A popular tutoring company will close its doors this week after conceding that AI has rendered its service obsolete.
Dymocks Tutoring and Talent 100, which has five centres across Sydney, will close after telling parents it would be cheaper for them to pay for an artificial intelligence tool rather than a human tutor to teach their children.
The company, which is part of the 140-year-old Dymocks institution, said students have increasingly been turning to AI bots like Claude, Gemini and OpenAI for help with exam preparation and study feedback.
In turn, Dymocks says its tutoring, which can cost parents up to $900 per subject, is no longer good value for money.
‘Most of our customers would be better off using their hard-earned cash on cheaper solutions rather than simply paying for overpriced tutoring,’ Dymocks Education chief executive Mark Buckland told the AFR.
‘Sure AI won’t perform as well as our human tutors with all the support behind them, but it’s also $30 a month.’
Mr Buckland also claimed the tutoring industry doesn’t ‘actually do anything unique’ but instead provides comfort to students - something AI can replicate.
While some parents said they understood why the tutoring service had chosen to shut down, others criticised its reasoning as a ‘misguided’ claim about AI.
‘That concept is tragic and scary! Nothing replaces human connections,’ one person said.
Another person added: ‘Human to human is way more motivating. My students go into a coma in front of their Chromebooks.’
Those concerns were echoed by Australian Tutoring Association chief executive Mohan Dhall, who said he was surprised by the company’s decision to close.
‘It was certainly a surprise to see that [Dymocks] had opted to leave at a time when I’d have thought if they stayed longer, there was more to realise in this industry,’ he told the AFR.
The closure comes as debate continues over the role AI and emerging technologies should play in education, with recent PISA results showing Australian teenagers have recorded their lowest literacy and maths scores in two decades.
Scores in both subjects have fallen steadily since 2009, around the same time smartphones became increasingly widespread.
NSW and Victoria have since introduced policies aimed at curbing the negative impacts of technology on students, including smartphone bans and limits on screen time in classrooms.
Victoria has also moved to ban smartwatches and headphones in schools.
News of the tutoring company’s closure came a day before Anthony Albanese urged world leaders at the United Nations to put in place stronger international safeguards around AI.
Even assuming it’s true that it’s cheaper and good enough (the first point is probably true, the second I’m not sure about), it’s rather odd for a business to give up on an overpriced product that people are actually paying for… Smells fishy to my inner-cynic.
Even assuming it’s true that it’s cheaper and good enough (the first point is probably true, the second I’m not sure about),
It’s definitely good enough. Go check out the latest models (but not if you only have the ‘free’ plan) and ask a standard student level question. Especially if you ask a question and ask for references and links.
The free plans that lots of people on Lemmy seem to use in their examples, still sorta suck, but the $20 a month models are awesome for tutoring. And if you have a whole tutoring-style prompt and lesson plans that you feed in to it… it’s legit better than anything that big tutoring companies can offer because of price.
A lot of the big tutoring companies are doomed because of AI. Rightfully so since they were overpriced so that made them mostly available to rich kids. I’m pretty happy to see them go down.
I’ve used quite a few models with varying levels of success and done things like implement my own harness from scratch; I’m well aware of what they can do.
I’m not sure that the way kids would interact with an AI is as effective for learning as from an actual person – doubly so given the extra caution needed to catch the kinds of mistakes LLMs are prone to making. Even if they were guaranteed to be perfectly accurate though, lack of face-to-face time with an actual person may be detrimental… I’d like to see actual studies done. Remember that a lot of kids did not do well with remote learning during COVID, unfortunately.
I’d expect a smart, motivated teenager self-studying with a bot after learning to be properly skeptical of its answers would probably do pretty well… but a poorly motivated kid who needs remedial help because they’re falling behind? I expect that’d be a disaster.
I’m not sure that the way kids would interact with an AI is as effective for learning as from an actual person
Remember that a lot of kids did not do well with remote learning during COVID, unfortunately.
But we’re talking about part-time tutoring, not full-on replacing school. I think with parental involvment and guidance, AI would be awesome for tutoring. But without, it’d would be pointless, as most things regarding education and lack of parenting.
Dymocks Tutoring and Talent 100, which has five centres across Sydney, will close after telling parents it would be cheaper for them to pay for an artificial intelligence tool rather than a human tutor to teach their children.
This is very true. As long as a parent sits down and oversees this kind of tutoring, AI can be a useful and much cheaper alternative to private tutoring. It won’t replace a good human tutor in every situation, but for explaining concepts, giving practice problems, and working through things step by step, it can do a ton.
If parents don’t trust monthly subscription corporate models, they could spend money on a decent computer capable of running newer local LLMs. That’d still cost less than regularly paying for a private tutor.
AI isn’t going away, no matter how much Lemmy bitches about it, so we might as well learn how to use it to our advantage. I love AI and use it every single day. Lemmy crying about it so much just makes me laugh.
Ya’ll act like you want to be Amish, but you’re fucking getting paid good money working in tech. Go ahead and quick your tech jobs and work for minimum wage while you avoid all AI. Then come back and tell us how that works out for ya.
