This point was driven home after shutdowns by the rise of “online learning,” another well-documented disaster in which teachers were exposed as shrill activists, rather than educators. As a result, national reading and math scores plummeted, at the same time that traditionally trained educators were pushed out, no longer necessary in an Educational Complex disavowing traditional core curriculum in favor of Activism 101. Parents and students, meanwhile, were subjected to four long years of intensive cult programming, made to believe up is down, right is wrong, their sons are daughters, their daughters sons, and if you disagree with any of this, the government will label you a domestic terrorist. After that, is it any wonder that parents would seek a new version of education, unhampered by these “teachers?”
Enter Alpha private school in Austin, Texas, which uses AI to teach students, not teachers. Their pitch is simple: “Standard school is broken. We waste 12 years of our children’s lives in a dysfunctional system.”
Which is true, as far as it goes, but AI will likely not be the solution. Here’s why:
The most popular AI programs have been found to have implicit bias against anyone who isn’t “diverse,” in particular white males, who the algorithms seem deliberately programmed to degrade, no matter which company makes them. Consider the cases of industry titans like Google and Microsoft, both of which have invested billions in the creation of their AI models. Yet when those models debuted, well…let’s look at some examples of the bias that was baked into them:
Google’s Gemini AI rollout depicted historically inaccurate generated images of a black George Washington, non-white Vikings, a female pope, and even black Nazis. Per the New York Post, “When Gemini was asked to produce pictures of white people, it refused, saying it couldn’t fulfill the request because it ‘reinforces harmful stereotypes and generalizations about people based on their race.’” Granted, Google’s CEO said Gemini’s results were “biased” and “unacceptable,” but anyone with a brain knows that the only part he was objecting to was the multiracial Nazis (likely because the poor man had exactly those people in his workforce). Moreover, even if AI educational software was trained to only spit out the consensus among educational authorities, have you seen the latest stuff out of academia? If not, let me remind you. As just one example, Harvard writes, “...one issue in particular concerns the risk of prostate cancer in transgender women.” Needless to say, only men have prostates. We know that. Will the AI?
Google’s bias isn’t unique. An artificial intelligence engineer at Microsoft says that the company generates images which go against Microsoft’s oft-cited responsible AI principles. DALL-E 3 (Microsoft's latest version of the AI model) generates violent and sexual images.in other words, it’s not safe for kids…or for humanity, in general.
Not to mention, even if you think that AI could be a counter to teachers’ unions, the fact is that the teachers’ unions themselves – at least in states like New York – would love it. And why not? They’re already protected by contracts that prevent them being fired. Why not turn the kids on Zoom calls over to a robot programmed by San Francisco they/thems? If it worked as advertised, they’d probably already be rolling it out.
If. But that’s the kicker: those in charge haven't worked out the technical issues with online learning, let alone AI. Recently in New York City, school was shut down for “online learning” due to an impending snowstorm which never materialized. The results of even this were comically inept: due to a “technical glitch”, teachers and students were shut out of their virtual classes. NYC DoE Chancellor David Banks said the department would conduct a “full analysis” of what went wrong. “This was a test,” he said. “I don’t think that we passed this test.” No, no they didn’t.
Which is at least something of a source of hope: If they can’t even get the online learning part right, then AI will really need its kinks worked out. But make no mistake, unless parents educate their own children about its dangers, AI – with all the worst biases of the woke educational machine – will be mainstreamed into the classroom. As parents, then, our duty is simple: whether it’s a machine or a person spewing the lies, we have to make sure our children can’t be “programmed” into becoming thoughtless ideological robots.
