Framing this as a pattern across the entire industrial world is a bit misleading. Looking through the data at Math Scores since 2015 shows big country level split:
Japan: -3
S Korea: -1
Singapore: +1
Taiwan: +9
---
Germany: -45
France: -38
Sweden: -33
US: -10
This is an issue with the western industrialized world. Which ought to make the analysis simple since we can look at what those countries have done differently than their East Asian counterparts and stop pursing those actions as national policy
PISA data show that students who use AI for specific schoolwork tasks, such as summarising texts, drafting or conducting research, attain lower scores in science than students who do not use AI.
So much for all the EdTech startups that want you to use their AI teachers.
Seriously, this should be a major signal to keep screens and AI solutions out of classrooms. That's not solving everything but at least students would be given a few hours window of de-brainroting everyday.
I'm open to accept that AI can have a positive impact on education but people and tools are apparently not ready and for the moment using it is a net negative.
> So much for all the EdTech startups that want you to use their AI teachers.
The AI they’re talking about is not EdTech AI-based teaching tools. It’s students who use ChatGPT to handle work for them so they can ignore any teaching parts.
Apples and oranges. Using this study to draw conclusions about AI EdTech would be a mistake
The "AI use ... To help me learn" graph is really interesting! It may be interpreted as showing moderate selective AI use being beneficial and, perhaps, even mitigating the effect of socioeconomic status, that is democratising the learning of science. However, it may also show that groups without AI use/access are left behind, and that over-reliance on AI in learning is detrimental.
The breakdown for AI usage is four categories though, not three. While the first three are negatively correlated with increased usage, the one for using AI "to help me learn" is much more flat when it comes to usage frequency.
Also, is a 1960’s test that hasn’t substantively changed a good metric? Maybe it is, I honestly don’t know, but I’d be curious to see the content before assuming it’s a useful benchmark.
Has what students are expected to know changed since the 60s? For instance, have there been any, I dunno, new developments in technology over the past 60-odd years?
The U.S. is at 17.8% top performers, well behind Japan and Korea but around the same as Canada and Switzerland. But the U.S. is significantly ahead of the big EU countries: Germany is at 14%, France is at 9.8%, Italy is at 10.1% and Spain is at 7%.
If you're referring to the few-point difference between 2012 and 2018 in the first chart here: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results-volum... I think that's more likely to be statistical noise. Keep in mind that PISA was originally normed to a mean of 500 and standard deviation 100. Even the more obvious drop after 2018 (I blame the pandemic) down to a mean of 466 on the reading test in 2025 isn't all that huge in absolute terms, though definitely statistically significant with the large sample they have.
That's quite funny, but the new recruits at my work place are super smart and full of piss and vinegar. Much more motivated than some of the older workers. The problem is that they will work lots of unpaid overtime, and they have no idea about work boundaries and being exploited by employers.
Depending on the education/age of new recruits, you might not have seen much of the, younger, lower scored cohort, because the sharp performance drop only really started after 2018 (so the oldest affected people are around 22).
Makes sense. The kids can see that education isn't really going to be a sellable skill when AI ends up coming into full force.
AI already writes most of the articles I see posted here, is doing math at the level of the best mathematicians, and is writing a ton of the code out there. Given another decade to develop, the kids will be hitting the workforce with very stiff competition. It's not a shock they're putting their energy elsewhere, and I can't say they're wrong.
They may be the first generation who grow up fully catered to by AI.
> is doing math at the level of the best mathematics
Terence Tao a few days ago [1]:
> When we point the AIs at really difficult problems where none of the standard techniques apply, they are still very, very bad, I mean they're just randomly guessing.
Please don't reply saying they'll be proving the Collatz conjecture next week. It adds nothing.
Aren't the best mathematicians the best at solving the hardest problems? I don't see how you can argue this without assuming an arbitrary scale for being "good" at something.
Let's see you solve some open problems before you dismiss LLM capabilities. They're working at a level far beyond all but the best of the best.
And we're only a couple of years in. Their capabilities aren't going to be getting worse over time. These kids will be hitting the workforce after AI has another decade of improvement put into it.
Sure, if these kids can all perform at Tao's level, they could likely be able to keep up with the AI capabilities from a decade before they would enter the workforce.
I was clear on what I was responding to, and quoted it: "is doing math at the level of the best mathematics". This is misinformation and a public perception that will harm maths as it continues to spread. For some actual insight on the relationship between human and LLM maths (including on why thinking of it in terms of "levels" is misguided), see the video I linked.
Your broader point is based on a future extrapolation of LLM capabilities that is far from guaranteed to play out, so it sounds like poor risk management to me, even accepting your framing of it purely in terms of value in the workforce (which I don't).
> Makes sense. The kids can see that education isn't really going to be a sellable skill when AI ends up coming into full force.
If true, this is a disastrously foolish thing to believe. Education is only going to become more important as supervising increasingly advanced AI agents becomes more difficult. We need people who understand all different domains of human endeavor at the deepest level possible.
I mean, what's the alternative? AI does everything for me and I play Fortnite all day? Might as well plug yourself into the Matrix.
Just like kids eventually take over most of the daily tasks for their parents (for people in countries where you don't have any kind of retirement fund and assisted living, etc.). Same will happen here - on one hand because the human population keeps growing older without any replacement and on the other because all the new tech will be too complicated for humans to understand.
The situation will probably be like with airline pilots. The plane is mostly an automated system, but we simply don't let automation to work through exceptional situations, without human review. Therefore, lots of pilot training (and their presence) is still required.
But it's also hard to guess what exactly skill should the pilots have. It's clear that lots of things from manual aircraft do not translate well to automated.
It seems unlikely that we'll be able to keep up with AI in any capacity. Your alternative seems like the inevitable outcome of AI succeeding, and it doesn't sound so bad.
Dunno man, the articles ai writes are empty cardboard crap, and the code it produces is hot garbage. “Cleaner upper of AI messes” might be a good future skill to have.
I don't think you can dismiss the output quality so easily.
Give yourself a few hours to write out some code in the old way. Can you really tell me that you could not have done a better job with AI in the same time?
Eg, implement chess or poker games.
Or write a component like a Swiss table.
It's not obvious to me that AI produces bad work at all.
That’s the thing - many times it’s not obvious. But go check that chunk of code that, sure, works, and you’ll find subtleties that just don’t look right. But hey - you do you if that’s the kind of quality you’re happy with.
I hope people recognize this account doom posts what amounts to misanthropic propaganda at a very high rate. There’s never any question how the comment is going to be framed.
It’s always, “give up little humans, your robot overlords are here.”
Framing this as a pattern across the entire industrial world is a bit misleading. Looking through the data at Math Scores since 2015 shows big country level split:
Japan: -3
S Korea: -1
Singapore: +1
Taiwan: +9
---
Germany: -45
France: -38
Sweden: -33
US: -10
This is an issue with the western industrialized world. Which ought to make the analysis simple since we can look at what those countries have done differently than their East Asian counterparts and stop pursing those actions as national policy
*edit for formatting
Its 2026. Everyone who isn’t a moron knows by now it’s immigration.
Now go ahead and flag every single reply mentioning this basic fact, it won’t change reality.
I see news and forums claiming the problem is screens/smartphones and social media.
Given the big gap between the east and the west... does anybody know if these are somehow less used/abused in asian countries?
Any other reason why this gap might happen?
Thanks
Careful.
PISA data show that students who use AI for specific schoolwork tasks, such as summarising texts, drafting or conducting research, attain lower scores in science than students who do not use AI.
See graphs on PISA 2025 homepage : https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results-volum...
So much for all the EdTech startups that want you to use their AI teachers. Seriously, this should be a major signal to keep screens and AI solutions out of classrooms. That's not solving everything but at least students would be given a few hours window of de-brainroting everyday. I'm open to accept that AI can have a positive impact on education but people and tools are apparently not ready and for the moment using it is a net negative.
> So much for all the EdTech startups that want you to use their AI teachers.
The AI they’re talking about is not EdTech AI-based teaching tools. It’s students who use ChatGPT to handle work for them so they can ignore any teaching parts.
Apples and oranges. Using this study to draw conclusions about AI EdTech would be a mistake
The "AI use ... To help me learn" graph is really interesting! It may be interpreted as showing moderate selective AI use being beneficial and, perhaps, even mitigating the effect of socioeconomic status, that is democratising the learning of science. However, it may also show that groups without AI use/access are left behind, and that over-reliance on AI in learning is detrimental.
The breakdown for AI usage is four categories though, not three. While the first three are negatively correlated with increased usage, the one for using AI "to help me learn" is much more flat when it comes to usage frequency.
Sloppy conclusion about edtech startups.
If everyone is hiring a "tutor" to just do their homework for them, that doesn't mean that all tutors are bad.
There’s many books and established schools of thought about computers being terrible for learning even before the latest wave AI edtech nonsense.
Simply put, there’s nothing better than old school pen to paper.
At Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg Sweden 80% of the students would pass the entrance exam in the 60s.
These days it's reversed, only 20% pass.
I was told this was the case around 2005 when I studied there.
The exam has not changed in difficulty.
What percentage of the population is expected to get university education today vs the sixties?
Also, is a 1960’s test that hasn’t substantively changed a good metric? Maybe it is, I honestly don’t know, but I’d be curious to see the content before assuming it’s a useful benchmark.
What's the difference in how many people apply?
> The exam has not changed in difficulty
Has what students are expected to know changed since the 60s? For instance, have there been any, I dunno, new developments in technology over the past 60-odd years?
Quote
What were the sample sizes in previous years and their related demographics?The U.S. scores are interesting. On page 28, look at the column that says "Share of top performers" (in science, reading or mathematics): https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report....
The U.S. is at 17.8% top performers, well behind Japan and Korea but around the same as Canada and Switzerland. But the U.S. is significantly ahead of the big EU countries: Germany is at 14%, France is at 9.8%, Italy is at 10.1% and Spain is at 7%.
The decline seems to have started in the 2010s. Makes me wonder if this is connected to Jon Haidt's ideas about the impact of social media.
If you're referring to the few-point difference between 2012 and 2018 in the first chart here: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results-volum... I think that's more likely to be statistical noise. Keep in mind that PISA was originally normed to a mean of 500 and standard deviation 100. Even the more obvious drop after 2018 (I blame the pandemic) down to a mean of 466 on the reading test in 2025 isn't all that huge in absolute terms, though definitely statistically significant with the large sample they have.
Last I heard it started in the 90s. Although a lot of horrifying graphs do have their inflection point the year the iPhone came out.
You think parents off-loading parenting to YouTube brainrot since 2014-2015 might have something to do with this? No, it must be SOCIAL MEDIA.
Great. With later and later retirement dates, its important that the younger generations are easier to compete with. /s
That's quite funny, but the new recruits at my work place are super smart and full of piss and vinegar. Much more motivated than some of the older workers. The problem is that they will work lots of unpaid overtime, and they have no idea about work boundaries and being exploited by employers.
Sounds like they're trading excess energy for accelerated development. Where do I sign up?
Depending on the education/age of new recruits, you might not have seen much of the, younger, lower scored cohort, because the sharp performance drop only really started after 2018 (so the oldest affected people are around 22).
Makes sense. The kids can see that education isn't really going to be a sellable skill when AI ends up coming into full force.
AI already writes most of the articles I see posted here, is doing math at the level of the best mathematicians, and is writing a ton of the code out there. Given another decade to develop, the kids will be hitting the workforce with very stiff competition. It's not a shock they're putting their energy elsewhere, and I can't say they're wrong.
They may be the first generation who grow up fully catered to by AI.
The decline started in early to mid 2010's, this has little to do with AI.
> is doing math at the level of the best mathematics
Terence Tao a few days ago [1]:
> When we point the AIs at really difficult problems where none of the standard techniques apply, they are still very, very bad, I mean they're just randomly guessing.
Please don't reply saying they'll be proving the Collatz conjecture next week. It adds nothing.
[1] https://youtu.be/svl_1upFpQo (worth watching on the role of LLMs in maths)
The best mathematicians are also not very good at solving the hardest problems though. By definition.
Aren't the best mathematicians the best at solving the hardest problems? I don't see how you can argue this without assuming an arbitrary scale for being "good" at something.
Let's see you solve some open problems before you dismiss LLM capabilities. They're working at a level far beyond all but the best of the best.
And we're only a couple of years in. Their capabilities aren't going to be getting worse over time. These kids will be hitting the workforce after AI has another decade of improvement put into it.
I quoted Terence Tao. Are you suggesting he hasn't solved any open problems?
Sure, if these kids can all perform at Tao's level, they could likely be able to keep up with the AI capabilities from a decade before they would enter the workforce.
I was clear on what I was responding to, and quoted it: "is doing math at the level of the best mathematics". This is misinformation and a public perception that will harm maths as it continues to spread. For some actual insight on the relationship between human and LLM maths (including on why thinking of it in terms of "levels" is misguided), see the video I linked.
Your broader point is based on a future extrapolation of LLM capabilities that is far from guaranteed to play out, so it sounds like poor risk management to me, even accepting your framing of it purely in terms of value in the workforce (which I don't).
> Makes sense. The kids can see that education isn't really going to be a sellable skill when AI ends up coming into full force.
If true, this is a disastrously foolish thing to believe. Education is only going to become more important as supervising increasingly advanced AI agents becomes more difficult. We need people who understand all different domains of human endeavor at the deepest level possible.
I mean, what's the alternative? AI does everything for me and I play Fortnite all day? Might as well plug yourself into the Matrix.
Just like kids eventually take over most of the daily tasks for their parents (for people in countries where you don't have any kind of retirement fund and assisted living, etc.). Same will happen here - on one hand because the human population keeps growing older without any replacement and on the other because all the new tech will be too complicated for humans to understand.
It's not clear if it is foolish.
The situation will probably be like with airline pilots. The plane is mostly an automated system, but we simply don't let automation to work through exceptional situations, without human review. Therefore, lots of pilot training (and their presence) is still required.
But it's also hard to guess what exactly skill should the pilots have. It's clear that lots of things from manual aircraft do not translate well to automated.
Most people do not have the ability to understand a domain at the deepest possible level.
It seems unlikely that we'll be able to keep up with AI in any capacity. Your alternative seems like the inevitable outcome of AI succeeding, and it doesn't sound so bad.
Dunno man, the articles ai writes are empty cardboard crap, and the code it produces is hot garbage. “Cleaner upper of AI messes” might be a good future skill to have.
I don't think you can dismiss the output quality so easily.
Give yourself a few hours to write out some code in the old way. Can you really tell me that you could not have done a better job with AI in the same time?
Eg, implement chess or poker games.
Or write a component like a Swiss table.
It's not obvious to me that AI produces bad work at all.
That’s the thing - many times it’s not obvious. But go check that chunk of code that, sure, works, and you’ll find subtleties that just don’t look right. But hey - you do you if that’s the kind of quality you’re happy with.
As has been said before we've been cleaning up garbage code for generations and that doesn't look even close to changing anytime soon.
100%, does it matter if I cleanup the mess of another dev or of an AI? I don't think so.
Can other devs spew out crap at the same speed at AI? Cleaning up fifteen 10kloc pull requests per day? Yeah didn’t think so.
I hope people recognize this account doom posts what amounts to misanthropic propaganda at a very high rate. There’s never any question how the comment is going to be framed. It’s always, “give up little humans, your robot overlords are here.”
Yep, I've noticed that myself. It's getting pretty boring.
Yes, kids are the demographics known for long term thinking and rational decision making.
Where do you think they are putting their energy?