Why not AI?

Sometimes I think I'm crazy for starting a new tutoring business just when AI is being touted as the new educational panacea. The allure of a technology that can individualize learning for every student, adjusting as students learn at their own pace, challenging them just enough to keep them motivated but not overwhelming them with tasks beyond their grasp: this is the ideal that every teacher strives for. If AI ever becomes sophisticated enough to do this efficiently, effectively, and safely, then I will eat my words here. But from what I have seen so far with AI, it isn't even close to fulfilling this promise.

I sometimes use AI as a tool for creating decodable texts for my students based on their interests, with prompts such as, "write a 1st grade decodable text about snakes that focuses on 'silent e' words and includes these sight words: said, says, because." This is a fairly straightforward and simple task. And yet, I wouldn't dare use the product of this prompt as a teaching resource without carefully editing it first. Without fail, no matter how specific and simplistic my requests are, there are always errors or nonsensical elements in the AI output. To use AI without editing would be irresponsible to my students, and I wouldn't dream of using a student as a guinea pig in any AI-driven online learning program.

Errors and hallucinations aside, the evidence is piling up about the potential harms of AI for children, and the reality is that we just don't need to take that risk. Instead, we need to invest in education as a society and as parents. We should train teachers in responsibly using AI as a planning and assessment tool, not as a substitute for good teaching in the classroom.

We know the value of community, of relationships, in helping children develop into healthy, happy individuals. Many of us credit the teachers in our lives as helping us develop particular interests and shaping us into the adults we eventually become. Why would we want to deprive children of these foundational relationships by replacing inspiring teachers with mediocre AI?

As the education field continues to become more technology-focused, it is my hope that Synapse Tutors make wise use of technology to facilitate human interaction between teacher and student through online tutoring. It is a convenient, efficient, and affordable enrichment to classroom learning. Because the fact is that we already have at our fingertips all that AI promises: individualized learning for every student, adjusting as students learn at their own pace, challenging them just enough to keep them motivated but not overwhelming them with tasks beyond their grasp. Our answer is Synapse Tutors.