I have a 17 year old High School Junior, so I'm in the depths of the modern education system. Plus I had a brother that was a Professor of Education Technology. Plus, shocking on HN, I'm deep in tech myself.
I have mixed feelings on all this. The education system largely seems a bit better than when I was in school, however the impetus to learn has to be entirely provided by the parent (or innately by the rare student). Socially, it is a big problem because of phones, kids don't interact face-to-face nearly as much, as they can easily escape into the phone world.
But laptops? They seem fine, largely a positive, probably worth the cost? I'm undoubtedly far more aware of what and how my son does in school than my parents were. Teachers seem to use whatever works best, and there are lazy teacher and great teachers. The great ones use tech to great effect. One of my son's worst teachers didn't let them use laptops and did everything with paper, and she was terrible. Tech isn't a magic cure, but neither is paper!
I know my son is a better thinker, more informed, knows much more about life, history and science then I did at his age. If he wants to know something he can dig into it and learn what he wants. I had to bike up to the library and pray they had a decent book on the subject (they rarely did).
All that being said, AI is a big threat, but again, it will be a big differentiator. Those that want to learn we'll accelerate away from those that don't.
In many ways I feel like my son is on the proverbial last chopper out of 'Nam, when it comes to the public school system.
Of course, it also feels like going from the frying pan into the fire with the state of the world, but that's another topic.
AI allows innovative people to create more innovations by reducing a lot of the non-innovative grunt work in an efficient manner. It isn't the AI doing the innovation, but allows innovators to focus more on innovating.
Or at least that is the theory. It is certainly true from observations of those around me. It also scales well. Even someone a bit innovative gets a multiplier by using AI intelligently. Those that just focus on the grunt work are the ones in trouble.
I can't control random internet people, but within my personal and professional life, I see the effective pattern of comparing prompts/contexts/harnesses to figure out why some are more effective than others (in fact tooling is being developed in the AI industry as a whole to do so, claude even added the "insights" command).
I feel that many people that don't find AI useful are doing things like, "Are there any bugs in this software?" rather than developing the appropriate harness to enable the AI to function effectively.
I'm already, seriously, looking forward to the post-mortem. It kind of sucks when things break, but it is also really interesting to hear the gritty details. Hopefully they don't disappoint? Odds that is AI related?
TRS-80 CoCo! First computer I owned (started with a borrowed Commodore Pet). I appreciate the simplicity of flicking the switch and writing code in basic. One of my favorite gaming memories is this beauty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQKQHKdWTRs
Musk wants to put up 500-1000 TW per year. Even 1 TW would be 4.348 million of your systems. Even one of your clusters is at the edge of what we've built, and you talk about snapping 4000 of them together as if they were legos.
To run just one cluster (which would be generally a useless endeavor given it is just a few dozen GPUs) would be equivalent to the best we've ever done, and you wonder why you're being downvoted? Your calculations, which are correct from a scientific (but not engineering) standpoint, don't support the argument that it is possible, but rather show how hard it is. I can put the same cluster in my living room and dissipate the heat just fine, but you require a billion dollar system to do it in space.
It's only illegal if you get caught. Your insurer only needs to know if your house burns down. Don't burn your house down while this is set up in your living room.
It would be interesting to see the same graph broken down by wealth (preferably) or income quintile. Maybe higher tax rates don't mean more tax income, but it does mean more wealth redistribution.
I have mixed feelings on all this. The education system largely seems a bit better than when I was in school, however the impetus to learn has to be entirely provided by the parent (or innately by the rare student). Socially, it is a big problem because of phones, kids don't interact face-to-face nearly as much, as they can easily escape into the phone world.
But laptops? They seem fine, largely a positive, probably worth the cost? I'm undoubtedly far more aware of what and how my son does in school than my parents were. Teachers seem to use whatever works best, and there are lazy teacher and great teachers. The great ones use tech to great effect. One of my son's worst teachers didn't let them use laptops and did everything with paper, and she was terrible. Tech isn't a magic cure, but neither is paper!
I know my son is a better thinker, more informed, knows much more about life, history and science then I did at his age. If he wants to know something he can dig into it and learn what he wants. I had to bike up to the library and pray they had a decent book on the subject (they rarely did).
All that being said, AI is a big threat, but again, it will be a big differentiator. Those that want to learn we'll accelerate away from those that don't.
In many ways I feel like my son is on the proverbial last chopper out of 'Nam, when it comes to the public school system.
Of course, it also feels like going from the frying pan into the fire with the state of the world, but that's another topic.
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