AI tutors match expert humans on GRE learning gains at 918x lower cost
arampell · x · 2026-09-25
- Curtis Northcutt's team (Cleanlab/MIT) released the StudentBench paper (arXiv:2609.28470), testing 2,383 real students: pre-test → 1 hour with AI, human, or no tutor → post-test. No LLM judges; gains are post minus pre.
- AI tutoring is statistically equivalent to expert human tutoring for GRE learning gains (p=.015); the best AI tutor beat human experts on average in 5 of 7 GRE domains.
- Cost: $75/hour for a human expert vs $0.07/hour for AI — 918x cheaper (per-problem $0.0052 vs $4.81, p=.044).
- A second study had experts run 2,028 pairwise rubric evaluations of AI-generated lesson plans and practice problems, separating AI tutors on lesson planning, problem creation, conversational pedagogy, cost, and engagement.
- The platform logged 175,000+ student-AI messages. Motivation: $1 trillion/year goes to making machines better; some should go to making humans better.
Related event: AI Tutors Match Human Experts at 918x Lower Cost, Study Finds(2 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- Ross Girshick posts CVPR slides recounting 1.5 decades of object detection and its link to the LLM era — CatAstro_Piyush · 2026-11-11
- Ben Todd wrestles with a 50:50 chance only 18 months remain of 'the human era' — ben_j_todd · 2026-11-11
- Mathematicians face identity crisis as AI solves problems in hours, Corriere interview warns — ValerioCapraro · 2026-11-11
- Why inference speed will be AI products' biggest competitive edge in 1–2 years — itsOmSarraf_ · 2026-11-11
- AI Defense Shifts to Scale Economics: Attacks Buried in Legitimate Traffic — DavidLinthicum · 2026-11-11
- Ben Todd's alt log-log plot shows task horizons hitting a singularity in under 12 months — ben_j_todd · 2026-11-11