HACKER Q&A
📣 amichail

Should exams allow a level of AI help inversely proportional to your IQ?


This system could even allow schools to teach more advanced material to all students.


  👤 NetworkPerson Accepted Answer ✓
This leads to a terrible future outcome. Person A and B both graduated with high marks. Person A is truly brilliant and will be a real asset to your company. Person B figured out how to use AI to get the answers the school wanted but doesn’t understand anything and will be a hindrance to the company. Unfortunately, you don’t get to know which one is which, just that they came out of school with similar marks. Best of luck.

Also supposing in this situation that AI can’t really perform the job duties. If it can, don’t bother hiring either person.


👤 PaulHoule
I'd note that, for political reasons, IQ is disused in pedagogy.

This extends to standardized tests in general. It is often framed around class and race, but I think the real enemy of standardized tests is the "legacy admission" who can't test his or her way out of a paper bag. Ever other element in society is corruptible, people can use their social capital to influence teachers and school administers. Certainly test prep can give people familiarity with the test which helps up to a point but for a certain kind of student the only way to get a good test score is to hire a ringer to take the test for you.

When objective tests are used to assign kids to gifted programs the usual result is an increase in minority and low-income participation because groups that have high social capital are better equipped to manipulate subjective decisions.


👤 JohnFen
Wouldn't doing that eliminate the entire purpose of exams? The point of them is to test your knowledge, not that of an AI.

👤 beardyw
Yes. Anyone over zero gets no AI help.

👤 verdverm
What's the point of exams then?

The better way to think about this is as having a TA available 24/7, except during testing. This artificial TA should help guide students to gain understanding, rather then simple hints or answer/mistake guiding