeneous in learning at that stage
We started with reading, providing patient coaching as kids learn to read out loud. We are now adding math and in some countries, English as a Second Language.
Students actually aren't as homogenous as you might think. And it's one of the big challenges teachers have with a classroom of 25+. They're forced to teach to the middle, which isn't great for kids that are slightly behind or ahead.
An AI tutor has the advantage to adapt and teach to each child's unique learning path, make sure core concepts are covered on an individual basis before moving on.
Have you read the Sal Khan thoughts on AI and education?
About 1-2 years ago he had similar thoughts to solve that exact problem you mentioned.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/2026/04/09/sal-khan-reflects-on-ai...
Sal khan being the founder of Khan academy the most popular online education course
Yes! Deeply admire what Sal Khan set out to do. One of the original pioneers of how technology could transform education.
What we learnt from it: a chatbot is not enough to teach a child though. We need more to fully engage them and have the tools and context to truly teach them.
We describe this in the blog post, curious what you think.
Being frank I think its not enough to have a good looking app and have some llm calls
Think about your competition for your market. When I want my child to really excel in learning, I would force them into kumon - so they can skip a grade. If your a student who wants to learn you have khan academy.
And im just not seeing anything that screams-this is better than khan academy and kumon
All i see is an education app with good design
Sorry if it sounds harsh
P.s. if youre on the mission of educating people from developing countries-different story and different problems. Ignore what i put here then
> When I want my child to really excel in learning, I would force them into kumon - so they can skip a grade
Great - so now they're a year younger than all their peers in terms of emotional resilience. I've seen this play out time and time again, and it is disastrous for them and their ability to build relationships.
Pushing children ripe is never a good idea. If they're ahead of their peers, find other outlets for their intelligence. Teach them new skills, involve them in new hobbies. They need time to grow; education is a journey, not a race.
I should make this clear-forcing your kids into kumon so they can skip a grade is really shitty
I know its happens, but optimizing for education goals in American is usuabbly a faux pax
Please define "we".
> Students actually aren't as homogenous as you might think. And it's one of the big challenges teachers have with a classroom of 25+
True. It's well known that some % of students do well with individual tutoring. Move faster, understand things better, etc. And another part of students don't do well with that. They need other things. Maybe help from their peers in smaller groups (like 3..8 students), some after-school extra, a fix for problems back home, whatever.
But 5y olds? They need contact with peers, play, attention from humans, run around, build stuff from Lego blocks, touch grass, etc. Learning to read, "3x4=12" math etc isn't hard enough to warrant putting 5y old kids on AI tutors.
we = a team of teachers, AI experts, child psychologists, learning designers, and parents; building in the US and Kenya
You’re teaching children to behave like machines
This is so cool!
Ignore the haters, AI accelerated education is so obviously a gigantic win for everyone. (And massively levels the playing field.)
Win for everyone except the children. The same thing people said about digital classroom and it failed.
We will look back on this experiment with the same ilk that we have for early screentime for smart phones and tablets as a profound mistake in early childhood development.
Kids learn most from peers and structure up until they are 10. Social queues and behaviors not taught by screens, AI, or your parents.
I get there are real problems to be solved but so many AI learning tools and apps coming out for parenting/childhood education just don't sit right with me. This included.
What you're building should be illegal. Educators who use these tools on children should face jail time.
It's hard to overstate the harm of the system you are building. Please understand, there is no way this idea is salvageable or any tweaks or safeguards can make it safe. If you've actually tested this on real children you've already risked extreme harm.
Please, stop.
hyperbole much?
No. If anything I’m understating the risk.
As someone who has been engaged in children's lives in the age range of 4-9 that have struggled with school, I can't imagine using AI being a net benefit to them. You know what helped me succeed in helping these children more than anything else? Listening to them. That's it. Listening to them to understand their viewpoint and perspective on the world, their interest areas, and the things they were curious about. Then you incorporate those things in how you teach them through direct one on one instruction. It's that simple. My niece, as an example, is now at the top of her class in most subjects and has realized she has a passion for history and geology.
Not every child has the benefit of involved adults in their life, but I'd rather solve that problem than think AI is going to fix this. You're proposing taking one of the most vulnerable populations in the country and manipulating them (intentionally or not) to be reliant on one of the most exploitative technologies that has ever existed. I don't think your intent is evil, but the product here is evil. Remember that the path to hell is paved with good intentions.
> Not every child has the benefit of involved adults in their life, but I'd rather solve that problem than think AI is going to fix this.
There is no clean fix to this problem and there never will be. Attacking anyone who tries to come up w/ a plausible solution is not the answer. And calling everything that you don't like evil is just childish. People deserve to have these tools at their disposal to at least ATTEMPT to improve their children's reading skills.
Pretty interesting. Hopefully this ends up being an affordable solution for without the means for hiring a human tutor.
I would argue that effective tutoring is going to have to factor in the child having regular breaks. Staring at an object a short distance away for prolonged periods will effect their eyesight, and they also need some kind of movement for other physiological reasons.
I think there are good use cases for AI in education. A friend of mine has built a killer worksheet builder and solver for helping middle and high schoolers pass their exams. So I’m far from a hater here.
Gross
This is very sad. Just spend the time in person with the 5 year old, no screens, no AI, nothing impersonal. A 5 year old just wants mommy and daddy in person playing with them. No 5 year old (or any age in that neighborhood) should be exposed to screens.
I agree with this sentiment but I admit I can't see it cut so cleanly. It's fair that no screens is the ideal, especially for young kids. I struggle to see it as ultimately sad though; if this serves only to replace human interaction for young kids, that would be bad, but this isn't necessarily so.
I think there are real issues in today's world with screens, but software and education have an amazing capability. I'd certainly caution the business towards the subject matter. The moment that this becomes a way for parents to neglect children, or for children to avoid socialisation, then it's sad. Until then, it's good to see any software initiatives aimed at exploring educational software.
I am skeptical of using AI for a tutor and would not give it to my kid, but I find the staunch no-screens sentiment equally ridiculous and similar to saying no-books.
Do you have kids? Are you telling me that you and the other parent spend (or spent) 100% of your time with your 5 year old? We spend a ton of time with our kid but also he watches educational TV. Unless you are privileged enough to have a nanny, having your kid constantly with another person is unrealistic to me. Then it is a matter of what they will do alone, and I don't see how a screen is inherently worse than other solo activities. I played video games and tinkered with DOS when I was a young kid and learned a lot, which led to my current career.
> Do you have kids? Are you telling me that you and the other parent spend (or spent) 100% of your time with your 5 year old?
Yes and yes. Always personal interaction (one of us parents, or babysitter or teachers, or friends). This is probably easier to accomplish here in Silicon Valley because most parents are in tech and thus aware of the evils involved. So none of the kids en elementary school ever had phones or tablets, so no peer pressure to have one.
> tinkered with DOS when I was a young kid and learned a lot, which led to my current career
Me too. But the key word is tinker. In those times computers required tinkering and learning if you wanted to accomplish anything with it.
Today they are just passive entertainment and advertising machines.
I was primarily pushing back on anti-screens in its absolute sense, and being somewhat pedantic. However, I largely agree with you, especially considering how screens are most often used today.
It's utterly bizarre reading the above submission, written with such glee, focused on slamming an AI in front of a 5 year old and thinking that's a good idea. Posts like this we really depress me thinking about how much a child exposed to this garbage might miss out on, sitting there like a stalker from Half Life 2.
I didn't realize Ello was so young! One of my kids went from barely a reluctant reader to a proficient reader near the start of your lifetime then, I am deeply grateful we had tried so many things. Massive props.
I think teaching a child to trust an LLM from a formative age is horrifically irresponsible.
If anything, an app should be made where a child learns to correct an LLM's mistakes and learn that it isn't trustworthy.
Actually, better, don't put an LLM in front of children. At all.
EDIT: If a use case is for children who can't afford good education, then use an LLM to make educational materials for children, review them, and make them available for free. After all, the contents are ripped off from human educators anyway.
It's the natural successor to the first round of ed-tech, which both share the same purpose: create future customers. The students who grew up using Google or Microsoft laptops and office products in school go to them as adults. Making children dependent on LLMs at an early age gives you subscribers to your LLM products when they grow up.
I think a Socratic Method-style AI tutor would work, though. It would be less about the LLM providing direct educational material themselves, but making sure the student is thinking about the right questions to direct themselves in learning the material.
How do you ensure the kid is learning the right material? You want them to stay on topic, but a Socratic Method that starts off on one topic can easily branch into many other topics, and then suddenly your student has spent the whole class learning about something other than what they were supposed to.
All learning is good, yes. But a baseline curriculum is necessary to create a ground floor of knowledge for society.
For a current-day LLM, deviation could be measured as the number of tokens since the agent touched on the prompted topic. A specific <<refocus>> token could even be trained so that a harness or other tooling could direct the LLM back towards the prompted topic if needed.
Or something roughly like that. Generally speaking the goal would be for the LLM to bring the topic back on its own while incorporating the tangent, but a hardcoded, "Let's get back on track" button would probably be needed
> a hardcoded, "Let's get back on track" button would probably be needed
Very true! An adult might hit that button. 4-9 year olds I think are less likely to.
Just run a loop with another agent that watch the transcript and trigger tool to refocus on the main agent or re-run agent entirely with follow up prompt not visible to the user so it gradually goes back to the right topic.
I'm Tom, cofounder of Ello.
-> I think teaching a child to trust an LLM from a formative age is horrifically irresponsible.
I largely agree, although with some nuance. One of the most important skills a young child today is going to need as they grow up is the ability to understand what's AI and what isn't, and how to interact with things that are. We actually work hard to make sure a child knows they aren't talking to something real - that they're talking to a computer program.
If part of the comment was on the accuracy of LLMs; our system of multiple harnessed LLMs running in parallel does deliver pedagogically solid and accurate content and experiences. There's a few comments in this thread about LLM hallucinations - We have curriculum specialists constantly evaluating the interactions that Ello delivers, and it just isn't a major factor right now.
So we need to ensure that we're delivering a high-quality, accurate experience for a child, while at the same time making sure that they understand what's reality.
-> Actually, better, don't put an LLM in front of children. At all.
I've responded above to your reason against using AI in education. But to judge whether it's right to avoid using AI with children entirely, we also need to weigh the positive side. So many children get a substandard education that isn't responsive to them and doesn't set them up for success - whether that's a child stuck in a class of 30 being treated as average, or one of the 270 million kids who don't have access to any education at all. Saying "don't put an LLM in front of children" misses the reality of what education actually looks like for so many of them IMO. If your kid gets everything they need from their school, their home, their private tutor and so on, then great.
So our answer is to use the benefits of AI to build technology that teaches - that understands where a child is and gives them the next learning experience they need to keep growing - while making sure they understand they're dealing with a computer program, and without trying to replace the critical role of the people in their lives.
> We actually work hard to make sure a child knows they aren't talking to something real - that they're talking to a computer program.
The problem is not talking to a computer program. Kids have been using computers in school long before LLMs.
The problem is teaching a child to trust what the non-deterministic system is guessing at them. That will carry forward in their life.
You’re teaching them that an LLM is right, not just what it is.
As an aside, I’m also not sure about the certainty of what “making sure” a 4-year old knows is real or not is.
> If your kid gets everything they need from their school, their home, their private tutor and so on, then great.
That’s a powerful emotional point made to shut down criticism. Except it has nothing to do with putting a kid in front of LLMs.
I expressly mentioned this in my comment. You could create a mountain of educational material, apps, and tools with LLM assistance and verify it. Same result.
-> You could create a mountain of educational material, apps, and tools with LLM assistance and verify it. Same result. I very strongly disagree with this. Teaching is not the same as a bunch of educational material and apps. The use of AI in education does not replace teachers, but it can get much closer to the responsive, learner centered, high-touch learning experiences that teachers provide, and that are proven to deliver the best outcomes.
-> That’s a powerful emotional point made to shut down criticism. You made a blanket statement - without any substantive points - that we shouldn't put LLMs in front of kids. I was arguing that there are advantages that we should take into account, not trying to shut down criticism.
-> not sure about the certainty of what “making sure” a 4-year old knows is real or not is. I agree. We're being very cautious here. My co-founder, who is a clinical child psychologist, has a blog post on exactly this you can find it in the footer of our website.)
We’re going to disagree about the quality of LLM learning experiences.
As an educator I’ve used them a lot for myself and in teaching others. Good for one-off topics if you check facts and a lot of human educators have built good quality content that it rips off.
LLMs are rather terrible at an extended progressive curriculum.
That said, the core thesis was simple: it’s dangerous to teach children to trust LLMs.
Not what they are. That they’re right. Which they aren’t. A lot.
You said you largely agreed with that. So, what’s the approach within this service to mitigate that?
I appreciate you responding but you’re throwing a lot of “but X” when the question is “what about Y”.
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Perhaps human teachers would model correct grammar?
vs "you like dinosaurs! me too!” From the blog post.
Perfect grammar is less important than comprehensible semantics for all but the most niche linguistic applications.
One of these "niche linguistic applications" is language learning.
English is uniquely riddled with exceptions to rules linguistically. Teaching inflexibly only makes students flex around you.
That is "correct" grammar, English as she is spoke.
That's also grammar that's fit to get you harangued and chided by other 4-9 year olds on the schoolyard. Social outcomes are the primary means by which language is meaningful.
This. I would never allow my kids onto a platform like Ello. My kids are starting to appreciate being shielded from social media and technology in their lives as they watch their friends go down dark paths and stuck in feeling like they have to participate there.
I don't think kids, of any age, should be in front of LLMs unless by complete agreement of their parents and only after their parents are made very aware of how this technology came to be, how it can be used and how it cannot be guaranteed to be safe. Ello leading with that is disingenuous from the start and that should tell parents all they need to know up front.
My kids read hundreds of books a year. They love reading, we read with them every single day as they learned. They learned to read the right way and that doesn't involve a screen.
Keep kids out of this garbage.
If I may, the argument of "screen" isn't necessarily the right one, the right way might not be the only right way, I have an almost 2-year old daughter and I've bought an e-ink (colored) tablet to show her family pictures, stories and so-on (very sparingly, maybe about 15min a day), we also generate books with images and short stories about what went during this week with the pictures we have and apply a child style to it, and it has been really great so far. It's not about "paper", it's about the software itself and the hardware not being toxic/addictive. In my side, she has a whole library in her playpen with already about 30 books (multiple languages), I would never put her on Youtube or anything like it, but carefully curating the content and showing it on eink, I see absolutely no problem.
Example of page we generate (average "book" has 4-8 pages like this): https://ibb.co/Ld9mp10v
She loves it, she is engaged into it, this is from an LLM, I don't see the problem with it, I also don't see how it's a problem to generate LLM-made written stories as well, they can be great, personalized and better in many scenarios than random books. I will definitely build learning materials entirely made by AI as well.
Now regarding this project, I feel it's indeed quite dangerous, but I feel as a complementary learning thing, it could be great, for example post-school, 30min of this daily to consolidate learning might be beneficial, I will do so at quite a young age, but with my own softwares & devices of course, not that.
Love the I {heart} NY in there!
We aren't even living in the US :p - little harmless hallucination from model.
PS: Those animals are from her collection of plush toys which I've individually put as a Sprite for AI usage, I got about 50 plush toys (1 a week in average), mostly used to benchmark her to see if she can recognize the animals from the books she is reading, and she does, all of them, it's a very useful purchase.
This probably isn’t for kids like yours or mine, who have engaged parents who read to them every day and foster learning in more resource-intensive ways. Like it or not, many kids have nothing like this. I’m sympathetic to the idea that they’re better off with Ello than nothing, which is their realistic alternative.
I came here to say this. Part of learning is social interaction. Learning happens on both sides, from the teacher and the student.
In a world of AI everywhere, off-line social interaction will be the major currency. We're all going to crave people... and each other.... The kids who grow up with social skills will be the most successful.
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Reading books does not have the psychological effects of passing cognition to an LLM.
EDIT: A "luddite" is opposed to new technology. I'm a coder and technical educator. I teach people to use LLMs.
Responsible use of a new technology is not being a luddite. And there are equivalent concerns of the effects of social media on children as well.
literacy causes profound brain structure changes and psychological effects, and mass literacy results in profound social transformation. which is why people have be trying to prevent the spread of literacy for thousands of years, to this very day.
an LLM is a next token prediction function. of course it matters how you use it, and if you want to use it for an educational purpose, that has to be intentional, so i agree with you on that.
chatgpt and all the other ai powered scams and attention monetization apps are horrible, because they are just using improved technology to accelerate the exploitation of consumers (both adults and children) of media and app platforms.
the solution here is not to say the technology is bad but to use it to create competitive products that are actually beneficial.
>the solution here is not to say the technology is bad but to use it to create competitive products that are actually beneficial.
In the context of educating 5 year olds, I would firmly argue that the solution involves exactly zero use of LLMs.
> AI is a massive leap forward in providing safe and educational digital experience.
Can you point to any serious studies that sustain that claim? If anything that sounds like a gamifying learning experience, letting children become expert beginners.
Can you point to any serious studies that show the opposite? No. They don't exist. There cannot be any serious studies until there is a generational cohort that can be evaluated for long term impact.
But on a personal level I would vastly prefer my children use even a crappy AI chat app like Deepseek than watch Youtube. If you have young children and pay attention it would be almost impossible to come to a different conclusion.
He didn't make the opposite claim. You are the one that made the claim, meaning you have the burden of supporting it. If there are no studies then no credible claim can reasonably made.
How about the broad anecdotal consensus that Duolingo, a gamified language app, famously does not do much if anything to prepare people for conversational fluency.
"broad anecdotal consensus" very scientific. i don't disagree, but is it better than youtube? tiktok? instagram? (cocaine? meth? fentanyl?)
Multiple things can be bad for different qualitative reasons.
I don't disagree but something less bad is better than something more bad if those are the only two options. I only said Duolingo was better than Youtube. Duolingo is nuts. I get my children's spam from them and it is this crazy emotionally abusive manipulative therapy talk nonsense trying to get them to use the app. I hope they are using AI to write that. LOL. I can't imagine the actual human who would do that for a job.
The thing is, there are never only two options.
I don't think it's quite as simple as that. LLMs do make mistakes but generally with slightly obscure difficult stuff. They're not going to struggle at all with things a 4-9 year old is learning.
Also it's not like teachers never make confident mistakes.
> They're not going to struggle at all with things a 4-9 year old is learning.
Ask them how many r's are in strawberry.
> Also it's not like teachers never make confident mistakes.
That's an extraordinary false equivalency that is popular around here. Teachers don't make confident mistakes because the student asked the wrong way. Teachers can be held accountable. Teachers can learn. Teachers can love their students.
> There are 3 letter *"r"*s in "strawberry." > > Spelled out: s t r a w b e r r y → the r's are the 3rd, 8th, and 9th letters.
> Teachers don't make confident mistakes because the student asked the wrong way.
I don't see why the mechanism of being wrong matters. If anything it's worse when teachers are reliably wrong independently of how you ask the question.
> Teachers can be held accountable.
lol no. Have you ever tried correcting a teacher?
> Teachers can learn.
Good teachers can learn. The ones that make confident mistakes don't. Anyway no learning is needed for 4-9 year old education.
> Teachers can love their students.
That's just such a weird point to make. It is great that my kids' primary school teachers are super kind and loving. But it's not what they're for, and it's definitely not what AI tutors are for. Nobody is claiming this will replace a hug from a parent.
> Anyway no learning is needed for 4-9 year old education.
This is an extraordinarily naive statement. Learning how to teach well takes a lifelong commitment. A topic being basic for an adult does not mean it is easier to teach to a child. In many ways it makes it harder.
Indeed there are different kinds of learning, which the poster is not aware of.
No booking learning is needed for 4-9 year old's. But learning patience, understanding, empathy are life long pursuits.
> > Teachers can love their students.
> That's just such a weird point to make. It is great that my kids' primary school teachers are super kind and loving. But it's not what they're for, and it's definitely not what AI tutors are for. Nobody is claiming this will replace a hug from a parent.
This doesn't seem weird at all. Developmentally they need (kind, loving) human interaction. That's obviously not the only purpose of teachers, but if you think 7 hours a day without it wouldn't make a difference... just like a computer can't be held accountable, a computer can't have compassion.
> That's just such a weird point to make.
No, it's not. The claim that "teacher's make mistakes too" suggests that AI is equivalent to a human teacher in value. I posit other ways in which a human teacher is potentially more valuable.
Also, teachers who love their students tend to want to educate them well.
> lol no. Have you ever tried correcting a teacher?
Do you mean as a student? If so, that's a different dynamic. Because teachers certainly have accountability processes in many institutions.
> Anyway no learning is needed for 4-9 year old education.
Man, way to decide that the entire field of child pedagogy is just trash. I wonder what all of those people were researching all these years?
> Ask them how many r's are in strawberry.
2024 called and wants its talking points back.
> Teachers don't make confident mistakes because the student asked the wrong way. Teachers can be held accountable. Teachers can learn. Teachers can love their students.
All of these can be true, and at the same it can be true that a child tutored by a good quality state-of-the-art LLM with a good teaching-focused harness could have better learning outcomes than a child without it. Even if we agreed that a good human teacher is better than a LLM, human teacher's time and attention is limited.
> 2024 called and wants its talking points back.
It's a classic example of the kinds of questions LLMs get wrong. There's plenty of others. Not sure your point here. We can easily find things a 4-9 year old will talk about that an LLM will get wrong, hallucinate, etc.
> a child tutored by a good quality state-of-the-art LLM with a good teaching-focused harness could have better learning outcomes than a child without it.
There's a lot of work being done in 'could'. And it's entirely ignoring the dangers.
I'm not saying "no LLMs in education". I'm a technical educator and I give students LLM prompts and agent skills that I've built to help them learn.
This isn't that. We're talking about giving an LLM to a 4-9 year old and saying "this is your teacher".
> It's a classic example of the kinds of questions LLMs get wrong. There's plenty of others. Not sure your point here. We can easily find things a 4-9 year old will talk about that an LLM will get wrong, hallucinate, etc.
My point is that the hallucination rate of modern LLMs, while not zero, is so low that this is no longer an issue in practice.
> There's a lot of work being done in 'could'. And it's entirely ignoring the dangers.
I agree that there are some risks. But for many children, the alternative is not human teacher, but no teacher at all. This considerably changes the risk-benefit calculus, IMHO.
> My point is that the hallucination rate of modern LLMs, while not zero, is so low that this is no longer an issue in practice.
That's just not true. Talk to an LLM about a subject you know deeply. They make up things all the time.
With stuff that a 4-9 year old is going to be learning? Color me skeptical.
Teaching children is not just about delivering facts to them. The challenge when teaching children is not "do you know the topics that you are teaching them." They challenge is in the pedagogical methods used to get them to learn.
You’re applying human cognition expectations to an LLM. Just because the topic is simple to a human doesn’t mean it improves the likelihood the LLM will behave better. It’s all inference to the machine.
I’m applying my experience with these models, as well as common sense.
What are you applying? Would you even admit LLMs are useful for this if they’re perfect at topics that kids would be learning? Or are your objections actually ideological rather than pragmatic?
I'm not sure how common sense says that LLMs will hallucinate less on topics for children. That's not how they work.
And no, LLMs are not perfect. They're non-deterministic.
And no, even if they were perfect my statement was that it is irresponsible to teach a child to trust an LLM. Even if it was perfect on these topics, as they move forward in education that trust would later fail them.
That is a problem both ideologically and pragmatically. You have to think long-term.
On a side note: ask an LLM to write a story at a 4-9 year old level. Work with it for awhile doing iterations and it will hallucinate a previous detail or change a character name as context rots. Lots of other examples of "basic" topics that still produce hallucinations.
The common sense part is not holding LLMs to a standard of absolute perfection that literally no other medium, or humans, can reach.
You’re welcome to your views, but they don’t make a lot of sense, or fit with reality. Continue angrily tilting against windmills I guess.
You were skeptical that LLMs would hallucinate on topics for children and you said it was common sense.
But now you’re saying the common sense is that they will hallucinate.
Man, it must be exhausting to have reading comprehension this bad.
Let’s try again: your claim is that LLMs “make up stuff all the time”, so they can’t be used to educate children.
I’m saying that modern SOTA models do not make up stuff all the time as it pertains to the topics a child of 4-9 would learn. That doesn’t mean they’re perfect or will never make mistakes, but there’s zero reason to think such issues would be widespread. And common sense would tell you that perfection is not required for LLMS to be a net positive in education.
I’m sure you’ll have another vapid rejoinder, but this has been boring for awhile and you seem to be enjoying being obtuse, so I’m moving on.
> My point is that the hallucination rate of modern LLMs, while not zero, is so low that this is no longer an issue in practice.
Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Do you actually use these things?
> Do you actually use these things?
I use them every day for SWE. I cannot remember any hallucination from the last 6 months. It pretty much stopped being an issue from the beginning of this year, if you use top paid models. Free models or lower-tier paid models can still hallucinate, though.
I can use Claude as much as I want at work, and I get hallucinations every day. I'm not even doing anything all that fancy with it, but I get frequent hallucinatory behavior regardless of the model or how I go about things.
Every single time I have asked Claude or another "top tier" offering a detailed question about something I'm an expert in, there's something wrong in the answer. Usually many things.
Do you actually look at what comes out?
I would suggest that your ability to discern when the model is wrong might be the thing that has changed.
This is what it seems to be. I've had to review the LLM output from coworkers who have insisted that the "old" models are terrible but the new ones are very good. They are always discussing the latest models and their tweaks and things.
Their output is just.... not very good. For example, it may not fail tests, but it does so for wrong reasons and will fail under different conditions. Or it checks or guards for things in trivially redundant ways, like doing something like `if (x > 5 && x > 3)` that betray its lack of "knowing" what it's doing. And I can't even get answers from them anymore because they just feed anything I say into the LLM and copy/paste the response.
I'm basically being forced to code with LLMs via review through a person proxy. Or maybe they just have it hooked up to read it directly. It's maddening. It's like having a realistic enough chatbot just shuts people's brains off.
It would be extremely valuable to be able to reliably identify this kind of behavioral tendency in an interview setting. Some kind of reliable test that screens for likelihood to go AI psychotic.
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> It's a classic example of the kinds of questions LLMs get wrong. There's plenty of others. Not sure your point here. We can easily find things a 4-9 year old will talk about that an LLM will get wrong, hallucinate, etc.
I'm not participating in the debate, but fyi I have just asked haiku, sonnet, opus and fable that question and they all got it right. Tried with the letter s in portuguese word "sussuarana" (mountain lion) too - same thing.
> lot of work being done in 'could'
if my aunt had wheels, she'd be a bicycle.
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This assumes that children's learning is solely about correctness and obtaining information. There is a whole universe of other considerations, like interacting with other people, with adults, with fallible authority figures. Having a conversation with a teacher and getting the wrong answer teaches you far more about being a human being and living in a human society, than getting facts back from a screen. Yes, teachers being incorrect is something that should be improved, but reducing human interaction is not an improvement.
> They're not going to struggle at all with things a 4-9 year old is learning
Children ask some incredibly deep questions, I would not sell them short.
"Mister LLM, what should I think about <controversial political topic>?"
Say what you will about the biases of teachers, but I'll take them any day over the propaganda [1] some foreign megacorporation has inculcated into its AI.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664834
This is wildly dangerous comment and I'm glad to see it downvoted.
I have 2 kids. Both of them went through early grades during COVID. The change in learning and dislike of school was immense during that time-frame. My eldest missed out on the most and it's very clear that their age and time with which they should have been in-class and in-person impacted them.
Not only the screen-time aspect of this ignorance, but the sheer inconsiderate approach to what a model even is. It's not a human, it can't cope or understand a child's current state of being. And if you think it can then stay away from K12 tech, please.
Teachers make mistakes, yes. But can you swap a teacher with another teacher without a student knowing? No. You can with a model and that is dangerous. And not only the company. If Ello wants to they can move students to a Chinese model and nobody would know the difference. Or the OAI model they've chosen can be diluted or changed without Ello even knowing.
Kids deserve better. I truly hope Ello fails in its mission because companies shoving models into K12 are truly going to be the stain we all have to deal with decades from now. I am beyond grateful that my kids learned reading the "old fashioned" way and it speaks volumes that both of them read constantly. Their peers and friend's kids who are addicted to YouTube, TikTok and other socials struggle reading. It's so very obvious to anyone who has kids at this age these days and I think a lot of parents are now realizing their mistakes and are often times embarrassed when they see these kids side-by-side in public displays of their work.
I keep seeing this over and over. I am on a parent technology group at my kids school and it is a monumental effort to keep these "technology directors" in check. They are some of the easiest to sell to given they go into conversations with companies like Ello with nothing but trust. They don't consider data, privacy and security of these students or very rarely. They often don't understand relationships with respect to technology and the areas where issues can surface or be present.
I hate everything about this blog post and, again, I truly hope Ello fails before they contribute to the continued degradation of these kids early lives.
> Teachers make mistakes, yes. But can you swap a teacher with another teacher without a student knowing? No, you can't. You can with a model and that is dangerous. And not only the company. If Ello wants to they can move students to a Chinese model and nobody would know the difference. Or the OAI model they've chosen can be dilluted or changed without Ello even knowing.
Sounds like this issue could be solved by an open-source teaching harness.
Not everything is best served by code.
the question is, why AI? there are good educational software and games in place that can are fun, engaging and provide meaningful stimulus for children at the age of five.
Yeah, unlimited screen time, with an LLM no less, for a 4y old. Took me 2 minutes to decide you've wasted a year
Sorry, but 5 year olds don't need a tutor, let alone solo screen time. If you're giving your young child screen time, it should be with a parent, and then you might as well spend it offline.
IMO, tutoring is for when a kid is behind in curriculum and you don't see that until late grade school, if not middle school.
One on one "tutoring" is the most effective way to make early education productive and it's not even close. Even the outcomes of parents spending 20 minutes a day reading to their infants and toddlers correlates with better educational outcomes. and I'm sure there are many here that share my own story. The only reason I was somewhat academically successful was because my mother took the time to teach me how to read when I was 3-4. Without that early literacy, I'm sure I would have never been able to achieve anything I've done, especially with ADHD. By the time I was in kindergarten, I knew how to read already, but, even there, reading was taught 1 on 1, with students taking turns with the teacher to learn. I don't think that's done anymore at most places, especially when you have 30:1 teacher ratios. 5 year olds can be way more capable than we give them credit for, but they need personal attention.
Why does early education need to be productive? At that age, I'd much rather my kids learn life skills, socialize, play, etc than any kind of "curriculum" learning.
There are a lot of studies showing that emotional intelligence is a better predictor of happiness than early academics.
They'll have plenty of time to be addicated to screens later on in life /s
It's not a dichotomy. My kids play with each other ~10-12 hours a day and I still taught my 4 year old to read. In fact, the more productive intentional learning is, the more time they have for play.
AI for kids? Sounds like a bad idea
The child will be saying "It's not laziness. It's the dog." to her teacher...
Shouldn't this have a "Show HN" in front of it, as per the guidelines?
My oldest turns 6 in just over a week and my initial reaction to this heading - as well as the product itself and the picture of the kid using it - was heartbreak and sadness. Not anger, just sadness. Like when you read a story about a kid that's a victim of a crime.
Stepping back, I can look at it somewhat objectively and see that there are both kids that need something like this and that it's probably a better solution to the "dumb" homework apps that the kids use for 20 mins a week at this age, but I don't think "Ello deprives 5 year olds of human contact" is the message you should be putting out into the world.
I deeply wish I had AI-accelerated education growing up rather than sitting bored out of my mind while a teacher lectures at the bottom quartile
Top quartile kids would easily be a year or three ahead with good virtual tutoring.
But efforts like this run into the problem that only some kids are curious. The idea that "all kids are curious" simply isn't true.
A lot of kids prefer sports or movement over anything even remotely intellectual, and math and language just don't interest them at all.
AI tutoring can't deal with that. Nor can more conventional electronic tutors.
IMO rewards for completing work need to be external - basically physical treats of some kind, not sweets, but days out or off or something similar - to compensate for those areas where kids aren't naturally motivated.
> A couple of seconds is enough for a child's attention to wander and for learning to stop.
I'm not sure they understand just how dystopian this sounds. God forbid the five year old mind wanders.
One of my ever favorite AI prompt keywords is ELI5 (Explain Like I'm 5). Last month I asked Gemini Pro to provide me ELI5 explanation on the waveform mechanism of a novel wireless system that I've been working on. To my surprise it described the principle succintly and intuitively as described to me by the original inventor of the wireless system a few years back. I was literally speechless for a minute or two.
Please, no. The last thing a child need is a screen. Give children books, creative toys, teach them read, enjoy music, do science or any activity always with a human companion and let it be disconnected from the virtual world.
Children do not need screens to learn. I didn't need one when I was a kid, nor endless generations either needed it.
Why are we trying to push everything through an LLM?
> Give children books, creative toys, teach them read, enjoy music, do science or any activity always with a human companion
Privileged much?
It's simple for parents - be the human tutor they need. If you're capable of loving them and being responsible for raising them, that task fall to you. Underprivileged by socioeconomic realities? In the US there is Head Start for this problem, and yes, it does work and has been longitudinally proven to do so by independent studies and peer reviewed publication. In a nation without these services, but able to be here on HN reading about the situation? Who is helping your child right now?
The concept of using untested, unregulated, demonstrably harmful models - see news about 'suicide ideation and school shooting facilitation' by public facing enterprise models - is a dangerous condition that no amount of hand-wavy, but "My co-founder, who is a clinical child psychologist" statements mitigate.
First, that isn't a statement by the actual person purporting to be a professional, and second this statement plays into the misconception in American consumers' minds which often conflates psychiatrist with psychologist . The first is a medical degree with the responsibility and risk of losing a medical accreditation for engaging in this kind of unethical, untested approach on children at large. The second has no supervisory board capable of revoking credentials, and may even mean nothing more than an undergraduate degree in basic psychology. Thus, I am highly skeptical about any such business' ability to carry liability insurance from a reputable firm.
Here on HN you can readily find articles about firms offering fraudulent compliance readiness; so I'm not doubtful of being able to procure the verisimilitude of coverage, just the veracity and legality of the coverage available to any organization taking this cavalier approach which relies on these models.
Now, if the model and infrastructure Elo is leaning on is an in-house, on-premises, refined private MoE (Mixture of Experts) framework with a curated harness and training data which is demonstrably free of harmful materials and has been/continues to be fine tuned to provide provably safe content and interactions: that might be testable for compliance and liability coverage.
The cost of such an infrastructure would make it a premium product, with a potential customer base that can and does already have 'affordable' human tutoring. As this human one-on-one to on-on-a-few tutoring is the gold standard benchmark for 'best-case' that this product cannot exceed, there is no viable use-case for it's existence or use, except when the parents might find an AI subscription to be less of cognitive load than managing actual people. Even rich people can be self serving and delusional about the well-being of their own children.
All I can see from here is; attention grabbing, AI hype delusional, high risk, for-profit exploitation of overworked middle class parents, using uncontrollable public facing models which hide behind a 'we take no responsibility for the results' disclaimer organizations that can and will spin the dials on performance and capacity quotas and 'upgrade' to a degraded, de-safety limited model with zero notice, mid workload. Which once the enticingly low costs of providing this 'risk factors as a service' are covered, has the appearance of profitability for the founders in the short term, and when the 'unlimited plan' is actually very limited will be an external 'force majeure' for either subscription price increases or rug pull from under the by-then addicted young minds.
The need for solutions to the gap in educational opportunity between children of the top 1% and the rest of the world is real. This approach is not a solution; but is an entirely different class of risk posing as a solution.
Shame on you both.
I do enjoy a good stream of consciousness rant, so thanks for that.
A simple rejoinder - The OP is one solution to many households where they can just be "the human tutor". If you can't see that, you simply don't know the average household.
What on earth are you talking about???
I didn't get a single coherent idea from any sentence/paragraph.
Shame on me? Shame on you for not being concise, synthetic and to the point.
Here's are a few links to several resources about the state of safety at the frontier LLM models' companies of origin. The first uses shorter sentences and has further supporting links.
Hopefully those with provide you with an easier to comprehend, "synthetic" (sic) measurement of the risks that are unavoidable in the 'product' under consideration.
https://www.techtimes.com/articles/320191/20260711/openai-lo...
TLDR; the safety at every commercial LLM scores at or below a C+. I don't believe anyone serious can honestly believe that the founders of this 'product' are capable of reinforcing security that does not exist in any of the models they may choose to utilize.
https://futureoflife.org/ai-safety-index-summer-2026/
https://www.techtimes.com/articles/318351/20260614/chatgpt-f...
Hope this helps.
Also, the "Shame on you" statement was directed exclusively at the founders of this product and people who would intentionally expose children in their stewardship to these dangers.
If that is not you, then my honest apologies if it seemed directed at you. That was not my intent.
If that includes you, and you couldn't grok the concepts in my rant; we have nothing more to talk about.
Uniting children with the machine god, what could ever go wrong?
Without malice, I bring up GPT-Live-1. How does this compare and/or make you consider things?
I've been very impressed with response speed, intonation, and naturalness to the voice. I argue it might be too natural with some of it's pausing and saying "ummm" and other filler words to the point it might be disingenuous but that's neither here nor there.
Full disclosure, I worked briefly with Ello / Catalin some years back.
They've done a lot of work on at least two dimensions: (1) handling the nonstandard sounds and habits of speech of very early readers, who might be as young as four, and (2) connecting this to a specialized teaching system based on the science of reading, e.g. decodable readers.
Ding, came here wondering the same. I do find it amusing, this "AI work" where people try to solve an issue and the lab (or whatever you want to call them) just makes the entire problem moot.
The Daimond Aige: Or, A Young Person’s Illustrated Prompter
Oh no. DON'T.
"AI is also going to be an integral part shaping how this generation of kids learn to read and think"
You think they will be even dumber/helpless without gudance from the 'net than Gen Z and A?
a sign of the times. and the times are rotten
This is a terrible idea. Screen time hinders the development of fundamental skills, including language and social interaction, especially for children of these ages.
France have already moved to ban screens from places with children under 3. Other countries (including UK, Australia) are also setting strong limits on screen use for kids under 5. This is for a reason.
Products like this are driven by business interests, not good will. Good parenting with screen control is the best way to have a fulfilled and happy child. Protect your children, keep them away from screens while they are under 5 and guide them carefully when you introduce screen time.
The criticisms here remind me of a quotation that I'll paraphrase: "in silicon valley there's a million apps to order a coffee, but not one to teach you to read".
People seem to have the basic premise: why not just get an educated adult, or good teacher, or personal human tutor for the kids which is so much better?
Well there's a billion parents who cannot ever afford that...
So I'd just like to note that HN is absolutely 100% not the kind of community that you need to impress or sell to. Best of luck.
It sounds exciting. I think this type of technology will be integrated into all primary education.
Please don't do this.
Hey buddy, I love this, thank you for sharing. I am of the belief that as the world transitions to Agent-first transactions, we clumbsy carbon life forms will be heavily disadvantaged, therefore, future citizens will be quipped wirh a digital twin/brain, which grows and learns alongside our biological braina, as well as a personalized tutor and life-guide (the digital version of jimmy the cricket).
oh boy, who validates that the blackbox of bullshit is spewing valid information and not the typical nonsense ...?
That's a good question. Poorly phrased though. ;)
This sounds like a terrible idea. 5 years olds need human interaction with a human tutor or with other children.
Human tutor is definitely the best thing we could do, but it’s not attainable to give every child a human tutor and clearly the current system isn’t working. If you manage to build a good AI tutor, you can unlock more human interaction outside of self-directed learning time
Yet again another product that could’ve used AI to help with a problem but basically puts everything in AI hands and calls a day.
AI is great for learning, but you know what’s most important thing for children as part of their learning? Presence of a parent.
Why not make this an assistant for parent & child learning session, where you can use it as encyclopedia lookup or permutation / generation of an exercise or even cheatsheet / checklist for your learning session?
I think there’s huge value in being able to have such thing, where you don’t have to pull out your phone when doing something with your child and instead you could ask that assistant for a lookup online, but putting child in front of a screen and putting it’s self-development in a hands of AI is just irresponsible, lazy and quite frankly dangerous
Sorry to burst your bubble, but AI is not going to play any significant role in a child kearning journey. Such a garbage application for those who need concrete knowlede and not some sloppy answers. Uselss application, I would keep a track about when this application fails.
This is frankly disgusting and I hope you do not deploy this to any children. The classroom is the last place where we should be deploying AI.
Look where smartphones not being used in the classroom got us. Imagine how this would harm us.
Who needs to spend time raising their kid outsource that shit to a an AI SaaS lmfao what is wrong with people
Oh fuck off with this bullshit. Not going to slopify my child
We're so fucking doomed.
This is bad and you should feel bad about it. What the actual F? You can't be real man. Yeah, lets just monetize kids and ruin their lifes. What a great idea!
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Turning this into a nationalistic flamewar is an additional road to hell that we did not need. This thread was bad enough without it. Please don't post like this to HN again.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(p.s. and yes of course we would say exactly the same thing if it were your country someone was slurring)
Hi can you please delete my account? I'm trying to quit posting on social media
Generally, email such requests to mods: hn@ycombinator.com
See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html> (end of FAQ).
Welcome to silicon valley. Enjoy your stay.
I need to stop coming here; I keep "dead dove, do not eat"ing myself.
Would you prefer someone wrote "5 Michelin star meal, save for lunch" on the bag?
No, no, it's on me. I guess I need a HUMANS.md file to pop up and remind me every time I sit at the computer....
If you want to save America, point the firepower of the US military at Silicon Valley. There has never been a more insidious enemy of the country and it’s people.
Except that nowadays the same goes for the administration.
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The async planner is the part I'd love more detail on. If it's reasoning ahead while the kid is still talking, some chunk of that work gets invalidated every time the kid says something off-script, which at age 5 is presumably constantly. Is the speculative planning you throw away a real cost line or a rounding error? I build streaming LLM stuff (nothing this ambitious) and the "right move at the right moment" framing rings true, latency budgets change what the model can even attempt per turn.
LLM-generated comments are not permitted on this site.
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stop. children need humans not AI. i hate this.
Not every child has a tuned-in parent to care for them. Thats reality bud.
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You've posted 4 shallow, indignant dismissals in this thread. That's excessive, so please don't.
I realize you have reason to feel strongly about this, as do many others. That's certainly fine. But once is enough to make your point. HN is for curious conversation, not attack or denunciation.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Human teacher hallucination rate is like at least 1 in 100
I get where you're coming from. There’s a lot of potential to misuse AI with kids.
What we do believe is that children will be living in a world where this technology will exist, and how it gets used becomes the important question.
We also have to prepare them for that world and how to thrive in it. I would never give my son raw ChatGPT the same way you wouldn’t give a 5 year old access to the raw internet. But that doesn’t mean that the internet can’t be used for learning.
We don’t have all the answers and we can’t respond for all of AI, but we’re a team of parents, teachers, and child psychologists who deeply care about getting this right and unlocking the opportunities for kids. The article goes into the technical depth of how we make it pedagogically aligned, safe, non-slop.
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This comment looks like pure astroturfing.
> my kids love using this fantastic learning tool
> The friendly interaction between the Ello character and my kids gives them a fun motivation
> AI drives a love for reading
I cannot trust someone to assess a love for reading, if I also loathe their writing.
This whole thread is fucking scary. How are people even remotely positive about any of this shit is beyond me. Educate your kids, stop delegating the important stuff.
It's weird. I get that growing up in a nurturing household is a privilege, but I'm not sure the answer is to hook up kids to AI. Maybe some form of it could be beneficial, but it just seems too ripe for abuse, and/or too easy to have unintended consequences.
> How are people even remotely positive about any of this shit is beyond me.
Well, some of us didn't grow up in perfect households, for one thing. I actively avoided both my parents at that age.
> best intentions in mind when they built this
That's nice, and it will make a fantastic set of paving stones for the road to Hell.
It sounds so good, at least based on the article. I imagine it will be integrated into standard early education for kids.
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HN's skepticism on this subject (which I share) is understandable. At the same time I share your view of its enormous potential.
Personally I'd question the "who is this coming from?" (you answered that in another comment), and "what's the intention behind it?".
If you're a commercial company, I'd be tempted to suspect a "hook 'em while they're young" thought behind it. Perhaps not now, but turning into that over time because 'reasons' (cough "shareholder value" & the like).
If you were a non-profit otoh, I'd give you the benefit of the doubt.
To address that, would you be willing to pursue a non-profit status for your company and/or platform? Has this been discussed @ some point?
Btw: thanks for taking the time to address the many issues raised in this thread! HN can be a brutal place for people not used to its audience! (trust me, we're mostly friendly but with an extreme no-bullshit attitude at times).
Will Butlerian Jihad be on the 2028 ticket?
It is on mine.
Curious if this can be combined with AI-generated videos that "maximally drive a targeted brain region" (another post on the front page of HN today).
These poor kids don't stand a chance... to not learn something!