this post was submitted on 18 May 2025
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30% of South Korean schools have adopted AI-powered digital textbooks since the country's education ministry began a full-scale rollout in March 2025 (asia.nikkei.com)
submitted 6 days ago by Pro@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 25 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

And what exactly are AI textbooks? Does AI generate a quiz? Or generate the facts? I feel there is quite some bandwidth there and the article doesn't say a lot.

[–] riot@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Here's a way around the paywall: https://archive.md/ZDs6S

But the article doesn't really make it clear how much AI is involved in the textbooks, just that "Digital textbooks that make use of artificial intelligence are being adopted throughout South Korea.", emphasis mine.

Other text from the article, relevant to your question:

South Korea, the 2025 APEC chair, held the group's first education ministers' meeting in nine years, the theme of which was innovation in digital education. Education ministers from 21 countries and regions participated.
[...]
Private companies and government-affiliated organizations set up booths at the APEC venue to promote their efforts. They exhibited software in which generative AI writes student evaluations on behalf of teachers or assigns homework and applied problems tailored to each child's level of understanding.

The road to implementation was not a smooth one.

The government's original goal was the world's first rollout of AI digital textbooks to all schools nationwide. But teachers worried about the burden that making full use of the technology would place on them, while parents questioned whether the textbooks would actually improve student performance and whether they could lead to digital dependency.

After heated debate, lawmakers made last-minute changes, including requiring continued use of paper textbooks for subjects such as Korean and home economics and delaying implementation for other subjects. The government also made plans to provide advanced training to more than 160,000 teachers as well as dispatch 1,200 digital tutors as support staff.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 points 6 days ago

Hmmh, I feel the paragraph with what they saw at some booth at a fair might not be connected to the textbooks, though. Or it's just a different way of phrasing it, I'm not sure. I just hope AI does a good job for the Korean students. I remember we once had a math textbook which was the first run/edition and it still contained a handful of errors. And those were super annoying as a student. I feel that could happen more often with AI.

[–] TheBlackLounge@lemm.ee 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

The picture shows OCR, which is AI. Maybe it's just that.

[–] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 2 points 5 days ago

This is what I want to know also. "AI textbooks" is a great clickbait/ragebait term, but could mean a great variety of things.

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com -3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

And what exactly are AI textbooks?

A grift.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 4 points 6 days ago

Well, I heard in some countries all textbooks are a grift, and cost like $120 each and you have to buy like 5 of them... Not so much in other countries... I had hoped to get a bit more background information from an article... I really have no clue about the education system in Korea.