Paul Allen Wants To Build The Computer Tutor
from the good-luck dept
Since leaving Microsoft, Paul Allen has worked on a variety of "big" projects - most of which have gone nowhere. His latest, is a plan to build a computer tutor. He wants to build a system that can ace Advanced Placement exams, often used by high school kids to get college credit. The idea is not to use artificial intelligence - though, that seems to be a semantics issue. The way they describe the system it is an artificial intelligence machine, whether they like it or not. Of course, the more important issue is the one the article brushes over: this is a contest. Instead of just putting a bunch of people in a room to work on this, they're putting up money for three different teams to complete the task. This way, they can (in theory) get competing approaches and see what works best. It's a bit of money-based evolution, I guess. Of course, you wonder if this is a better method than something like the X Prize, where no upfront money is given, but there's a big prize at the end for the first successful contestant.
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The East Pole
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Good, and evil.
Good part - Parents who care about their kids will be better able to track what is going on. If the state wished to have kids stay home most of the time and once/twice a week have students get together for socialization lower capitol costs would exist for education and the teachers could become higher paid. There would be less teachers and their job would no longer be babysitting.
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Combine this with publicaly owned co-op based netw
Alas, that is long-term thinking....and we can't have that!
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