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I think you meant “stopping people cheating isn’t going to change that”. In my friendly/complementary rebuttal, the catch lies somewhere in the phase of learni

I think you meant “stopping people cheating isn’t going to change that”. In my friendly/complementary rebuttal, the catch lies somewhere in the phase of learning foundational material. In the same way that traditional mathematics education emphasizes doing problems by hand that could be solved computer, there’s something to be said for learning to parse the research material that ChatGPT has indexed when you’re writing a term paper. It’s worth noting here that math education may be moving away from the rote memorization and routine problem solving that today’s math researchers state are essential. ChatGPT has made it much harder to detect cheating on untimed power tests. The biggest downside I see to this is that it makes an old problem worse. If a prof has no choice but to administer a non-computer (proctored) timed exam, students who take tests slowly or have anxiety disorders are going to suffer.

oceanplexian 4y ago
At the end of the day though, it doesn’t really matter. The person cheating is failing themselves if the foundational material you’re talking about is so important. If they can somehow manage to pass enough courses while using an AI, and then get a degree out of it, or a 4.0 GPA, or whatever then the degree wasn’t that valuable to begin with. This already mirrors the real world pretty well. Outside of your first job or two, nobody really cares what your GPA is or what college you graduated from. In the real world if you managed to cheat with an AI you’d probably get a nice promotion. I don’t personally see a downside, other than the demise of certain flawed notions of academic success that deserve to die out anyway.
- deleted 4y ago
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- Jensson 4y ago
  Lets say we are training ChatGPT2, would you let it use ChatGPT for solving things? Do you think it would learn better if it had to learn itself without relying on ChatGPT? We learn by doing. Relying on smart tools puts you in a local optima, it is hard for you to improve over those tools, but people who don't rely on tools continue improving and then start using the tools later.
  - comfypotato 4y ago
    I was just trying to allude to the nature of the universities’ business. (Being assessing that they’ve taught what they claim to teach.) My PhD mentor is actually leading a discussion about ChatGPT use by students, and the tone is mostly concern. But it’s not all bad; it’s an incredible tool for quickly diving into a subject at a surface level and getting your bearings regarding what’s important. It saved my ass on one of my finals too when the rest of the questions were harder than I expected and ChatGPT helped me tear through the remaining T/F questions.

oceanplexian 4y ago

At the end of the day though, it doesn’t really matter. The person cheating is failing themselves if the foundational material you’re talking about is so important. If they can somehow manage to pass enough courses while using an AI, and then get a degree out of it, or a 4.0 GPA, or whatever then the degree wasn’t that valuable to begin with. This already mirrors the real world pretty well. Outside of your first job or two, nobody really cares what your GPA is or what college you graduated from. In the real world if you managed to cheat with an AI you’d probably get a nice promotion. I don’t personally see a downside, other than the demise of certain flawed notions of academic success that deserve to die out anyway.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Jensson 4y ago
Lets say we are training ChatGPT2, would you let it use ChatGPT for solving things? Do you think it would learn better if it had to learn itself without relying on ChatGPT? We learn by doing. Relying on smart tools puts you in a local optima, it is hard for you to improve over those tools, but people who don't rely on tools continue improving and then start using the tools later.
- comfypotato 4y ago
  I was just trying to allude to the nature of the universities’ business. (Being assessing that they’ve taught what they claim to teach.) My PhD mentor is actually leading a discussion about ChatGPT use by students, and the tone is mostly concern. But it’s not all bad; it’s an incredible tool for quickly diving into a subject at a surface level and getting your bearings regarding what’s important. It saved my ass on one of my finals too when the rest of the questions were harder than I expected and ChatGPT helped me tear through the remaining T/F questions.