There is nothing quite like the particular hell engendered by trying in vain to properly FORMAT an otherwise completely correct answer/solution to a lengthy problem in chemistry, physics, or calculus.
Just saying-- this experience is fairly fresh in my mind. It drove my daughter crazy that her chemistry homework portal would randomly select a number of significant figures for constants-- without telling the student what it had chosen for a particular problem. Sometimes it took 15 minutes or more to "guess" at the right value, and she lost points for every incorrect answer. Yes, really.
Let's also recall that such programs are created and instructed by human beings, too, and that they therefore contain errors. She found a few of those, as well.
My personal favorite was the resonance structure question which rejected her answer because--
it was entered "upside down" relative to the solution. There is simply no legitimate way to consider that answer incorrect.
So yes, while automation is a distinct improvement upon incompetent educators running classrooms, it only works well when it isn't some monolithic, inflexible beast that must be fed the proper input stream at all times. Computers are only as smart as those providing the instructions for them.
It's still not what I'd call good, relative to an actual expert human being, in other words.
