All Day TA founder rebuts Maryland study: 18,000 AI interactions in one class last week
Afinetheorem · x · 2026-10-14
Economist Afinetheorem (All Day TA founder) posted a long thread rebutting the Maryland study that found in-class AI cut grades by 4pp.
- In that study only 14.6% of students ever used the AI, and 8% asked more than 3 questions — huge negative effects despite near-zero usage suggest bad tools and norms deter study effort broadly, not AI itself
- All Day TA saw 18,000 AI interactions from one comparable US public university class last week, with near-universal student adoption
- Proactive tools, especially AI-driven interactive quizzes, absorb almost all student effort; the backend is far more complex than RAG + GPT-4o
- All Day TA 2.0 (spring) will track auto-extracted per-student learning goals and use bandit theory to customize each interaction
- AI rollouts need AI-proof assignments; their data shows exams complement AI
- Used at 250+ universities (Columbia, MIT, Stanford, Toronto, etc.) from $100/course; founder invites an RCT
Related event: All Day TA Founder Rebuts Maryland Study on AI Hurting Grades(2 posts)→
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