alt Hacker NewsThe drop from 2018 to 2022 is as big as the one from 2022 to 2026, so it's not obvious whether AI had a role at all, although it's highly plausible.
I suspect the bigger culprit is the optimized monetization of human attention, because pre-algorithmic social media doesn't seem to be as destructive. The fact that science wasn't as affected as math and reading (both of which rely more on attention/practice than rote memorization) somewhat supports this.
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Hmm, did anything happen in 2020 to disrupt the entire education system?
I saw extremely rapid computerisation of my kid's education around 2020. Properly thought out and edited text books were replaced with last minute rushed teachers notes on google docs and buggy apps.
That would have contributed to to the decline.
Let’s also not forget efforts to make test scores less important.
If you actually tied outcomes to test scores all these “causes” would disappear.
AI, screen time, short form text/video, normalization of recreational drugs, post-truth, there's no one cause but there's lots of things that are not helping
WolframAlpha was able to do advanced calculus in 2009 fully for free. LLMs shouldn’t have affected math performance at all because the tools were already readily available for a decade at that point.
Between 2018 and 2022, we saw the widespread adoption of social media and the rapid digitalization of education. Focusing on these key shifts, it seems clear to me that any kind of electronic learning has had a negative impact on education :p