The state's charter school board approved an application on Monday from Unbound Academy to open a school with a two-hour per day academic curriculum set by AI.

By a 4-3 margin, the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools on Monday approved an application from Unbound Academy to open a fully online school serving grades four through eight.  Unbound already operates a private school that uses its AI-dependent “2hr Learning” model in Texas and is currently applying to open similar schools in Arkansas and Utah.

Under the 2hr Learning model, students spend just two hours a day using personalized learning programs from companies like IXL and Khan Academy. “As students work through lessons on subjects like math, reading, and science, the AI system will analyze their responses, time spent on tasks, and even emotional cues to optimize the difficulty and presentation of content,” according to Unbound’s charter school application in Arizona. “This ensures that each student is consistently challenged at their optimal level, preventing boredom or frustration.”

Spending less time on traditional curriculum frees up the rest of students’ days for life-skill workshops that cover “financial literacy, public speaking, goal setting, entrepreneurship, critical thinking, and creative problem-solving,” according to the Arizona application.

  • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.businessEnglish
    1654·
    20 hours ago

    I’m sure an AI babysitter won’t be immediately and utterly broken and bypassed by every single kid in these “classes”.

    (Seriously: we’re talking about 8-12 year olds here and the absolutely are smart enough and incentivized to break the ever-loving crap out of this stupid idea.)

    • flameguy21@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      2 hours ago

      When I was in school, someone figured out that if you go into Google Translate and type in a link, you could go to whatever website you wanted. We also figured out that despite Google Images being blocked, you could just click on the images tab of Google search and use it that way. Even the teachers told us about that one lol.

    • Peffse@lemmy.worldEnglish
      101·
      20 hours ago

      At that age I figured out that I could bypass the policy restrictions on my computer by unplugging the Ethernet cable right after login. Gave me full local admin.

      A year or so prior to that I figured out that if you viewed IE’s temporary internet files and just backspaced your way up, you can access the otherwise restricted C:, where I found other kids had already installed games onto.

      No way this works for a full school year.

      • brbposting@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        14·
        15 hours ago

        A year or so prior to that I figured out that if you viewed IE’s temporary internet files and just backspaced your way up, you can access the otherwise restricted C:\

        Public library Halo classic… good old days

        Library software today can be wayyyyy better and lock down all the old tricks. Gotta count on the kids to keep cat ‘n’ mousing for their generation.

        • KinglyWeevil@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          2·
          6 hours ago

          A few of my friends and myself ended up with the network admin password, so we had full administrative access to every computer. Ah, the good old days.

      • quixotic120@lemmy.worldEnglish
        43·
        18 hours ago

        I’m old so things were easier but I remember in my middle school days I figured out you could bypass the schools content filter by using babelfish to translate the page from English to English in like 1998. Somehow accidentally stumbled across the concept of a proxy

    • jrs100000@lemmy.worldEnglish
      181·
      18 hours ago

      Honestly that seems like its going to be a valuable set of skills to develop.

        • jrs100000@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          12 hours ago

          In 20 years the gen alphas are walking around getting double Human Chow rations for no reason and not even fulfilling their work quotas. Then, when the Overseers come to discipline then there are these weird pulses of light and the drones wander off mumbling about how, as a large language model, they have no opinion about that topic. We beg them for help, or maybe some left over kibble, but those stupid kids just laugh and say “OK Xers”.

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
      20·
      20 hours ago

      Problem is that yes they will probably do that and get away with it and a bunch of kids get to have a bunch of fun … learn very little other than how to cheat and get by and they get a passing grade and go through school learning nothing.

      • ifItWasUpToMe@lemmy.caEnglish
        97·
        18 hours ago

        To be fair, the kids smart enough to cheat it would have, most likely, learned nothing in regular school as well

        • Serinus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          11 hours ago

          It doesn’t matter how smart you (think you) are if you’re not educated. It’s possible to educate yourself, but unlikely for the vast majority of people. If you were a smart slacker, you wouldn’t be one of those teaching yourself “boring” topics, whether that’s trigonometry or history. You could barely motivate yourself to open your mouth while being spoon fed.