Using AI for homeschool

Posted: March 16, 2024 by navygrade36bureaucrat in opinion/news
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The implosion of public school during COVID created a whole new batch of homeschooling families. While this is great news, it also means more than a few families are discovering the difficulty in homeschooling children, especially when the child has difficulty in subjects the parents aren’t familiar with.

That’s why I encourage all homeschooling parents to use AI. I use CoPilot since its free, but you’re welcome to use OpenAI or any other AI. Now, we aren’t going to try and look up gender studies or DEI subjects, because parents should talk with their children about those topics. But what about math?

Let’s be honest, unless you happen to work in engineering, integrating a function is likely something you haven’t done recently. AI makes this really easy AND it explains the work.

Remember diagramming sentences? I don’t because I’m sure I slept through that portion of school. So what do you do when your kid is confused about diagramming sentences?

Problem solved! But what about foreign languages?

Too bad for CoPilot! You have to have a Microsoft account of some kind to make this work

If it can diagram sentences, it can definitely update your work too!

What about chemistry? Balancing redux equations in high school chemistry is something I haven’t touched in years.

Another great use of AI is technical help. If something doesn’t work correctly on your computer, AI makes it easy to troubleshoot. I had a lot of problems getting rid of the kid’s google accounts from my wife’s laptop. I would go to a website and their account, vice my wife’s, would load and be heavily restricted. AI helped me solve that problem.

Another great school use is Excel functions. Microsoft Excel is extremely powerful, much more so than Google Sheets, but the syntax and formatting can get messy quickly. CoPilot is especially good at taking what you want to do and spitting out a function you can copy/paste. Even something complicated like pivot tables falls to the power of AI!

I think Microsoft captured AI, especially large language learning models, with the phrase “CoPilot.” Yes, AI can generate some pretty humorous poems and the occasional rap song, plus create some very cool images, but human beings are still far better at imagining unique things. Where AI shines is rote work. How many times have you Googled different Excel formulas, or how to integrate a function, or where some setting is in PowerPoint? My kids have tons of weird questions that pop up, ranging from English and Math to Biology and Chemistry. Anything that is straightforward will easily be answered with AI.

One caution: I always encourage people to have a discussion with the AI. Just popping in a question and getting an answer is dangerous, because the AI, like human beings, can get it wrong. This happened on an English question my daughter had. The first answer didn’t make sense, and she was ready to write off AI. I had her put in a few more prompts, and then the AI (in this case, CoPilot) gave her the correct answer. Treat it like a really smart human and you’ll do great!

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. And besides the pictures, nothing else in this post was generated by AI.

Massachusetts Side Effects Patriots Edition

Posted: March 15, 2024 by datechguy in nfl, Sports
Tags: , ,

Well there’s been another round of layoffs and outright dismissals at my company. To my knowledge only one of my bosses and bosses bosses over the last year will be with the company ten days from now but since that doesn’t seem to impress anybody in terms of just how bad things are let me put it another way.

Driving to mass today I was listening to sports radio and they were talking about the various free agent signings in the NFL. When the Patriots had Tom Brady getting free agents was never a problem because the chance of going to a Superbowl was 50-50 every year and at worst it meant that later in life you could say “I played with Tom Brady!” Even with Bill Belichick here there was a slight draw in the idea that you would be playing with one of the greatest tacticians and the one of the top 3 winningest coaches of all time.

But both Brady and Belichick are now gone and now when I turn on the radio I hear about the competitive disadvantage that the Patriots have in signing free agents. There are quite a few locations that don’t have a state income tax which means that you have to offer a minimum of 5-6% more as a baseline just to be even with the other guy, but with the Millionaire’s surtax added on suddenly the price of a good free agent goes up so much that another team can outbid you without even trying.

It’s not just the business people who flee, it’s the people who don’t bother to come in the first place.

But hey as always we get the government we deserve. Good and Hard.

This desperate:

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) denounced Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an “obstacle to peace” in a Thursday floor speech and called on Israel to hold a new election to replace the Netanyahu-led government amid its ongoing war with Hamas.

You never know Hamas might kill him last

It is excruciatingly obvious that very few individuals living in the United States truly understand freedom of speech.  Those on the political left are not only clueless about this most fundamental right, they openly despise the very concept of it.  Thanks to our criminally atrocious educational system the younger generations are also clueless and also openly hostile to the concept of freedom of speech.  Unfortunately, those of us on the political right sometimes demonstrate a lack of understanding when it comes to freedom of speech.  It is now time to dispel the most common misconceptions about freedom of speech that I’ve encountered.

There is no hate speech exception to freedom of speech.

Someone asked me if I support the right of the KKK to hold rallies in public. My answer is: Even though I find the KKK absolutely reprehensible and I am completely disgusted by everything they stand for I support their right to say it in public. If I found out there was a KKK rally planned in my area I would work tirelessly to organize a PEACEFUL protest and I would make sure my protest would completely dwarf the KKK rally. That is the essence of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. No one has a right to silence others, no matter how much they disagree with what others have to say. No one has a right to prevent another person, or group, from holding an event, or to interfere with that event in any way. Everyone has a right to peacefully protest anytime they want.

Even the most reprehensible individuals have a right to say the most reprehensible things. 

Far too often those on the political left label speech that contradicts leftist orthodoxy as hate speech.  They then use the declaration of hate speech as a weapon to silence that speech they disagree with.

There is no misinformation exception to freedom of speech.

Each and every individual has a right to spread whatever lies they wish to spread, on whatever medium they wish to use.  Outright spreading of misinformation and disinformation is most definitely protected by freedom of speech. 

Labeling speech that contradicts the progressive narrative as misinformation, and then censoring that speech is a favorite tactic of the Marxists who masquerade as Democrats.

The First Amendment specifically prohibits the federal government from policing speech.

Each and every attempt at regulating speech by the federal government is a direct violation of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.  That includes so called hate speech and misinformation.  The federal government has zero authority to define those concepts, and zero authority to classify speech according to those criteria.  The federal government has absolutely no authority to ban any speech at all.

Every state has a Bill of Rights that protects the rights of those living there from the tyranny of the state government and the local governments.  That includes freedom of speech.

The Bill of Rights does not grant rights.

All rights are granted to each and every individual directly by God.  The Bill of Rights is merely a restraining order that prohibits the federal government from infringing on, or regulating, our most fundamental rights in any way.  There is no such thing as a First Amendment Right, only God-given Natural Rights.

Governments most definitely do not grant rights.