4 ms·

That's not what education is about. AI is not novel concepts, and learning is not just rote facts. Things are answerable by AI because humans have written it

That's not what education is about. AI is not novel concepts, and learning is not just rote facts. Things are answerable by AI because humans have written it and recorded it. It dismays me seeing such poor takes everywhere about how they think education will falter and people ask questions like this, it's almost comical. Perhaps people should start to learn that education is about learning how to learn and applying that to new concepts.

chrisco255 4y ago
You haven't provided any solution to the problem though. ChatGPT is able to digest new material and provide reasonable answers to questions about that material. That is what is unique to this.
- bfeynman 4y ago
  You are not even describing a problem, and you seem to thoroughly misunderstand how ChatGPT works, it is able to digest new material, where does that material come from? Getting answers to basic facts is not a valuable skill and is not something that is valued in workplace that much either.
  - chrisco255 4y ago
    The OP did describe the problem. You can feed it a story live in the chat dialogue and then ask it questions about that story, or ask it to rewrite the story in a different style. I've used ChatGPT enough to be impressed, that the capabilities are clearly an order of magnitude better than any chat bot I've interacted with. I understand where its limitations lie. However, it is, for example, able to consistently answer above 50% of the questions on the bar exam for attorneys. It is probably able to pass an SAT with a very good score. Answers to basic facts do matter for academics because a large part of our modern schooling system is just rote memorization and regurgitation of facts. Even for subjective interpretations of, say, works of literature. You can direct the GPT to write an essay arguing from virtually any perspective you desire. I do think it's something worth discussing and not being dismissive about.
    - bfeynman 4y ago
      ChatGPT is cool, but you're misappropriating what you think is a solution to a problem that you cannot understand. If you cannot understand the question, it doesn't matter what the solution is. Why does it matter if it can answer questions on a bar exam? You know who can also answer that - if you have a copy of the answer key... And it does not matter to academics, rote memorization is a proxy for learning as it is very difficult to observe how well people learn and like I said, education is about learning how to learn. The point is ChatGPT does not learn how to learn, its regurgitating tokens from training data, and that training data is not coming from itself.
furyofantares 4y ago
It's because we have experienced education that serves a few functions: it's a daycare for working parents, it's a place for children to socialize with other children, and the educational purpose it serves is that children at the bottom don't get left behind, there's a minimum amount of education everybody gets rather than some kids getting none. This last point means it doesn't particularly serve people around or above the median, which is why, in fact, it feels to many of us that the education we experienced was about learning rote facts. Now maybe that's not the education you received, but it is the one I received. Asking if students have started questioning it is in fact asking if students are using it to question the value of rote facts (as students have rightly been doing since forever anyway.)

chrisco255 4y ago

You haven't provided any solution to the problem though. ChatGPT is able to digest new material and provide reasonable answers to questions about that material. That is what is unique to this.

bfeynman 4y ago
You are not even describing a problem, and you seem to thoroughly misunderstand how ChatGPT works, it is able to digest new material, where does that material come from? Getting answers to basic facts is not a valuable skill and is not something that is valued in workplace that much either.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  The OP did describe the problem. You can feed it a story live in the chat dialogue and then ask it questions about that story, or ask it to rewrite the story in a different style. I've used ChatGPT enough to be impressed, that the capabilities are clearly an order of magnitude better than any chat bot I've interacted with. I understand where its limitations lie. However, it is, for example, able to consistently answer above 50% of the questions on the bar exam for attorneys. It is probably able to pass an SAT with a very good score. Answers to basic facts do matter for academics because a large part of our modern schooling system is just rote memorization and regurgitation of facts. Even for subjective interpretations of, say, works of literature. You can direct the GPT to write an essay arguing from virtually any perspective you desire. I do think it's something worth discussing and not being dismissive about.
  - bfeynman 4y ago
    ChatGPT is cool, but you're misappropriating what you think is a solution to a problem that you cannot understand. If you cannot understand the question, it doesn't matter what the solution is. Why does it matter if it can answer questions on a bar exam? You know who can also answer that - if you have a copy of the answer key... And it does not matter to academics, rote memorization is a proxy for learning as it is very difficult to observe how well people learn and like I said, education is about learning how to learn. The point is ChatGPT does not learn how to learn, its regurgitating tokens from training data, and that training data is not coming from itself.

furyofantares 4y ago

It's because we have experienced education that serves a few functions: it's a daycare for working parents, it's a place for children to socialize with other children, and the educational purpose it serves is that children at the bottom don't get left behind, there's a minimum amount of education everybody gets rather than some kids getting none. This last point means it doesn't particularly serve people around or above the median, which is why, in fact, it feels to many of us that the education we experienced was about learning rote facts. Now maybe that's not the education you received, but it is the one I received. Asking if students have started questioning it is in fact asking if students are using it to question the value of rote facts (as students have rightly been doing since forever anyway.)